General

Dr Caitríona Carter is Senior Lecturer at the Europa Institute, University of Edinburgh and Research Fellow at the CNRS research centre ‘Science Politique, Relations Internationales et Territoires', (SPIRIT), Sciences-Po, Bordeaux. Working within the discipline of social science, Caitríona Carter's general research interests are in the following areas:

• the European government of industry - in particular, sea fisheries and aquaculture

• studying regions as spaces for politics - in particular, Scotland, Wales and EU politics

• domestic parliamentary adaptation to the EU - in particular, House of Commons, House of Lords, the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales

To pursue her research agenda, she has held research grants and consultancies with bodies including the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Scottish Executive and the Convention for Scottish Local Authorities.

A central and continuing aim of Caitríona Carter's research has been to argue the case for theoretical approaches informed by a 'political sociology of institutions' to produce new and rigorous knowledge about causes and effects of political change - including European integration and devolution. To advance this line of inquiry, and in conjunction with others, she has co-organised the Europa Institute Seminar Series:

‘Practicing EU government: problematisation, mobilisation and legitimation' Caitríona Carter (Europa Institute), Richard Freeman (Politics) and Martin Lawn (CES).

For further details about this series please see
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/practicingeugovernment/

Or type this address directly for public access to site.

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Current Research and Writing Projects

•  The European Government of Industry

Berthet, T., Itcaina, X., Roger, A., Smith, A. (SPIRIT Sciences-Po Bordeaux), Jullien,B., Montalban, M. (Bordeaux-IV), Cazals, C. (CEMAGREF), Carter, C. (Europa Institute and SPIRIT, Sciences-Po Bordeaux).

This is a collective research project - ‘Le Gouvernement Européen des Industries' (GEDI) - funded by the French ANR which examines the European Government of four industries - aquaculture, cars, wine and pharmaceuticals. Taking industries, not states, as our core units of analysis, the project advances an analytical framework for capturing the causal and constituent mechanisms of the EU government as it affects each industry. Additionally, four trans-industry regulations are specifically examined for their effects on change in an industry's institutional ordering - these are flexicurity, sustainable development, trade and competition policy.

Carter responsibilities:

• Aquaculture. Building on past research into the transformation of UK-EU sea fisheries, within this project I am leading the industry-specific research team on the European government of aquaculture;

• Flexicurity. Additionally, and also building on previous work into EU social policy, I am co-leading (with Thierry Berthet) our collective investigation into the EU's trans-industry programme of flexicurity.

Related Papers and Publications:

Berthet, T. and Carter, C., ‘The EU Government of ‘Flexicurity': Trans-Industry Regulation to What End?', SASE Conference, Paris, 16-18 July 2009.

Carter, C., Cazals, C. and Smith, A., ‘The Politics of Aquaculture', Paper for GEDI workshop, Sciences-Po Bordeaux, Bordeaux, 26 June 2009.

Carter, C., ‘Debating Causality in the Government of the EU: ‘Territorial-Institutionalism' and the Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy', European Union Studies Association International Conference, Los Angeles, 23-25 April 2009.

Carter, C., ‘Globalization, Scottish Fisheries and ‘Political Work': Global-EU-Local Dialectics' in B. Jullien and A. Smith (eds.), Industries and Globalization: The Political Causality of Divergent Responses (London: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 149-181.

Carter, C. & Smith A., ‘Revitalizing Public Policy Approaches to the EU: ‘Territorial Institutionalism,' Fisheries and Wine', Journal of European Public Policy, 15(2) (2008), 263-281.

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• ‘Studying Regions as ‘Spaces For Politics': Territory, Mobilisation and Political Change

This writing and publication project is developed with Dr. Romain Pasquier, IEP Rennes. Our collective work presents the general case for re-visiting and up-dating sociological treatments of regions as ‘spaces for politics' to capture current transformations in regulatory government. This approach notably implies a move away from conceptualising transformative consequences of economic globalization, EU policies and/or State reforms as independent variables having uni-directional ‘top down' effects. In these, regions are frequently perceived as simple receptors of macro political and economic transformations.

