The European Union: Governance and Politics in a Diverse Polity

This course will examine the evolving relationship between governance and politics in the European Union. The EU is a diverse polity of 27 member states, which differ widely from one another in their economic development, institutional structures, and political cultures. It lacks many of the administrative, budgetary, and political resources of conventional nation-states, including an elected government and a monopoly of legitimate coercive force. Yet in many policy fields, the EU regularly manages to adopt and implement binding rules and decisions, which have progressively expanded into the realm of its members’ core state powers. And as the salience of the Union’s policies has grown, its decision-making processes have become increasingly politicized, at both national and EU levels.

The course will introduce students to current theoretical debates and empirical research about how EU governance works under these conditions, how it has responded to growing politicization, and where it may be heading in the future. It will begin by analyzing what is distinctive about EU governance, focusing on the relationship between hierarchy and experimentalism in its decision-making architecture, together with how seeks to reconcile regulatory integration with legitimate national diversity. The course then goes on to examine how far asymmetries in the EU’s constitutional and legal structure may block the adoption of ambitious common policies, especially in the social sphere, while undermining national capacities for market-correcting regulation, along with whether the Union’s decision-making processes are biased in favor of business interests. The course will conclude by considering whether and in what respects growing politicization represents a threat or opportunity for EU governance, and what kind of governance may be emerging in the wake of the Union’s recent polycrises.