Based on the current research agenda, the seminar provides students with a systematic overview of this public EU politicization. By reading and discussing recent and mostly empirical literature, the participants delve into the different arenas in which EU politicization takes place, carve out the emerging lines of political conflict on governance beyond the nation state, and finally discuss the resulting challenges for decision-making in the EU. This should enable participants to assess and to apply the politicization concept to various questions of contemporary European politics (and to support own research projects in this regard).
Political decisions of the European Union (EU) increasingly permeate national politics but are often taken in rather closed settings dominated by executive or technocratic actors. Yet, this mode of decision-making is increasingly challenged by controversial public debates. Decisions taken on levels beyond the nation state figure prominently in the news, the respective public opinion is much more aware but also more diversified, and various societal actors ranging from social movements to political parties, in particular, actively mobilize on European questions.
As a participant, you should be willing to engage in both the substantial and methodological issues of the literature to be read, regularly watch the preparatory videos (inverted classroom!), and be prepared to actively participate during the individual sessions. Besides regular participation, assignments include one active participation role (presenter, minute-taker, or debater) and a term paper which applies one of the discussed aspects to a freely chosen empirical issue of (contemporary) EU politics.
The seminar addresses advanced Bachelor students in political science and related disciplines (e.g. international relations, comparative politics, public administration, or political sociology) who already control some basic knowledge on EU decision-making. The full syllabus will be available on my website at latest one week prior to the start of the seminar.
Specific literature will be provided for the indivudal sessions, but to gain an impression of the seminar contents before hand you might want to read Rauh (2021) or De Wilde et al (2016).
The seminar is largely organized around the idea of an inverted or flipped classroom. Contrary to traditional teaching in class, I will offer the lecture and content delivery part of the seminar before our meetings. This will typically be one or two introductory texts for your own reading and a lecture video shared via Moodle roughly three days before each session. For you, this approach has two key advantages. First, it allows you to learn about the key contents of each session at your own speed. Second, it frees up in-class time for joint, active learning: together we will deepen the key contents of each session on the basis of your questions, group discussions and debates, as well as presentations of more advanced topics.
To realize these advantages all participants should take both their own preparation phase as well as our joint in-class work seriously along the following seminar participation steps:
The following active participation roles are available to you in individual sessions:
Students wishing to collect 6 ECTS will hand in a term paper studying one self-chosen question related to EU politicization after the seminar (deadline March 31, 2024). The length of the term paper is typically around 5.000 to 6.000 words, depending on the module under which you are enrolled in the seminar. More detailed paper guidelines are available via Moodle and my website.
We will have a dedicated session on how to develop a term paper in the third block of the seminar and you are expected to hand-in a very short exposé sketching your initial ideas in early January. Term papers can come in the format of a research design which will be further specified in class but in principle it consists of developing a research question on contemporary EU politicization, discussing relevant political science literature to develop expectations/hypothesis for answering the question, to finally discuss empirical sources and methods that could (!) be used for assessing the developed expectations. In other words, you are expected to plan (rather than to execute) a research project. This format is particularly suited to develop and to asses first ideas for a bachelor thesis (independent from whether it is realized later or not).
The seminar addresses advanced Bachelor students in political science and related disciplines (e.g. international relations, comparative politics, public administration, or political sociology) who already control some basic knowledge on EU decision-making.
Prospective participants should be willing to:
As a participant, you should be willing to engage in both the substantial and methodological issues of the literature to be read, and be prepared to actively participate during the individual sessions. Besides regular participation, assignments include one active participation role (presenter, minute-taker, or debater) and a term paper which applies one of the discussed aspects to a freely chosen empirical issue of (contemporary) EU politics.
The contents of the seminar are split into three blocks. The first block introduces the basic concepts and presents the most prominent arguments on the drivers and consequences of the politicization of supranational governance. The second block then looks into the actual dynamics of politicization in different arenas of domestic politics (a.o. public opnion, media, and election campaigns), mainly by discussing the recent empirical (and often quantitative) research literature. The third block then pulls the strings together and aims at an aggregate perspective which enables us to discuss the normative and pragmatic consequences that politicization has for intergovernmental and supranational decision-making in the EU. The following table lists the respective structure session by session.
