Amelie Kutter

Forschungsprojekt: A cultural political economy of crisis and crisis management (2010-2013)

This trans-disciplinary research project focuses on the complex and multi-faceted economic crisis that became evident in 2007 and explores it through to 2011. Different literatures and methodologies are used: corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis; actor-centred institutional analysis of varieties of capitalism and their place in the world market; studies of governance and governmentality; and studies on the EU’s open method of coordination as sources of insight into global crisis-management. Amelie Kutter is co-investigator on this project, which is directed by Bob Jessop at Lancaster University.

Kutter, A. and Trappmann, V. (2010) Civil society in Central and Eastern Europe: the ambivalent legacy of accession

Given the particular incentives that the EU offered for the empowerment of non-state actors during pre-accession, it has often been assumed that EU intervention strengthened civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. We argue that, instead, the EU’s impact was highly ambivalent. Although the EU aid and EU-induced policy reform levelled the way for established actors’ involvement in multilevel politics, it reinforced some of the barriers to development that the civil society organisations face in CEE.