  We study symmetry reductions in the context of Euclidean Chern-Simons gauge
theories to obtain lower dimensional field theories. Symmetry reduction in
certain gauge theories is a common tool for obtaining explicit soliton
solutions. Although pure Chern-Simons theories do not admit solitonic
solutions, symmetry reduction still leads to interesting results. We establish
relations at the semiclassical regime between pure Chern-Simons theories on
$S^3$ and the reduced Quantum Field Theories, based on actions obtained by the
symmetry reduction of the Chern-Simons action, spherical symmetry being the
prominent one. We also discuss symmetry reductions of Chern-Simons theories on
the disk, yielding $BF$-theory in two dimensions, which signals a curious
relationship between symmetry reductions and the boundary conformal field
theories. Finally, we study the Chern-Simons-Higgs instantons and show that
under certain circumstances, the reduced action can formally be viewed as the
action of a supersymmetric quantum mechanical model. We discuss the extent to
which the reduced actions have a fermionic nature at the level of the partition
function.
