Lecture: Introduction to European Integration

Course Description

The process of European integration has had major consequences for European societies, politics, and policy-making. The lecture gives a thorough overview on the history of the integration process and the current state of the European Union (EU). Specifically, the students will get to know the basic institutional features of the EU and the major theoretical approaches used to explain the level and scope of integration. Also, the lecture puts a spotlight on debates over the politicization of Europe, the decline of citizens’ support, and the multiple crises faced by the EU. Overall, the students will advance their understanding of the political and social implications of the process of European integration which forms an important background for their further studies of contemporary European societies.

Basic Readings

Cini, Michelle and Nieves Pérez-Solórzano Borragán (eds.) (2016). European Union Politics. Fifth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lelieveldt, Herman und Sebastiaan Princen (2015). The Politics of the European Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Research practicum: Dynamics of protest and electoral politics in Europe

Course Description

The research practicum will focus on the dynamic and manifold relations between protest and electoral politics in Europe. Although social movements and political parties provide the two most important channels of democratic representation, research in political sociology still tends to neglect these relations. Most importantly, this is due to a strong division of labour between those scholars who study social movement and protest, on the one side, and those who study political parties and elections, on the other. In the first part of the seminar, students will read recently published studies that aim to bridge the two strands of the literature. In the second part, they will conduct their own empirical research on the topic. More specifically, the students an choose whether they will empirically approach the topic by means of a large protest event dataset based on the coding of international news wires or whether they approach it based on the analysis of individual-level surveys featuring questions about involvement in protest, elections, and/or party activities.

Basic Readings

Hutter, Swen. 2014. Protesting Culture and Economic in Western Europe: New Cleavages in Left and Right Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kitschelt, Herbert. 2003. “Landscapes of Political Interest Intermediation. Social Movements, Interest Groups, and Parties in the Early Twenty-First Century.” In Social Movements and Democracy, edited by Pedro Ibarra, 81–103. Palgrave Macmillan.

McAdam, Doug and Sidney Tarrow (2010). Ballots and barricades: On the reciprocal relationship between elections and social movements. Perspectives on Politics 8: 529–542.