This seminar should help students in acquiring an in-depth understanding of the contemporary functions and functioning of the European Union, building on both recent empirical research in the political sciences and on group work in the seminar.
The seminar contents are structured along three blocks. In the first block, we will look at the traditional explanations of European integration and political co-operation in the EU. We then together assess whether these classical explanations still hold when we think about the different crises the EU has lived through in the last two decades. The second block will then zoom in on the functions and functioning of the key institutions in EU legislative politics, most notably the European Council and the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, as well as the European Commission. Students will learn about and discuss the internal decision-making logics of these institutions and their relative influence in the EU as a whole. The third block finally focusses on the interactions between European decision-making and national politics. We will especially investigate the public politicisation of EU affairs in the member states to then review empirical research studying how different EU institutions respond to and deal with such controversial public debates.
Throughout these three blocks, students will thus encounter the key questions in the current scientific and political debates about the EU and European integration and will train how to think and discuss about them on their own. Throughout the individual sessions, the seminar will provide many pointers to relevant literatures as well empirical data sources and research methods for students wishing to pursue specific questions further.- Kursleiter*in: Prof. Dr. Christian Rauh