Course List

The European Communities were conceived upon a bold vision of freedom and peace. With the financial, economic and debt crisis hitting the EU, new challenges emerged. Promising cases before 2008 (Ireland) turned to problem cases. The course shall assess the Grand European Projects EMU and Europe 2020. Why do Poland and other East European entrants perform better than many old members? In this respect, enlargement fatigue makes the question about the final boundaries of the EU, as well as the resulting necessity of a sustainable neighborhood policy pressing. Here especially Russia is central. The mighty and self-confident supplier of energy is crucial for Europe's economic prosperity. But how stable is Russia, given the fact that resource abundance and hence natural capital based growth tend to produce economic slump and social tension? Finally, will the European economic and social model prove inferior to the dynamic systems of China, India, the US and other major powers? Will an aging Europe, reluctant to deregulation and flexibility, fall behind those economic centers and lose its attractiveness? Special attention will be paid to the lessons from the financial and debt crisis.

What are the challenges and prospects facing Europe today? The European Union is the realization of a bold vision: a large economic and political space with free movement of goods, services, capital and labor. Yet rigid markets, overregulation and reform resistance make it hard to adapt to globalization, the process of Eastern enlargement has created great divergence, and some economies in the West perform disappointingly. This course will examine the European Monetary Union, the Lisbon Strategy, and the challenges facing new entrants, with an eye toward analyzing the state of European integration. In examining Europe today, we will also consider the relation of Europe to Russia and compare the European model to the dynamic societies of China, India, and the United States. This course was previously taught as IR/PSC 254. Students who took the course under the old number are not eligible to take IR 232.