Allgemeine Informationen
| Veranstaltungsname | Seminar: European Integration and Its Critics: Euroscepticism(s) in Comparative Perspective |
| Semester | WS 2024/25 |
| Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden | 12 |
| Heimat-Einrichtung | Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft |
| Veranstaltungstyp | Seminar in der Kategorie Lehre |
| Nächster Termin | Mittwoch, 16.10.2024 08:15 - 09:45, Ort: 2119 Geb. D (30 Pl.) [PhilSoz] |
| Voraussetzungen |
Students are expected to carry out their reading assignments in preparation for the next class and to actively participate in class discussions. Please note: where class readings for one week include more than one text, reading groups will be formed beforehand. Some students will be assigned one text, others will be assigned another text. Compulsory reading never includes more than one text per student weekly. Students are of course free, and indeed warmly encouraged, to read the other texts as well. |
| Leistungsnachweis |
Portfolio examination including: - 3x short (1-2 pages) written essays/debate protocols - short individual/collective presentations - 1x short (ca. 10 pages) term paper due Mo, March 31, 2025, 23:59. The short presentations will be held in English, the essays/debate protocols and the term paper may be written in English or in German. Please note: more information will be given in the introductory meeting (1. Introduction – We, October 16, 2024). |
| Veranstaltung findet in Präsenz statt / hat Präsenz-Bestandteile | Ja |
| Hauptunterrichtssprache | englisch |
| Sonstiges |
The process of European Integration has undoubtedly contributed immensely to the advancement of peace, prosperity and liberal democracy in Europe over the last seven decades. The European Union (EU) has come to include 27 member states and has become a central actor on the European and world political stage as well as in the everyday life of hundreds of millions of its citizens. Despite this, the story of this process is plural and more complex than a triumphant march towards the telos of an “ever closer Union”. The last two decades in particular have seen the EU being hit by multiple crises and have registered a rise in Euroscepticism, i.e. a scepsis towards European institutions and/or the European Integration project. Euroscepticism is also a complex and plural field, with critics ranging from anti-immigration sovereigntist Far Right (Orbán’s Fidesz of Hungary) to anti-austerity pro-Integration Radical Left parties (Greece’s Syriza), and the scope of their critique going from all-out opposition (as in the case of British Euroscepticism leading to Brexit) to discontent only with certain elements of the institutions (as expressed by many reformers). Finally and most recently, nationalist Eurosceptic parties from a growing number of EU member states have joined forces at the supranational level, and have attempted to reinvent themselves as proponents of a different, positively connotated idea of European Integration, thus using Europe as legitimation tool – exemplified, among others, by the new European Parliament (EP) group Patriots for Europe (PfE), or by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s pro-European about-face. In this seminar, these various and plural forms of critique of the project of European Integration (Euroscepticisms), expressed across time and space, will be analysed from a comparative perspective, with a particular focus on contemporary empirical cases of party-based Euroscepticism. After a critical review of the theories and narratives of European Integration, we will be looking at the main strands of theory within the field of Euroscepticism studies. In the second part of the seminar, our goal will be to make use of these theories to analyse and compare with each other a host of empirical cases of (mostly) party-based Euroscepticism at several stages of the history of the European Communities (EC)/EU, in different member states East and West of the former Iron Curtain and hailing from the Right as well as the Left of the political spectrum. This will be done with a two-fold goal: First, to understand the main conflicts and tensions at play in the EU today, and thus to better understand the EU and the present of European Integration; Second, to understand the challenges, contingencies, and the implications of one’s choices when using theoretical concepts – e.g. Euroscepticism – to study political reality in social science research. |
