Regional Integration in a Changing World

The purpose of the lecture will be to disentangle the various strands of the processes and projects that add up to European integration in order to understand their relation to global social transformations as well as to specific European dynamics. In particular, emphasis will be put on three distinct but connected transformative dynamics -- economic, political, and cultural -- that help to understand the limitations of regional integration in its traditional forms and to sketch possible futures for the EU. Furthermore, the workshop will present and illustrate the extensive literature on the role of problem definition and evidence in the policy process and also offer students the opportunity to conduct hands-on work on hypothetical responses to contemporary social transformations.