Revolving doors, understood as mobility between the private and public sectors, has attracted much policy attention in Brussels and national capitals, most recently in connection with the Uber controversy when we learned through the leaked files that Neelie Kroes had been advising the company during her "cooling-off" period, when former Commissioners are not supposed to engage in any lobbying activity.
This presentation provides an overview of the Academy of Finland funded research project, REVOLVE that looks at revolving doors at the Member State level (Finland, France and Slovenia), its links to the EU level, and the ways of regulating it through comparative and sociolegal (interviews and document analysis) methods. Moving away from normative approaches and the theory of regulatory capture, REVOLVE understands mobility flows as a mode of accumulation and circulation of knowledge and expertise. In addition to uncovering institutional and professional logics and practices behind revolving doors and identifying gaps and grey zones in EU and national policies aiming at regulating them, the REVOLVE project provides insights into the type of knowledge and expertise valued in European regulatory spaces and the evolution of the public/private border in societies governed through expertise.