Politique Europeenne

About Politique Europeenne

About Politique Europeenne

Politique Europeenne (in French, Politique européenne) is a bilingual French and English peer-reviewed journal devoted to European studies, published in France. Its print ISSN is 1623-6297 and its electronic ISSN is 2105-2875. It publishes thematic issues and varia issues covering the whole field of European studies: public policy analysis, international relations, political sociology, political theory, and political anthropology, together with presentations of research in progress and critical or cross-readings of important work.

The journal was created as part of a broader effort to open French political science to the study of European integration. Its founders observed that reference academic contributions to the political analysis of the European integration process were still largely dominated by journals publishing in English, and they set out to build a French and English forum in which political science could develop its own analytical grids and tools for the EU field, drawing on international relations, public policy, political sociology, political anthropology, and political thought rather than borrowing its frameworks mainly from law and economics. That founding ambition still explains the journal's identity: it is a political science journal about Europe, not a law review, not an economics journal, and not a commentary magazine.

At a Glance

• Full title: Politique Europeenne
• Country: France
• Print ISSN: 1623-6297
• Electronic ISSN: 2105-2875
• Languages: French and English (bilingual, as described by Cairn.info)
• Frequency: 4 issues per year, as listed by Cairn.info; the Cairn listing showed issue 2025/4, number 90, as the latest issue at checking time
• Platform: Cairn.info, which presents the journal and its archive
• Field: European studies; EU public policy, international relations, political sociology, political theory, political anthropology
• Stored publisher value in the existing record: a numeric code (7194) rather than a publisher name - see the corrections note in the sources file for this profile; no publisher name is asserted here beyond what Cairn.info itself presents
• Article processing charge: could not be verified from a source fetched for this profile
• DOAJ listing: a DOAJ search-API query for both ISSNs returned no result at checking time, so no DOAJ listing is claimed

History and Purpose

OpenAlex, resolved through its ISSN endpoint to source S4210190138 at checking time, records this title from the year 2000 and lists 1,126 works under the ISSN pair, which makes Politique Europeenne one of the more substantial francophone outlets in European political science by accumulated volume. Its numbering reached issue 90 by late 2025 according to the Cairn.info listing fetched for this profile, a run consistent with a quarterly journal publishing continuously since the start of the century.

The journal's stated ambition is to become one of the key forums, in French and in English, for scientific controversy in the field of European studies. The word controversy is used in its scholarly sense: organised disagreement between well-supported positions. The journal wants to provide observers - scientists, students, and journalists - and actors in EU politics, administration, and economic life with a high-quality scientific journal that takes stock of the debates driving research and that sheds new light on the reality of the EU. That double audience, academic and practitioner-observer, shapes its contents: articles must satisfy scholarly reviewers, and they are expected to say something that matters beyond a single department seminar.

Scope and Subject Coverage

The whole field of European studies is the scope, read through political science. Public policy analysis includes how EU policies are made, implemented, evaluated, and contested in areas from agriculture and cohesion to digital regulation, climate, migration, health, and defence. International relations coverage includes the EU as a global actor, its neighbourhood, transatlantic relations, and the interaction between member-state foreign policies and common institutions. Political sociology coverage includes the people and groups who staff, lobby, protest against, vote in, and work inside European institutions, studied with interviews, ethnography, surveys, and archival work. Political theory and political anthropology coverage includes democracy, legitimacy, sovereignty, citizenship, identity, and the everyday meanings of Europe for the people who encounter its institutions.

Recent and frequently read material on the Cairn platform illustrates that breadth in practice. Articles have examined the 2024 French European election as a second-order contest shaped by the rise of the far right and protest voting; the 2024 European Parliament elections in the Netherlands; European digital sovereignty as a legal reality and as geopolitical rhetoric; the governance of the outermost regions of the EU through a political sociology of agro-industrial policy; transparency registers and lobbying knowledge in the EU; disability and field research inside European institutions in Brussels; and the Europeanisation of immigration policies and of national party competition. A reader who works through several issues will encounter electoral studies, institutional ethnography, policy history, legal-political analysis, and normative argument side by side.

Article and Issue Formats

The journal publishes thematic issues, which gather articles around a shared question or dossier, and varia issues, which gather strong articles across its fields. Issues also include presentations of research in progress and critical or cross-readings, formats that let scholars debate books and findings directly rather than only through separate articles published years apart. For authors, the thematic format is an opportunity and a discipline: an article submitted to a thematic dossier must speak to the dossier question and to the other contributions, while a varia submission must stand on its own as a contribution to European studies as a whole.

