This course describes the contradictions of European integration and the institutional set-up, arguing that there is an overarching process of maintaining European integration, with the consequence that in any crisis elites react by intensifying the networks of supranational governance. The institutional set-up and the main policy area are points of departure for this reflection. Some areas of major importance for thickening the ties are focussed on. European integration is an elite-driven process based on the conviction of a large enough segment of European elites on the necessity of unification for maintaining European independence in a world of increasingly continental states or empires. Starting from the historical process and its embeddedness in political and economic contradictions of the pre-unification European state system, the hybrid institutions of the Union are analysed in their dynamics. Key social and political fields are analysed regional homogenisation are analyzed in their relation to the deepening of the integration process also via commitment of increasingly large groups in the integration process. Standard theory of European integration is confronted with the actual process of elite-led identity creation. Socially uncontroversial policy fields such as foreign policy behaviour are instrumentalized, as are highly controversial issues of such as the actual Euro crisis. The course brings together the different layers of the integration issue by constantly keeping in mind that there is an overarching consensus of European elites about the desirability of the integration process. As a result the issue is not whether integration is deepened, but how emerging divisive issues and opposing political coalitions can be instrumentalised for further enhancing and deepenening the integration process.

Semester: SoSe 2021