REFRAMING SOCIAL POLICY: INTERNATIONAL ACTORS AND THE MAKING OF SO­CIAL POLICY IN SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE: FRA­MING NEW APPROACHES Paul Stubbs, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb and Noémi Lendvai,Berzsenyi College, Hungary I. INTRODUCTION Social policy is no longer a matter for domestic actors alone. Whilst there are sig­nificant theoretical disagreements about how to study the trans-national dimensions of social policy, and empirical disagreements about the relative weight to assign to international and domestic actors in terms of specific policy domains, no study of the making of social policy is complete without, at least, some recognition of the role of external actors. Questions remain, however, about how far the increased salience of international actors, trans-national processes, various kinds of network­based organisations, and new intermediaries has effectively depoliticised social policy, or how far it has led to a more intense internationalisation of political strug­gles and mobilisations. This paper addresses these issues theoretically and empirically, through a review of recent work on trans-national processes and flows, and an overview of the making of social policy in South East Europe 1 . Theoretically, the paper argues that notions of'social policy' and of the'external' and'internal' cannot be held as constants in these debates but must, also, be questioned and seen as socially constructed. Em­pirically, South East Europe is of considerable interest as an emergent regional space, largely ascribed from outside, in which political and institutional arrange­ments have been profoundly destabilised, and sub-national, national and regional spaces and their institutionalizations, inter-relationships and re-scalings are heavily contested, not least in terms of the delineation of sovereignty, and the‘clash’ be­tween an uneven and unclear European trajectory and a fragmented, projectised, development and reconstruction agenda. Politically, since, in this region,“govern­ance and the subjects and objects of governing are in process of simultaneous and mutual invention or constitution”(Clarke, 2007), the construction, deconstruction 1 The inspiration for much of this text comes from our involvement with a group of researchers and practitioners exploring'Intermediaries and translation in interstitial spaces' and on a book project on'Social Policy and International Interventinos in South East Europe'. Particular thanks here go to John Clarke, Fred Cocozzelli, Bob Deacon, Reima Ana Maglajli ć-Holi č ek, Ešref Kenan Rašidagi ć and Siniša Zrinš č ak for their collaborations, insights, and enthusiasm. Whilst, at times here, we have borrowed significantly from their work, responsibility for what follows is ours alone, of course. 44