European Politics and the European Union

Units

1. 1

   Political development of Western Europe

   3 lessons

   1. War and state formationState Tilly's thesis that war made the European state, read the shrinking number of political units from 1500 to 1900, place the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, and name the critiques of the thesis.
   2. Paths to democracy and fascismTrace the extension of the vote across Europe, explain the interwar breakdowns in Italy, Germany and Spain, and compare the explanations of Moore, Luebbert, Berman and Linz.
   3. The postwar settlementDescribe the postwar settlement in Western Europe: Christian democracy, the Marshall Plan and rapid growth, and use Lipset and Rokkan's cleavage model to explain why party systems froze.
2. 2

   Britain and the Westminster model

   3 lessons

   1. Parliamentary sovereigntyDescribe the Westminster model as Lijphart's majoritarian ideal, explain the fusion of executive and legislature, and state Dicey's doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty with its modern limits.
   2. First past the postState Duverger's law and its two effects, read the 2015 British general election's gap between votes and seats, and explain why the SNP gained and UKIP did not.
   3. Thatcher, Blair and devolutionExplain the policy shift of 1979 under Thatcher, the aims of New Labour in 1997, and how devolution created parliaments and assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland while leaving Westminster sovereign.
3. 3

   France and semi-presidentialism

   3 lessons

   1. The Fifth Republic of 1958Explain how the Algerian crisis brought De Gaulle to power in 1958, describe the constitution's design for a strong executive, and state what Articles 16 and 49.3 do.
   2. CohabitationExplain cohabitation, date the three cohabitations of 1986, 1993 and 1997, and show how the 2002 reform to a five-year term ended them.
   3. Two-round electionsExplain the two-round runoff used for French presidential elections, read the shocks of 2002 and 2017, and explain the logic of the front republicain.
4. 4

   Germany: federalism and the mixed system

   3 lessons

   1. The Basic Law of 1949Explain how the failures of the Weimar Republic shaped the Basic Law of 1949, including the constructive vote of no confidence, the 5 percent threshold and a weaker president, and read the institutions of chancellor, president and Bundestag.
   2. Mixed-member proportional votingExplain the two ballots of the Bundestag election, how the second vote decides party seats, how the 5 percent threshold works, and how overhang and compensation seats arose and were reformed, using the results of 2021.
   3. The Bundesrat and the LänderDescribe Germany's 16 Länder and the Bundesrat, explain its veto over consent laws and Scharpf's joint-decision trap, and trace the reunification of 1990 and the reforms of 2006 and 2009.
5. 5

   Nordic welfare states

   3 lessons

   1. Nordic social democracyThe 1938 Saltsjöbaden agreement, the Swedish model and a chart of union density in Sweden, the UK and the US 1950 to 2020.
   2. Universalism and flexicurityUniversal benefits and the Danish flexicurity triangle of flexible hiring, generous benefits and active labor policy, with a chart of taxes as a share of GDP.
   3. Crisis, immigration and populismSweden's early-1990s banking crisis and reforms, and the rise of the Sweden Democrats and Danish People's Party on a chart of vote shares.
6. 6

   European integration history

   3 lessons

   1. From the ECSC to RomeSchuman's declaration of 1950, the Coal and Steel Community and the 1957 Treaty of Rome on a map of the six founding states.
   2. Enlargement 1957 to 2013A map of the EU colored by accession wave: 1973, 1981 and 1986, 1995, 2004, 2007 and 2013, with the Copenhagen criteria.
   3. The Single Act and MaastrichtDelors, the 1986 Single European Act and the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on a timeline of treaties, with neofunctionalism and Moravcsik's intergovernmentalism as competing theories.
7. 7

   EU institutions

   3 lessons

   1. The ordinary legislative procedureExplain how the European Union makes most of its laws: the Commission's monopoly of initiative, the readings in the European Parliament and the Council under the ordinary legislative procedure, qualified majority voting by the double majority of 55 percent of states and 65 percent of population, and the informal trilogues that settle most laws at first reading, worked through with real population shares.
   2. Commission, Council and CourtExplain the EU's main institutions and how they relate: the Commission as agenda-setter and guardian of the treaties, the Council of the EU and the European Council of heads of government, the European Parliament, and the Court of Justice, whose rulings in Van Gend en Loos (1963) and Costa v ENEL (1964) established the direct effect and supremacy of EU law; and weigh supranational and intergovernmental readings of who holds power.
   3. The democratic deficitAssess the claim that the European Union suffers a democratic deficit: the standard charges of executive dominance, weak and second-order European elections, distance from voters and technocratic policy; the falling turnout in European Parliament elections from 1979 to 2014 and its rise in 2019, read from data; the Spitzenkandidat experiment of 2014 and its abandonment in 2019; and the rival views of Andrew Moravcsik, who denies the deficit, and Follesdal and Hix, who defend it.
8. 8

   The euro crisis, Brexit and populism

   3 lessons

   1. The euro and its crisisExplain the eurozone crisis of 2010 to 2012: the design of the euro under Maastricht, with a single monetary policy, national fiscal policy and the 3 percent deficit and 60 percent debt rules; how Greece's hidden deficits and the banking crisis turned into a sovereign debt crisis; the bailouts of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain's banks and Cyprus, mapped; the spread of bond yields between Germany and the periphery, read from data; and Mario Draghi's pledge of July 2012 to do whatever it takes, with the political costs of austerity.
   2. BrexitThe 2016 referendum shown on a map of results by region, the Article 50 negotiations and the 2020 departure, with the divide by age and education.
   3. Populism in EuropeLe Pen, Orbán, the AfD and the Five Star Movement compared on a chart of populist vote shares since 2000, with economic and cultural explanations.