Spring 2014 - 63493 - PA388K - Advanced Topics in Public Policy

Over the past half-century, the European Union (EU) has become the most advanced regional example of supranational governance in the world. At the same time, it has also emerged as one of the most influential actors in building global institutions. This course will first investigate the EU as an outcome of global governance, examining how it has developed a multi-level system of policy-making on issues as varied as energy policy, the single currency, or common border controls. We will then turn to the central role that the EU plays as an actor in our globalized world: both in terms familiar to us from foreign policy (peace-keeping, development aid, and nation-building) as well as in areas that have risen from the domestic to the international realm due to globalization (climate change, counter-terrorism, and intellectual property rights). By the end of the course, students will gain an understanding of how the EU has driven states to cooperate in a system of global governance within its borders (through the European integration process), on its periphery (through enlargement and its neighborhood policy) and in the world at large (through its engagement in building multilateral institutions and global norms).