When Scholarship Matters: Theory-Building and Theory Effects in the EU Polity Context

: I welcome Jan Komarek’s project to engage in a history of “European Constitutional Imaginaries” as seen through EU law landmark theories and most prominent authors. Some malicious minds would think of it as yet another avatar of the “scholastic bias” that structurally incites us scholars to transform our professional anxieties (what is my/our scholarship worth for?) into full-fledged research question (do ideas matter?)... Others could see it as a vain exercise in nostalgia, as EU law researchers return to a golden age, that of the late 1980s, in which EU law was indeed able to frame professional identities and capture political imaginaries way beyond the academic circles. I would rather take it as part of the “critical turn” that has come along the sense of désoeuvrement so pervasive among EU lawyers ever since the constitutional project failed to gather popular support. A détour to the history of the discipline can indeed be a powerful methodological device to strengthen our reflexive gaze and, maybe, start again rolling up the immense boulder of theoretically connecting Europe, the European Union and the Law. I would argue however that the success of such endeavour is conditioned by our capacity to provide a renewed analytical framework able to compare past theoretical undertakings not only from an “internal” point of view (in terms of legal ideas) but also from an “external” point of view (in terms of social and political relevance) and -most importantly- account for the tensions and contradictions between the two. I take the very notions of “utopia”, “imaginaries” and “ideology” introduced by the project IMAGINE, that all refer to the capacity of legal ideas to capture political expectations and strategies, as strong incentives to move in that direction. In this paper, I suggest to examine theories of European law along two (partly conflicting) dimensions -their scientific robustness and their social relevance- and apply this simple conceptual toolbox to three historical constellations of European law theory. The paper was written as part of a workshop organized in the framework of the Project IMAGINE, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 803163).


Abstract:
I welcome Jan Komarek's project to engage in a history of "European Constitutional Imaginaries" as seen through EU law landmark theories and most prominent authors. Some malicious minds would think of it as yet another avatar of the "scholastic bias" that structurally incites us scholars to transform our professional anxieties (what is my/our scholarship worth for?) into full-fledged research question (do ideas matter?)... Others could see it as a vain exercise in nostalgia, as EU law researchers return to a golden age, that of the late 1980s, in which EU law was indeed able to frame professional identities and capture political imaginaries way beyond the academic circles. I would rather take it as part of the "critical turn" that has come along the sense of désoeuvrement so pervasive among EU lawyers ever since the constitutional project failed to gather popular support.
A détour to the history of the discipline can indeed be a powerful methodological device to strengthen our reflexive gaze and, maybe, start again rolling up the immense boulder of theoretically connecting Europe, the European Union and the Law. I would argue however that the success of such endeavour is conditioned by our capacity to provide a renewed analytical framework able to compare past theoretical undertakings not only from an "internal" point of view (in terms of legal ideas) but also from an "external" point of view (in terms of social and political relevance) and -most importantly-account for the tensions and contradictions between the two. I take the very notions of "utopia", "imaginaries" and "ideology" introduced by the project IMAGINE, that all refer to the capacity of legal ideas to capture political expectations and strategies, as strong incentives to move in that direction. In this paper, I suggest to examine theories of European law along two (partly conflicting) dimensions -their scientific robustness and their social relevance-and apply this simple conceptual toolbox to three historical constellations of European law theory.
The iCourts Working Paper Series is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation Grant no. DNRF105.
iCourts -Centre of Excellence for International Courts -focuses on the ever-growing role of international courts, their place in a globalizing legal order, and their impact on politics and society at large. To understand these crucial and contemporary interplays of law, politics, and society, iCourts hosts a set of deeply integrated interdisciplinary research projects on the causes and consequences of the proliferation of international courts.
iCourts opened in March 2012. The centre is funded by a large grant from the Danish National Research Foundation (for the period 2012-18).

