Where have all the lawyers gone? Structure and transformations of the top European Commission officials' legal training
Founded on a prosopographical analysis of the European Commission¹s top civil servants, this paper gathers data in order to contribute to the analysis of the European legal capital in two ways. First, we show that while jurists (i.e. agents for whom law was the main element of their training) integrated the European Commission administration very early on, and acquired dominant positions, they were strong only insofar as their legal training was the basis of a broader undertaking of construction and acquisition of a more general bureaucratic capital. Secondly, we demonstrate that this ability to hold dominant positions within the machine tends to be increasingly contested with the rise of other agents, especially economists, whose properties tend to become indispensable for a high level career within the European Commission.
Transcended power of the state: the role of actors in Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of the state
Pierre Bourdieu's writings on the state consist of a series of more or less coherent investigations approaching the state from different angles. His writings on the state may seem to contain internal ambiguities. On the one hand, they argue for an actor-centered approach to the state while, on the other hand, elaborating the power of the state as an institution transcending these actors. The purpose of this article is to reconstruct Bourdieu's understanding of the state in order to examine if the opposition between these two apparently opposite approaches are in as sharp contention as they first appear. The article starts out by discussing how Bourdieu has approached the state through his broader sociological approach and concepts. Afterwards it outlines the state formation processes lying at the foundation of the state's power. Next it focuses on his special emphasis on the actor strategies that lie behind the emergence of the bureaucratic field. It moreover discusses Bourdieu's analysis of the abdication of the state in contemporary France. Having discussed the analytical potential of Bourdieusian studies of the state by focusing on the case of the European Union, the article concludes by arguing that Bourdieu's analysis is aimed at embracing the opposition between a focus on the state and on actors. The transcended power of the state is established in the conflict between the interests of actors, but gradually acquires an autonomy that goes beyond these interests.
KANT'S SECOND THOUGHTS ON RACE
During the 1780s, as Kant was developing his universalistic moral theory, he published texts in which he defended the superiority of whites over non-whites. Whether commentators see this as evidence of inconsistent universalism or of consistent inegalitarianism, they generally assume that Kant's position on race remained stable during the 1780s and 1790s. Against this standard view, I argue on the basis of his texts that Kant radically changed his mind. I examine his 1780s race theory and his hierarchical conception of the races, and subsequently address the question of the significance of these views, especially in the light of Kant's own ethical theory. I then show that during the 1790s Kant restricts the role of the concept of race, and drops his hierarchical account of the races in favour of a more genuinely egalitarian and cosmopolitan view.