Editorial Approach and Peer Review

Politique Europeenne is peer-reviewed, as Cairn.info describes it. Submissions in French or English are both within its remit, which is unusual and valuable: francophone scholars can publish in French without losing an international scholarly audience, and anglophone scholars can enter a debate whose key references are often French. Authors should expect reviewers to test the European dimension of the work. A study of a single country, party, ministry, or movement belongs here when it is used to answer a question about European integration, Europeanisation, EU institutions, or comparison across Europe, and when that framing is argued rather than asserted in a concluding paragraph.

Methodological pluralism is part of the journal's character. Quantitative electoral analysis, qualitative case studies, comparative policy research, historical sociology, political theory, and ethnographic work all appear. What unites them is the standard of evidence for the method chosen: data and code transparency where that is the norm for quantitative work, case justification and source transparency for qualitative work, and accurate, charitable reconstruction of opposing views for theoretical work.

Metrics and How to Read Them

The existing JournalsWorld record, drawn from Scopus-derived data, lists an h-index of 10 and coverage of 2017 to 2024. OpenAlex at checking time listed a markedly different picture for the same ISSN pair: 1,126 works, 4,987 citations, an h-index of 29, an i10-index of 163, and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.44, with leading topics in EU policy and governance, European politics and security, European and international law studies, electoral systems and political participation, and European law and migration. The gap between the two h-index figures is itself the lesson: h-index values are properties of a database and its coverage, not properties of a journal in the abstract. OpenAlex indexes a wider range of francophone social science material than the database behind the existing record, so its count is higher. Neither figure is a Journal Impact Factor, and neither should be quoted without naming its source.

Read sensibly, the metrics describe a durable, mid-sized scholarly journal with a quarter-century of continuous publication, strong roots in French political science, and an international readership through the Cairn platform. Its influence is best judged by the debates it hosts and the scholars who publish and cite there, with database numbers used as supporting evidence rather than as a verdict.

Indexing and Visibility

The journal is presented and distributed on Cairn.info, the francophone humanities and social sciences platform, which is the main route by which libraries and readers reach its issues, and Cairn also operates an English-facing international site. No DOAJ listing is claimed in this profile because the DOAJ search API returned no result for either ISSN at checking time. Current indexing in any specific citation database, current subscription and access terms, and any author charges should be checked on the Cairn journal page and with the journal directly, because platform arrangements change and no fetched source for this profile established a fee: the fee position is therefore recorded as could not be verified rather than assumed to be zero.

Publishing in the Journal: Guidance for Authors

Begin with the debate, not only with your case. A strong Politique Europeenne article identifies a live scholarly argument about European integration, Europeanisation, EU policy-making, European democracy, or Europe in the world, states its own position or finding within that argument, and shows what changes if the finding is right. Reviewers for a journal whose purpose is scientific controversy will ask what is at stake, and a manuscript that answers that question in its first pages starts ahead.

Choose the language deliberately. Publishing in French reaches the journal's core francophone community directly; publishing in English widens potential citation and teaching use. Either is legitimate. In either language, write for a reader who knows European studies but may not know your national case, your data source, or your theoretical tradition: introduce institutions, parties, and legal instruments briefly, translate quotations where needed, and define concepts that travel badly between languages, such as governance, polity, or the many meanings of integration.

Prepare the submission to the journal's current instructions as presented through Cairn and the journal's own calls, especially when submitting to a thematic dossier with its own deadline and guest editors. Keep the bibliography complete and consistent, because in European studies the reference list is part of the argument: it shows which conversation the article joins. In revision, engage reviewers as participants in that conversation, answering each point, conceding where they are right, and defending your choices with sources where you hold your ground.

Fit Checks Before Submitting

Ask four questions. Is the European dimension the object of study, rather than a backdrop? Does the article use a political science approach, broadly understood to include sociology, anthropology, and theory, rather than offering only legal doctrine or only economic modelling? Would a scholar working on a different member state or a different policy area learn something transferable from it? Does it engage existing scholarship in French, in English, or in both, rather than treating one language community as the whole field? Four affirmative answers indicate a good fit. A negative answer usually indicates revision before submission, not a flaw in the underlying research.

