Best European thesis in politics
The 2013 Jean Blondel PhD Prize of the European Consortium for Political Research has been awarded to Christian Rauh, senior researcher in the Global Governance research unit. Christian wrote his thesis "Politicisation, Issue Salience, and Consumer Policies of the European Commission" as a research fellow of the Schumpeter junior research group Position Forming in the EU Commission at the WZB.
The thesis provides an insightful account of the European Commission’s approach to policy making, helping us to better understand the dynamics of policy development and integration on the EU level. The extent of public awareness, issue contestation and salience constrains the Commission’s positions, and explains the location of its policy stance between laissez-faire and interventionism in consumer and market regulation.
More information about the prize
Find here a short version of Christian's arguments (in German; the text appeared as an article in the quarterly WZB-Mitteilungen in March 2013)