POLITICS OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

For more than fifty years, the European Union has led the world’s most advanced experiment in governance beyond the nation-state.  More recently, however, the EU 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 institutional components, 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 help us assess Europe’s ability to craft adequate responses to the changes brought by economic transformation, terrorism, multiculturalism, and worldwide financial interdependence.  Course requirements include regular attendance and participation, a midterm, several in-class quizzes, and two papers.  Although there are no formal prerequisites, some background in comparative politics or international relations or economics or European history is desirable.  Students with no prior background in any of these areas will find the course excessively difficult.