Instead, we propose an alternate research design whereby a region's own on-going construction (boundaries/interests/identities) is viewed as the central political process to be researched. Capturing the effects of regime change within this process includes investigating how actors deploy and align different social and political representations, cultural values, territorial discourses and regulatory practices and stabilize them as representative of the region. Through applying political sociology's conceptual tools, we argue that research can reveal how actors' perceptions of their interests are shaped, namely through problematisation, deliberation, argumentative persuasion. Overall, a central focus is placed upon demonstrating how actors politically use representations of ‘territory' as causal in legitimising ‘the reach' of regional public action and the representative authority of a range of actors to regulate in its name.

Related Papers and Publications:

Carter, C. and Smith A., ‘What has Scottish devolution changed? Sectors, territory and polity-building', British Politics, 4/3 (2009) 315-340.

Carter, C., ‘Regions as subjects of the government of the European Union: The changing engagement of Scottish actors in EU sea fisheries', paper presented at the Europa Seminar Series Practicing EU Government, University of Edinburgh, 20 March 2009.

Carter, C. and Pasquier, R., ‘Intégration européenne et gouvernance régionale : la congruence?', in Faure, A., Leresche, J- P., Muller, P. and Nahrath, S. (Eds.), Action publique et changements d'échelles: les nouvelles focales du politique (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2007), pp. 259-270.

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• UK Devolution and UK Parliamentary Adaptation to the EU - From State-centric to Multi-Territory Control?'

This writing project currently consists of a series of papers and publications which collectively mount a challenge to the orthodox (and implicitly normative) view that ‘parliaments' are outdated and weak organisations. Instead, I argue for a fundamental re-conceptualisation of UK parliamentary engagement resulting from effects of European integration on the one hand and devolution on the other.

Throughout, I stress that this shift in emphasis is not just one arguing for a change in research object to ensure that studies on UK parliamentary adaptation are not ‘blind' to devolution or Europeanisation. From an analytical point of view, I also contend that political change poses challenges for research on how to develop and apply theories and methods to capture its transformations - and I present the case for ‘political sociology' as a tenable theoretical and methodological means for addressing these challenges.

Related papers and publications:

Carter, C., ‘Parliamentary Committee Work, Organizational Knowledge & EU Engagement: A Framework for Analysis', Paper presented at the Association Française de Science Politique (AFSP) Conference, IEP Grenoble 2009, 7-9 September 2009.

Carter, C., ‘Convergence through Construction? UK Devolution and EU Parliamentary Engagement: Scotland/Wales/Westminster Compared', paper presented at workshop Europeanisation of Parliamentary Behaviour, 21-22 July 2009, University of Oxford.

Carter, C., ‘Identifying Causality in Public Institutional Change: The Adaptation of the National Assembly of Wales to the European Union', Public Administration, Vol. 86, No. 2 (2008) 345-361.

Carter, C., ‘Parliamentarianism, Subsidiarity and Devolution: A Rejoinder' in Kiiver, P. (Ed.), National and Regional Parliaments in the European Constitutional Order (Groningen: Europa Law Publishing Groningen, 2006).

Carter, C. and McLeod, A., ‘The Scottish Parliament and the European Union: Analysing Regional Parliamentary Engagement' in Weatherill, S. and Bernitz, U. (Eds.), The Role of the Regions and Sub-National Actors in Europe (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2005).

Bulmer, S., Burch, M., Carter, C., Hogwood, P. and Scott, A., European Policy-Making Under Devolution: Transforming Britain into Multi-Level Governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).

Carter, C., ‘The Parliament of the United Kingdom: From Supportive Scrutiny to Unleashed Control?', in Maurer, A. and Wessels, W. The European Parliament and National Parliaments After Amsterdam (Baden-Baden: Nomos Editors, 2001), pp. 395-424.

Carter, C., ‘Democratic Governance Beyond the Nation State: Third-Level Assemblies and Scrutiny of European Legislation', in European Public Law, Volume 6, Issue 3 (2000) 429-459.

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Phd Supervision

Caitríona Carter is able to offer PhD supervision on most topics falling within the following general research areas - the European government of industry; the study of regions as spaces for politics - globalisation, Europeanisation, devolution; the study of national and regional parliamentary adaptation to the European Union. She particularly welcomes applications from prospective students with political science interests in political sociology, constructivist and/or sociological institutionalism, as well as related sociological approaches within the disciplines of economics and/or human geography.