{"id":2039,"date":"2019-04-23T07:12:41","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T07:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neweurope.centre.ubbcluj.ro\/?page_id=2039"},"modified":"2019-04-23T07:56:38","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T07:56:38","slug":"issue-no-29","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/neweurope.centre.ubbcluj.ro\/?page_id=2039","title":{"rendered":"Issue No. 29"},"content":{"rendered":"

2019 Issue No. 29 \/April<\/div><\/div><\/h2>\n
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Table of Contents<\/h3>\n
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1. Zoltan GRUNHUT<\/strong>: EUROPEANIZATION: A CRITICAL REALIST, DISCURSIVE INSTITUTIONALIST APPROACH<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>Abstract<\/div>
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Abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the field of European Studies once so popular new institutionalist approaches are <\/em>struggling to compete with the theoretical innovations proposed by post-structuralist scholarships. <\/em>These latter interpretations debate that \u2018grand narratives\u2019 are proper explanatory frameworks to <\/em>understand different political, economic and social processes merged under the umbrella-notion of <\/em>Europeanization, so they favor more agent-based conceptualizations. While New Institutionalism aims <\/em>to reflect on this challenge through epistemological and methodological attempts, mostly by discursive <\/em>manners, yet this paper \u2013 with respect to the achievements of new empirical set-ups and designs \u2013 <\/em>argues that the ontological background should be addressed instead. For this goal the perspective of <\/em>Critical Realism is crucial to note, and its suggestions about 1) multi-layered social reality, 2) metatheory, <\/em>and 3) interconnectedness of subjects and objects in social science are pillars to be considered. <\/em>All of these potential contributions highlight that scholars need to be reflexive as they are existentially <\/em>embedded into the deep structures and linkages of generative mechanisms  hat they are theorizing. The <\/em>more stable the belief that certain ontological conceptualizations are grasping the observable facts and <\/em>events in a reflective way, the less reflexive the given thinker to realize the need for out-of-the-box ideas <\/em>and hypotheses.<\/em><\/p>\n