Policy making, Institutionalization, and Collective Mobilization: A Model for Transnational Intersectional Analysis

Abstract

This chapter combines a discursive approach to policy analysis with the dimension of contextualization in relation to the particular setting of the empirical study of EU policy making. According to Kantola,1 the agents articulating discourses “act not only within a discursive context but also within an institutional context, which constitute them as both subjects and actors” (2006, 45). There is an interrelation between the discursive and the institutional context in which policies are formulated and adopted at the EU level. This combination of discursive, institutional, and contextual dimensions of EU policy making is necessary in order to investigate the role of ideas within transnational policy processes and the importance of agency in the development of policies. Furthermore, in order to develop a contextualized approach to analyzing intersectionality at the transnational level, I argue that the particularities of the transnational space, the mobilization of civil society actors, as well as the institutionalization of diversity through policy-making processes and practices must be taken into account and integrated into a coherent model of analysis.