"An exploration of some social mechanisms affecting domestic political actors’ Europeanisation: the Belgian case"

The principal idea of this paper is that the European socialisation of domestic political actors as a result of the growing involvement in European policy-making settings is not as self evident as early and current neofunctionalists often assume. Rather we suggest that the European socialisation of national actors is mediated by factors that relate to the actors’ domestic embeddedness. It seems that socialisation power of the European institutions is inferior to the mechanism or scope conditions that are situated at the domestic level. Therefore we believe that future studies on European socialisation should control more explicitly for preexisting dispositions as key determinants of potential attitude change. Related to this, we argue that socialisation studies should focus more extensively on (domestic) recruitment that may affect pre-socialisation and international socialisation