IA/PO 370 - European Union in a Changing World: History, Politics and Policy-Making

The European integration is often attributed to having brought peace and prosperity to a continent reduced to ruins by the Second World War, but now the European project is facing an existential crisis with the many challenges that it had to deal with in recent decades.

The central objective of this course is to challenge students to think about issues (power inequalities, political differences, refugee crisis, financial crisis, etc.) related to the EU based upon a firm understanding of the EU’s origins, institutions, and policy processes. In addition, this course will have a component of studying the EU from an international relations perspective: what is the role of the EU in the current global order? Students will participate in theoretical and policy-related discussions about the EU and go on fieldtrips to obtain a practitioners’ perspective on European integration, the functioning of the EU, and the challenges it faces. Considering the problems that the European project is facing, we will ask ourselves: what does the future hold for Europe?