EUROPE AS AN INTERNATIONAL ACTOR

The course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of the emergence of the EU as an international actor, from the post-WWII European Communities to the present. This examination will be grounded in the longer histories of Europe’s actorness in the world, including the echoes of imperial visions and the legacies of Cold War political geographies. We will query not just ‘what’ is Europe but also ‘where’ it is, since geographical imaginations of the European space have always been fundamentally bound to the roles we assign to the European project. We will discuss successive rounds of EU enlargement, as well as other modes of the stretching of the EU spaces of action and governance, including border and migration management. The last section of the course will address the principal challenges facing the EU today as an international actor: from security and defence to ‘green’ agendas.

At the completion of the course, students are expected to acquire a detailed knowledge of the past and present of EU external action, including the role of different institutions and players. The course will also introduce students to a range of different conceptual and theoretical approaches to understanding EU integration and EU actorness, as well as to the most recent scholarly literature and discussions regarding the EU’s role in the world.
Students will develop key skills including:
-the capacity to identify relevant scholarly literature, including both academic and policy sources
-a critical appreciation of debates in the field and the ability to assess competing claims and theoretical perspectives
-the capacity to assess current policy challenges for the EU

Admission criteria required by the PISE degree programme - and a keen interest in the workings and role of the European Union!

SECTION I: EUROPEAN PASTS, EUROPEAN PRESENTS
1. The Histories and Geographies of the European Project: Imagining Europe
2. Imperialism, Colonialism and the European Project
3. Cold War Europes: Competing Internationalisms

SECTION II: WHERE IS EUROPE?
4. Remaking the European Space after 1989, 2004, 2014
5. Enlargement Geopolitics
6. European ‘Neighbourhoods’, East and South
7. Border Governance and the ‘Stretching’ of the EU Space

SECTION III: WHAT IS EUROPE?
8. Civilian power, Normative power?
9. The Changing Imaginaries and Practices of EU External Action
10. From the 2016 Global Strategy to a ‘Geopolitical EU’
11. Competing Visions for Europe: The Domestic Politics of EU Geopolitics

SECTION IV: THE EU AND TODAY’S CHALLENGES
12. A Social Union?
13. A Green Europe?
14. A Defence Union?
15. The EU in a Multipolar World?

There is no single textbook for the course. Specfic readings will be assigned to each lecture and made directly available to enrolled students on Moodle.

Written take-home exam, with 3 open-ended questions. Each answer is worth 10 points (out of a total of 30)

The exam aims at verifying students' knowledge of the guiding topics of the course, as well as their ability to use key concepts and theories to interpret and analyze the changing role and place of the EU as an international actor.

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The grading scale for the final written exam will be based on the following criteria.

A. Scores in the range of 18-22:
- Passing knowledge of the assigned readings and lecture topics
- Limited ability to utilise information and concepts and form independent judgments
- Sufficient communication skills.
B. Scores in the range of 23-26:
- Fair knowledge of the assigned readings and lecture topics
- Fair ability to utilise information and concepts and form independent judgments
- Fair communication skills.
C. Scores in the range of 27-30:
- Good or excellent knowledge of the assigned readings and related topics
- Good or excellent ability to utilise information and concepts and form independent judgments
- Fully appropriate communication skills.
D. The “laude” will be awarded to students with excellent knowledge and comprehension of the assigned readings and related topics and the ability to produce a critical and original analysis.

The course is structured around interactive lectures, including both a frontal component and discussion moments.

Questo insegnamento tratta argomenti connessi alla macroarea "Cooperazione internazionale" e concorre alla realizzazione dei relativi obiettivi ONU dell'Agenda 2030 per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile