166-240 European Integration: the Politics of the European Union

Note

Available as 166-340 at 3rd-year level.

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Normally 25 points of first-year Politics; students with only 12.5 points in Politics may apply to the 2nd/3rd-year coordinator.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

The subject aims to provide students with an in-depth analysis of the politics of European Integration. It provides analyses of the policy-making of the European Union (EU) and examines the tensions of intergovernmentalism and federalism in the attitudes of the member states and other participants in the process. It traces the EU's origins from post war recovery to the dynamics of European Integration and examines the approaches to the study of the EC/EU -- from functionalism to federalism. It scrutinises the policies of the EU and the prospects for Economic and Monetary Union and asks whether the EC/EU is a polity in the making. It analyses the institutions and participants and the drive to institutional and policy reform, as the EC/EU opens itself up to the world in external relations and foreign policy. It then moves on to the Single European Act and the significance of the 1992 Single European Market, which placed the EU in the position of the worlds largest trader, and the relationship between the EC/EU and Australia. It further discusses the issues raised by the Maastricht European Union Treaty, including the Referenda, the democratic deficit and complexities of citizenship, ethnicity and gender. It concludes with a discussion of Europe into the next century and the unification of Western and Eastern Europe.

Assessment

Essay work or equivalent totalling 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

• N Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European Union. Macmillan, 1994.
• D. Dinan, Ever Closer Union? An Introduction of the European Community. Macmillan, 1994.