I welcome Jan
Komarek's project to engage in a history of "European Constitutional Imaginaries" as seen through EU law landmark theories and most prominent authors. Some malicious minds would think of it as yet another avatar of the "scholastic bias" that structurally incites us scholars to transform our professional anxieties (what is my/our scholarship worth for?) into full-fledged research question (do ideas matter?)... Others could see it as a vain exercise in nostalgia, as EU law researchers return to a golden age, that of the late 1980s, in which EU law was indeed able to frame professional identities and capture political imaginaries way beyond the academic circles. I would rather take it as part of the "critical turn" that has come along the sense of désoeuvrement so pervasive among EU Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3647175 lawyers ever since the constitutional project failed to gather popular support. 1 A détour to the history of the discipline can indeed be a powerful methodological device to strengthen our reflexive gaze and, maybe, start again rolling up the immense boulder of theoretically connecting Europe, the European Union and the Law. 2 I would argue however that the success of such endeavour is conditioned by our capacity to provide a renewed analytical framework able to compare past theoretical undertakings not only from an "internal" point of view (in terms of legal ideas) but also from an "external" point of view (in terms of social and political relevance) and -most importantlyaccount for the tensions and contradictions between the two. I take the very notions of "utopia", "imaginaries" and "ideology" introduced by Komárek's project, that all refer to the capacity of legal ideas to capture political expectations and strategies, as strong incentives to move in that direction.
In this article, I suggest to examine theories of European law 3 along two (partly conflicting) dimensions -their scientific robustness and their social relevance-and apply this simple analytical toolbox to three historical constellations of European law theory.

Scientific Authority and the Professional Contest over EU government
Since social constructivism entered the field of European studies, it has become generally accepted that "ideas matter". 4 The period when EU scholars exclusively focused on the "interests"their up-grading, their conflicting can be now considered to be remote. Entire chapters in handbooks present this cognitivist turn in European studies where communicative and discursive practices are viewed as constitutive of the consciousness and social identity of the various Euro-implicated actors : "European identity", the "European-ness" of this or that professional group -just as any other social norm and collective identity-can not be taken as a given but is the outcome of a circular process in which actors and ideas, agency and structure co-produce each other.
Strikingly however, this research agenda has very rarely considered specifically scholars' ideas. Probably because the constructivist claim for the role of 'ideas' and cognitive schemes is too broad and undifferentiated, it does not seem to be able to account for the distinct role of scholarship (and of scholars) in EU processes. 5 Thereby we fail to grasp that, in European political systems where the structuration of academic fields goes hand in hand with that of State-building, 6 scholarly theories constitute an essential lever for the building of political imaginaries and legitimacies. 7 In that sense, academic debates are more than just abstract speculations or just about providing "findings" and "results" as a positivist approach might have it. They offer cognitive tools to whoever intends to decipher and make sense of otherwise complex and dispersed polities. They convey more or less explicitly models of organization that, if implemented, have social, professional and political ramifications. And, last, as they construct benchmarks and rationales against which the dynamics of EU politics (its legal order, its policies…) can be assessed, academic theories provide normative standpoints (about conceptions of legitimacy, utopia and ideology). In sum, social sciences' theories implicitly locate the ability and responsibility for "rational guidance" in particular institutions, and therefore in particular social groups. As scholars debate over the foundations, pillars and engines of European integration, they implicitly but continuously assess the relative position of the various institutions (Commission, Member States, Parliament, etc…), blends of professionals (lawyers, economists, high civil servants, etc…) and the value of their respective credentials (legal, political, economic, etc…) within EU government.
As a result, scholarly debates can hardly be detached from the various conflicting professional and social claims of those who participate in them. Building and imposing theories and paradigms on Europe/Europeanization can be regarded as an essential lever for a number of "jurisdictional claims" 5 See however recent special issues in the Journal of European Integration (37, 2, 2015) entitled "The Sociology of Knowledge Meets European Integration" and in the Revue française de science politique : "Pour une socio-histoire de l'Archive européenne" (1, 2019). Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3647175 in the sense given by Andrew Abbott to this term (the attempt to cognitively control or maintain control over the professional handling of specific social issues of problems). 8 In this line of research, theory-building is also one of the many professional strategies (along with organizational, financial tools) through which specific professionals (economists, lawyers, etc…) aim at establishing and maintaining their "jurisdiction" over specific "social problems" and keeping their competitors and challengers out of the business (consultancies in various EC policy domains, appointments to specific positions within the bureaucratic and political arenas, etc…) and symbolic profits related with the handling of these "social problems". On the whole, studying the scholarly debates triggered by the European construction goes way beyond the mere study of ideas floating around in Brussels or elsewhere; it also implies to follow the related professional claims as well as the related conceptions of legitimacy within the EU polity. 9

2-Between the "Real" and the "Right". Studying Theoretical Entrepreneurship
To enter such a large and complex problématique, I suggest to follow theory-building in the making and trace the socio-historical process through which theories are formulated, stretched, criticized, revised, etc. Methodologically speaking, this implies that I will not engage in the evaluation of their explanatory power but will rather consider the multi-faceted process through which they have been forged and maintained as powerful explanatory devices to account for the European project. In other words, instead of trying to assess how heuristic and explicative they may be, my intention here is to craft an analytical framework able to assess how specific paradigms have been endowed with a capacity of accounting for what is going on within Europe while at the same time structuring its political and professional identities and imaginaries. The various sorts of academic and non-academic debates over the scientificity and the political relevance of the various theories of European integration, forgotten/defeated theorizations just as established/successful ones, will make up the variegated empirical material for this work.
