Politics of European Integration

For more than 50 years, the European Union has represented the world’s
most advanced experiment in governance beyond the nation-state.  More
recently, however, this experiment has become mired in financial
turbulence and growing social protest.  This course takes a broad view of
the promise as well as the challenges of European integration.  It looks
at the EU’s basic institutional components, the events leading to the
single currency in the 1990s, enlargement eastward into the post-socialist
world, and Europe’s changing role in world affairs.  These topics allow us
to assess Europe’s ability to craft adequate responses to the challenges
posed by economic transformation, terrorism, multiculturalism, and
worldwide financial interdependence.