EU politics

Teacher(s)

Brogna Valentina;

Language

English

Prerequisites

The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

At the end of the course, students will have: - been presented with a general overview of the history of the European project - acquired a basic knowledge of the peculiar political system that is the European Union - had informed debates regarding the long-standing issue of the democratic deficit of the European Union

Content

The lectures will proceed in three stages. To begin with, we will make the point that the political institutions constitutive of the European Union are integrated enough to be considered an actual political system. Accordingly, the European Union can be studied as such, which we will be doing for several lectures, putting the emphasis on the fact that the EU is a quite unique political system that deserves to be approached as a sui generis case. We will highlight the institutionalized relationships between its main actors and attempt to paint at great brushstrokes its inner institutional logic.

Second, we will be looking backwards in time, at the history of the European project to explain how we arrived at such an institutional outcome. We will show that the European Union was not built in a day and that many of its quirks result from hard-fought negotiation processes and compromises opposing conflicting views of the European integration project.

Eventually, we will ask ourselves how the issue of the democratic deficit of the EU, identified by European analysts since the 1970s, has been tackled since then and how its approach could decisively shape the future of EU politics.

Teaching methods

Lectures, discussions of additional compulsory readings and presentations by professionals (tbc).
Each student will have to study selected chapters of a textbook, complementary to the ex-cathedra lectures : Cini M. and N. Pérez-Solórzano Borragán (eds.) 2022, European Union Politics, 7th edition, Oxford University Press

Evaluation methods

Two-hours long written exam consisting of open-ended questions focused on topics covered during the lectures and in the readings

Other information

Face-to-face , second term, 30 hours of theory.
The slides are given to the students right after each session. A syllabus is available at the beginning of the course.

Bibliography

On top of the compulsory textbook, a list of useful references is available in the syllabus. 

Faculty or entity

ESPB