In this process of theory-building, 10 I argue that two elements are of particular importance while at the same time in permanent tension with one another. The first element is the social and political relevance of the theory and the second its robustness.
By social and political relevance, I refer to the more or less dense network of institutions and professional groups that have adopted it as both their compass and credo. The focus here is on the theory's capacity to raise the interest and, even better, to enroll/enlist non-academic publics (political parties, civil servants, administrative departments, pressure groups, journalists, etc…). The point is essential: first of all, because the best way in academia is often for a wannabe-theory to leave academic circles and convince non-academic actors of its usefulness. The financial and organizational support coming from non-academic audiences (whether foundations, think tanks, political parties, etc.) provides theoretical bids with a social platform and ultimately contribute to ratify the theory's claim for relevance. Without these external validations, the theory might well end up being considered (often by academics themselves) as excessively abstract and arcane. In the case of legal theories, publics can be of at least two different sorts: legal professionals themselves from lawyers to judges but also the legal services of EU institutions, consultants, in-house lawyers, etc. ; and a broader set of audiences coming from political, bureaucratic and economic fields. The enrollment of audiences can take a variety of more or less institutionalized forms, from mere verbal acknowledgment of the relevance of the theory to being a new social and cognitive of professional identities, policy instruments, and institutional functionalities. In this last case, the theory serves as blueprint for action orienting actors' perceptions, strategies, and imaginaries.
The ability in reaching external audiences and in acquiring new membership has its shortcomings however as it triggers a dynamic in which the disciplinary control over the theory is endangered by its very success. As a matter of fact, when successful, a theory is not just diffused but it is necessarily translated -that is to say reshaped and revised-for the sake of its users, in the relation 10 I have argued elsewhere that it is equally important to study the role of methodological entrepreneurs shaping the techniques of data production and collection defined alongside doctrinal bids : on Eur-lex as a technical equipment of the "Sui generis legal order" paradigm, see A. Vauchez, "Methodological Europeanism at the Cradle: Eur-lex, the Acquis and the Making of Europe's Cognitive Equipment", Journal of European Integration, 37(2), 2015.
to sector-specific idiosyncracies and context. Hereby, its overall appeal -that is the fact it be used and "misused" by a variety of heterogeneous, if not conflicting, publics (political leaders, segments of EC bureaucracy, interest groups, etc…) may undermine the capacity of its academic founders/authors to maintain control over the meaning and the implications of the theory. As the theory is torn in all sorts of directions by non-academic actors for the sake of their social and professional undertakings, its capacity to fit in the scientific canon of autonomy is put at risk. As noted by Sartori many years ago, 11 "concept stretching" is a danger for effective and cumulative theory building. This in turn contributes to trigger academics to criticize the theory as been too encompassing, too fuzzy and in the end, useless to account for social reality. If successful, these challenges to the theory's scientific value in turn undermine its authoritativeness as they weaken its claim of objectivity. The "governance" paradigm could easily fit in that category as the success of that academic concept among policy-makers of all sorts has been so wide and so diverse in its usages that its academic promoters have soon lost control over its specific content and sometimes even repudiated the very concept they had contributed to forge. 12 On the whole then, success among of extra-academic audiences is a not sufficient criteria to account for the authoritativeness of a specific theory that might well end up being just a kind of buzzword carrying as many meanings as there are users.
