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SoSe 16: Europeanization and Domestic Change: the EU’s transformative power (Part I)

Carina Sprungk

Comments

European Studies have focused for a long time on analyzing and explaining the process of European integration. However, scholars have started asking to which extent this process feeds back into the Member States and results in significant domestic change. Several studies show that the Europeanization of national political and economic competencies changes domestic institutions, policies and policy-making processes in a sustainable way. But the EU's transformative power does not only work through the mechanism of EU membership. The principle of conditionality has had a profound impact on former and current candidate countries to the EU such as Croatia or Turkey. The EU also actively promotes domestic change in the outside world. It has various policies in place to diffuse its ideas (on democracy, "good governance" or market economy) both in its immediate neighbourhood and worldwide. At the same time, European integration ideas are being emulated across the globe - from Mercosur in Latin America to the African Union and the newest attempts at regional integration in Asia. In the framework of this course, we will analyse the EU's transformative power. To which extent does the EU succeed in transforming member states, candidate countries, neighbourhood countries and other parts of the world? How do we explain variation in the level and scope of domestic change between different countries? Why is e.g. the EU's democracy promotion policy more effective in certain countries than in others? What are the mechanisms of change - coercion, persuasion or emulation? The course will explore the level and scope of domestic change resulting from Europeanization pressures and explain it by drawing on institutionalist theories. Special emphasis will be placed on the question to which extent domestic change differs between and within specific countries and how we might account for this variation. close