Europeanization and Public Policies

The course aims to provide students with the core theoretical, conceptual and methodological tools to understand the processes through which the European Union makes public policy decisions and the challenges associated with implementing them within a multitiered institutional and political structure.
The course examines and contrasts the European Union's actions in different areas of public policy. In doing so, it aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills to: (a) analyse the workings of the political institutional system at a supranational level in different areas of public policy and to identify its characteristics, its formal and informal rules, its actors and its interactions, and (b) evaluate the effects of the Europeanization process on national public policy structures and on the dynamics of domestic political institutions.

Upon completing the course, students will have acquired the theoretical, conceptual and methodological tools necessary to understand and analyse the processes of making and adopting public policy in the political institutional system of the European Union.
By actively participating in lectures and classroom case studies, students will apply the knowledge and analytical methods they have learned as they explore the various theories and approaches covered. This will enable them to: (a) analyse the workings of the political and institutional processes of the European Union in different areas of public policy, identifying its characteristics, its formal and informal rules, its actors and its interactions, and (b) evaluate the effects of the Europeanization process on national politics and on the dynamics of domestic political institutions in various areas of public policy, including those not directly covered in the classroom.
By participating in individual and group exercises, students will also learn how to independently apply the main information and data sources regarding EU policy for analysis purposes.