This explains the importance of the second variable : the robustness of the theory. By this, I refer to its capacity to appear as a constitutive of a body of disciplinary knowledge whose mastering and authoritative handling requires special expertise. Among the various elements that contribute to scientific robustness, one is more "internal" to the theory itself and relates to its proximity to disciplinary "models of scientificity". In the case of law, for example, this refers to the capacity of the theory to describe social reality on purely legal grounds i.e. to be self-sufficient: 13 without engaging here in the debate over the scientificity of legal knowledge (or its different forms), 14 I would argue that ultimately robustness in legal theory connects to canons of legal autonomy (in particular vis-à-vis the chains of political or bureaucratic command) -whether it is grounded on a judicial or a scholarly figure as last instance apolitical interpreters of the authentic meaning and scope of law.
The following table tries to sketch, in an ideal-typical manner, this tension between relevance and robustness. The line reports the range and the variety of non-academic actors enrolled (relevance).
The column refers to the "robustness" of the paradigm as defined here-above. As ideal-types, the four situations outlined by this two-by-two table are not to be understood as mirroring reality, but rather as stylizations of specific constellations or, to put it differently, as theoretical fictions that provide a compass to identify dynamics and tensions in concrete empirical situations. When a specific theory does not manage to raise interest beyond academic circles and remains controversial, its authoritativeness is closed to null. This is of course the cruel destiny of most academic production which looks like "trial balloons" in search for both relevance and scientific validation… The "paradigm" constellation refers to the Kuhnian situation (1962) where a specific academic discipline reaches a consensus over one theory (in terms of basic assumptions, key concepts, and methodology) which is however still unable to appeal to non-academic publics. The third constellation is the one where a theory still has a controversial status within academia but has found ways to be used and mobilized by actors coming from a variety of policy areas, with different if not conflicting interests.
Used and misused in non-academic setting, the academic promoters tend to lose control over concepts that become mere "buzz words". The situation is the one that I coin as a "theory effect" situation in which a specific theory is accepted both as the scientific canon within the academic community (European studies) and as an unescapable blueprint for stakeholders' (legal, bureaucratic or political) action and identities.  Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3647175

Relevance
Truly enough, with the creation of both the Council of Europe (and its committees of codification) in 1948 and the biannual inter-governmental conference on codification (the so-called The Hague Conferences on Private International Law) in 1956, it seemed that the harmonization paradigm had found a new momentum in Europe. In particular, many comparative legal scholars got enthusiastic about the fact that the EEC would provide social and political relevance for a "a discipline which had been considered, wrongly so, as merely an occupation for theorists and professors only".
Comparative law now had the opportunity to become "l'outil de l'oeuvre grandiose de la formation d'un droit adapté à l'immense communauté des six pays de l'Europe occidentale". 20 Others envisioned the possibility for European states to finally "recover this unity which was a reality before the separation and isolation of European states". 21 A whole literature developed in the early years of the EEC on the various possible methods for unifying EC law. As a matter of fact, Unidroit itself engaged in the debate publishing a whole report on the best approximation strategy (hierarchy of priorities, tools, calendar, etc…) for the Common Market just a couple of weeks after the Rome treaties had been signed. 22 The paradigm had many supporters outside of the legal academia. If one considers the many articles of the Rome treaties referring to the "harmonization", "approximation", or "unification" of national legislations, it seems clear that such a paradigm was integral the EEC project from the very beginning 23 . EC officials themselves were deeply convinced that legal harmonization was the main legal channel that had to be followed. 23 See the many articles in the Rome treaty that refer to the : « rapprochement des législations nationales » (art. 3, 100-period. 24 The Court itself actually repeatedly insisted on the relevance of comparative methodology in order to identify "un ensemble de principes communément partagés par les droits nationaux" sur la base de ce que "fait ressortir une étude de droit compare du droit de tous les autres Etats membres" (Algera c/ Assemblée commune de la CECA case, 12 July 1957). The president of the EEC Commission, himself a reknown professor of private international law and an early follower of the comparative methodology, actively promoted this most promising path of European integration. 25 His stance is considered so enthusiastic that some of comparativists even criticized his "very general and ambitious conception of harmonization" that "confuses the EEC competences and his own project for

Constellation 2 : Unearthing the Community's Sui Generis Legal Order (1963-1965)
