CSPO 24A19 - EU Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy: Actors, Trends, Challenges

This course will examine the political challenges surrounding the EU’s neighbourhood towards the east and south-east, looking at domestic, regional and international dynamics and the institutional connections to the European Union. It looks at the old and new candidates for EU membership: the Western Balkans, that have spent over a decade in Europe’s waiting room, and three countries further east: Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Long stagnant, EU enlargement policy was reinvigorated after the shock of Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine, but underlying challenges remain: democratic decline or stagnation, identity conflicts, geopolitical competition. The course draws on the concepts of EU conditionality and ‘Europeanization’ as well as current research on democratization and autocratization, illustrating their functions and limitations by applying them to various current case studies. Its objectives are to (1) allow students to understand the institutional structure of EU enlargement and neighbourhood policy, (2) identify key political and institutional trends in Europe’s (south)eastern neighbourhood and (3) mobilize theoretical building blocks from literature on democracy promotion, autocratization and (de-)Europeanization to analyse current cases.

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An interactive seminar, this course combines student-led discussion on assigned readings and brief lectures on key themes.

Student presentation & discussion leadership on assigned readings, class participation, in-class final exam.

Students are expected to have completed each week’s assigned reading (usually two articles) and contribute actively to discussions.