Beyond Institutions and Discourses: Bringing Political Economy to Feminist EU Studies

The EU as a polity is rhetorically committed to gender equality and social rights, yet sees market-making and economic growth as the main tools to achieve liberal democracy and peace. The EU and Europe are also deeply shaped by the legacies of colonialism and the consolidation of neoliberalism after the Second World War. These historical legacies and institutional conditions structure policymaking in the EU and the European region, legitimizing gendered and racialised hierarchies and exploitations within and beyond Europe.

Yet, despite a rich and diverse body of Feminist EU Studies, Feminist Political Economy (FPE) approaches have remained a relatively small and specialised strand of this scholarship. Feminist analyses of EU policies and institutions have generated important insights into gendered and racialised power relations, but they rarely situate these within the political economy in which European institutions, policies and identities are embedded. This thematic issue addresses this gap by bringing Feminist EU Studies and FPE into a dialogue.

The issue aims to consolidate “FPE of the EU” as an ambitious and holistic research agenda for a feminist, critical analysis of the EU as a political economy. We understand FPE broadly as a holistic and eclectic approach that crosses conventional disciplinary boundaries and scales of analysis, connects economic and social processes, and examines how political economies produce and distribute resources, power and inequalities along gendered, racialised and other axes.

Bringing this perspective to the EU can reshape our understanding of the EU itself: its institutions, policies and forms of governance; its relationships to member states and impacts on the ground; and its relationships with the broader political economy. Through theoretically innovative and methodologically diverse contributions that cover both EU policies and national case studies with a link to the EU, the thematic issue will identify new sites, questions and analytical connections for feminist EU research.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Politics and Governance is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 100 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.