Dr Spyridon Economides

This course is available on the MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe, MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Columbia), MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Sciences Po), MSc in European and International Politics and Policy, MSc in European and International Politics and Policy (LSE and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Politics and Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in International Migration and Public Policy, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Political Economy of Europe, MSc in Political Economy of Europe (LSE and Fudan) and MSc in Political Economy of Europe (LSE and Sciences Po). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically very high. Priority is given to students from the European Institute, so students from outside this programme may not get a place.

Students who have little or no background in political science, international relations, public policy or related disciplines are strongly advised to take the EU4V9 Moodle course.

This course is an introduction to the causes and nature of regional integration in Europe and the EU’s governance system. The topic is presented from a historical, social scientific and normative perspective. We critically examine various theories and current debates about the European Union by studying the process of regional integration through different decades and crises, its effects on its members and third states, and its constitutional character. The first part of this course analyzes different stages in the integration process and asks under what conditions states have delegated (or not) authority to EU institutions and other regional integration bodies. The second part discusses a number of big public policy questions that this transfer of authority raises. What are the consequences of the single market and currency on national institutions? What is their impact on other markets and currencies? How does the EU enforce its laws and how does its legal system compare with the legalization of world politics? What is the EU’s role and power in world politics? We conclude by reflecting on current and future challenges to the EU, notably questions of its legitimacy, democratic quality and the populist challenge. At the end of this course students will have gained an overview of the process of European integration, political science theories of regional integration, the EU’s governance system as a political order beyond the nation-state, as well as public and scholarly debates about the reality and ideal of European regional integration.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 25 hours across the Autumn Term. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of AT.

One presentation. 

One 1,200 words essay based on the presentation. 

• Haas, Ernst B. 1961. International Integration. The European and the Universal Process. International Organization 15:3
• Moravcsik, A. (1998). The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. Cornell University Press.
• Schneider, C. and Slantchev, B. (2018). The Domestic Politics of International Cooperation: Germany and the European Debt Crisis. In International Organization, 72(1), pp. 1-31.
• Hobolt, S. (2016). The Brexit Vote: A Divided Nation, A Divided Continent. In Journal of European Public Policy, 23(9), pp. 1259-1277.
• De Vries, C. (2018). Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Oxford: OUP.
• Kleine, Mareike and Mark Pollack (2018). Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Its Critics. In Journal of Common Market Studies 56(7), pp. 1493-1509.

Online assessment (100%) in the ST.

The online assessment for this course will be administered via Moodle. Questions will be made available at a set date/time and students will be given a set period in the ST to complete the answers to questions and upload their responses back into Moodle.