In a couple of years however, a new paradigm took over and, in a strikingly quick manner, imposed itself both as the academic credo of EC-implicated legal scholars and as a possible compass for legal professions as well as EC institutions. As I have studied elsewhere in full detail the progressive building of the theory, I will mostly point here at the specific balance between "relevance" and "robustness" that emerged in this context. As is well known, the theory contends that European treaties have established a Sui generis legal order, different from both national and international ones, with direct effect and supremacy. Contrarily to the Harmonization theory, the model could claim to be more scientifically robust in that it was both autonomous and relied (almost…) exclusively on legal actions and actors for its implementation. The EC treaties had purportedly set up a sort of "magic triangle" connecting the autonomous (and prevalent) EU legal order to a procedural instrument connecting its implementation to a court. Taken individually, any of these notions was merely a legal principle utterly incapable of founding of viable legal order. Taken together, it is say, they form an self-sufficient legal theory of the European Communities: no supremacy with direct effect opposable to and by individuals; no direct effect with preliminary rulings ensuring that a uniform interpretation of Euro-law; and, loop to the loop, no preliminary references to the ECJ without an incentive to engage in that procedure, namely the direct effect and the supremacy of the treaties and of EC law in general.
In a context in which the Harmonization integration path was proving to be irrealistic, the "Sui generis Legal order" theory gave EC legal scholars the opportunity to assert scientifically both their "specificity" vis-à-vis the classic comparativists models and their relevance vis-à-vis EC-implicated actors. The flourishing of publications and conferences on the relationship between EC law and national law and on national judicial decisions on EC law indicated that progress in EC law would be now expected from the "judicial" realm (the relationship ECJ-national courts) rather than from the "legislative" one (the Commission and the Council). A swift reorientation of academic debates can actually be traced from legislation towards the analysis of this case law, from the policies of the Commission to the jurisprudence of the Court. The paradigm could claim to resemble the most achieved pure legal system as its promoters forcefully argued that individuals did not 'have to worry anymore that the recognition of their rights be paralyzed by the high political spheres'. 32 As it relied on a procedure that did not depend on the good will of the Member States or of the Commission (preliminary rulings) but on a Court, the European Communities were rooted on a solid ground.
As the hopes for a rapid development of Europe's supranational pole had been dashed in the context of the 'empty chair' crisis, the "Sui generis legal order" started to be of interest to a variety of groups and institutions from the Parliament to the European Commission embraced the emerging paradigm engaging in an overall redefinition of Europe in legal terms. The fact the 'empty chair' had not altered the dynamics of intra-European exchanges, which continued to expand swiftly, was considered as a confirmation of the fact that ECJ case-law had become the real locus of integration.
The many lawyers among the first generation of European office holders (Fernand Dehousse, Walter Hallstein, Carl Ophuls, Jean Rey, Ivo Samkalden, Paul-Henri Spaak, or Pierre-Henri Teitgen, etc.) proved critical in raising awareness and interest of non-academic audience beyond professional associations, learned societies and legal journals. This blurriness of the borders between law and politics is essential to understand how these gentlemen-politicians of law were able to seize the new course of the ECJ to re-direct their own pan-European investments into the promotion of the "Sui generis Legal order" paradigm.
On the whole, this new disciplinary bid managed to be regarded in a few months a new political common sense of Europe heralded it was by of the major players of EC politics. At the same however, the model reached a scientific robustness that had no equivalent as far as international or transnational law was concerned: not only did the model approximate that of "pure law" but also the community legal community tended to unify around this new paradigm. 33 In a very characteristic effet de théorie, 34 the convergence of these diversely implicated Euro-lawyers (involved in various bureaucratic, political, judicial arenas) around the "Sui generis legal order" paradigm, offered a unitary cognitive and normative platform for their variegated set of experiences or practices (as one joint contribution to the grand project of building of European rule of law). In few years, the paradigm got deeply entrenched in Europe's standard operating procedures. At the Court, the tentative formula of the early years had turned into a codified and polished number of legal formula ("ordre juridique propre", etc), performative statements ("la Communauté est une source de droit" ; "la Communauté est un ordre juridique" ; "les Etats ont créé une entité juridique autonome qui s'impose à leurs ressortissants et à eux-mêmes", "le droit communautaire diffère du droit international public", etc…) and already-made "attendus" and blocks of argumentation that could be articulated differently, but that formed the basic grammar of EC law with which anyone (lawyers or judges) willing to argue persuasively has to cope with : direct effect, institutional balance, European legal order, etc… Beyond jurisprudence, policy instruments, and policies through which the doctrine was been

Constellation 3. The Constitution/Constitutionalization Moment (late 1990s-early 2000s)
The third constellation can be situated in the late 1990s in a profoundly different intellectual and political context. The decade had indeed constituted a moment of great challenge and turmoil for EU lawyers' professional jurisdiction as the "Sui generis legal order" theory was meeting with increasing criticisms that pointed at its all-encompassing and formalistic understanding of EU polity.
