The (re)turn to activist government in the European Union: an introduction

Abstract

Abstract This introduction to the Symposium on the (re)turn of activist government in the EU is structured around four guiding research questions: whether the EU’s shift toward state interventionism is structural or contingent; how the emerging forms of state activism relate to the preceding neoliberal paradigm; to what extent these developments align with the existing Treaty framework; and what their implications are for democratic legitimacy. Against this backdrop, the introduction surveys the contributions to the Symposium and offers some preliminary, tentative answers to these questions.