Similar Journals and Alternatives

Authors comparing destinations for European studies work often also consider the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, European Political Science Review, and French-language outlets in political science that publish European material. Politique Europeenne differs in being bilingual by design, in welcoming theoretical and anthropological work alongside policy and electoral analysis, and in its explicit mission to host debate between francophone and anglophone scholarship. For work whose contribution depends on that conversation, it is often the more natural home even when an English-only journal has a larger citation database footprint.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ISSNs of Politique Europeenne?
Print ISSN 1623-6297 and electronic ISSN 2105-2875, listed in the journal record and confirmed by the ISSN pair returned by OpenAlex for this title.

Is Politique Europeenne bilingual?
Yes. Cairn.info describes it as a bilingual French and English peer-reviewed journal covering the whole field of European studies.

How often does it publish?
Cairn.info lists 4 issues per year. The listing fetched for this profile showed 2025/4, number 90, as the latest issue.

What subjects does it cover?
Public policy analysis, international relations, political sociology, political theory, and political anthropology, all applied to European integration and EU politics, plus research in progress and critical readings.

Where can I read it?
Through Cairn.info, which presents the journal, its issues, and its most-read articles, with library access arrangements handled through that platform.

What is its h-index?
It depends on the source: 10 in the existing Scopus-derived record, and 29 in OpenAlex at checking time, where the record held 1,126 works and 4,987 citations. Always name the source with the figure.

Is the journal listed in DOAJ?
A DOAJ search-API query for both ISSNs returned no result at checking time, so this profile claims no DOAJ listing.

Does it charge authors?
An article processing charge could not be verified from the sources fetched for this profile. Confirm the current position with the journal before submitting.

Can I submit in English?
Yes. English is one of the journal's two publication languages, alongside French.

What kind of article fits best?
An article that joins a recognisable debate in European studies, uses a political science, sociological, anthropological, or theoretical approach with evidence that fits its method, and draws a conclusion that travels beyond its single case.

Conclusion

Politique Europeenne occupies a distinctive place in European studies: a quarterly, bilingual, peer-reviewed journal, publishing since 2000, that was founded so that French political science could argue about European integration in its own voice and in direct exchange with English-language scholarship. Its Cairn archive, reaching issue 90 by late 2025, and its OpenAlex record of more than a thousand works show a journal that has sustained that mission. For scholars of EU policy, politics, society, and ideas who want their work read inside the francophone and anglophone conversation at once, it remains a serious and appropriate destination.

Reading Politique Europeenne Today: Themes in Recent Issues

A journal's true scope is visible in what it has lately chosen to publish and in what its readers return to most often. The Cairn listing fetched for this profile points to several durable preoccupations. Elections remain central: studies of the 2024 European elections in France and the Netherlands treat them neither as pure national contests nor as a single European vote, but as contests where national executives, protest dynamics, far-right growth, and attitudes toward integration interact, which is exactly the second-order and Europeanisation debate the journal has hosted for years. Digital politics has become a second strong strand, with work asking whether European digital sovereignty is a legal reality or a geopolitical expression, and reviewing major accounts of the global contest to regulate technology. A third strand is the study of institutions from inside: ethnographic and sociological work on field research in Brussels institutions, on lobbying and transparency registers, and on expert groups treats the EU as a working political system staffed by real people, not only as a treaty order.

Policy breadth is the fourth strand. Work on the governance of the outermost regions through agro-industrial policy, on the Europeanisation of immigration policy, on cultural policy between economic paradigms and claims of exception, and on party competition reshaped by Europe shows the journal applying political science to concrete policy worlds. An author preparing a submission can use that recent record as a calibration tool: if a manuscript's question, method, and conversation resemble those strands while adding something they miss, the fit is likely to be strong; if the manuscript could have been written without any reference to European integration at all, the journal will ask why it has been sent there, and the author should have a convincing answer ready before submitting rather than after review.

Why the Bilingual Model Matters

It is worth stating plainly why this journal's French and English model is more than a translation arrangement. European studies knowledge is produced in many languages, and findings, concepts, and debates do not move between language communities automatically. A concept developed in French political sociology may have no exact English equivalent; an English-language theory may rest on cases that francophone fieldwork would complicate. By reviewing and publishing in both languages inside one editorial project, Politique Europeenne forces those encounters to happen on the page. For early-career scholars, publishing here in either language places work where both communities can find and cite it. For teachers, its issues provide material that can be set in French-language and English-language seminars alike. That bridging function, stated in its founding ambitions and still visible in its current Cairn presentation, is the journal's most distinctive contribution to the field, beyond any single article it has published.