Truly enough, the field of "European studies" had undergone considerable changes ever since the Van Gen den Loos-Costa theory of EC law had initially been forged. EU scholarship had not only considerably grown over the years but also diversified, moving from the small "boutique" 35 atmosphere "tinted by legalism, and in particular legal positivism" 36 to a broad tournament of social sciences structured around powerful transnational academic networks (see e.g. the UACES, ECPR, etc.) and universities (European University Institute). As political science became an increasingly strong competitor in the field of theories of European integration, 37 a lively intra-academic (and notably inter-disciplinary) conversation developed around concepts and causal mechanisms.  The new theoretical bid that emerged under the umbrella of "constitutionalism" profoundly renewed the scholarly debate on the relationships between the European Union and the Law. In the liberal context of the years, it attempted to generalize the European Community case by detaching the notion of "Constitution" from its national anchorage and providing a flurry of new concepts, whether "beyond the state", "non statal", "multi-level", thereby opening the way to similar formalizations in the field of WTO, ECHR, etc. Yet, one of the most interesting feature of this new avatar of EU constitutional discourse, is the hybridization of (American) political science and lawin-context legal scholarship: , thereby providing a counter-offer to the challenge raised by the rise of political science in the field of European studies. Interestingly, constitutionalism was defined as both a legal fact (due to ECJ continuous constitutionalizing efforts at the time) and a sociological process It is not the place here to go through the whole political trajectory of this paradigm : how it came to raise interest in a variety of political, legal and bureaucratic quarters in Brussels and Luxembourg, and how it ultimately failed to garner popular support. The history of this constitutional momentum has been already told many times. With the hindsight, however, it can be read as a form of counter-mobilization on the part of EU law and lawyers in a context of rising intellectual and political challenges to their definitional power over the European project. The large variety of political, bureaucratic and civil society groups that had rallied at the time under the overarching umbrella of the "European Constitution" were indeed the ones whose interests and identities had been defined alongside EU Law paradigms (acquis/méthode communautaire) and shared a similar ambitious supranational project for the European Union. Fifteen years into the financial crisis and the rise of the eurozone government, the constitutional frenzy that took over the EU at the time seems more like a parenthesis in a longer and deeper process whereby EU law's intellectual and political leadership over European integration has progressively dismantled. Since the 2005 referenda which marked a sudden halt in the process, the constitutional genie has been back in its academic bottle… Yet, the history of the European projects teaches us that it is hard to think a political union without dwelling at some point into the constitutional grammar.

Concluding remarks
On the whole then, theory does matter indeed … but not only when it is able to convince its academic discipline (robustness) but also to reach out to wider political and professional contexts (relevance).
In particular, its capacity to capture political imaginaries and shape utopia does not connect to its intrinsic characteristic but rather to its being in tune with specific expectations on the part of social, legal and political actors. In that sense, any theoretical bid to re-connect Europe and the law should "forget nostalgia" for EU Law golden years and start from a comprehensive assessment of the political and intellectual zeitgeist. As grand unificatory projects forcing European countries into an ever closer and more supranational union has failed, the theoretical challenge has moved more towards providing a common analytical frame to think altogether diversity and interdependence in the European context. New theoretetical paths have open in the recent years in the field of European studies that all try to account for the transnational interdependence and horizontal mutual dependence that result from six decades of Europeanization. All of them cut away from the grand unificatory paradigm of "integration" and try to define a notion of European-ness that would not be exclusively Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3647175