Syllabus
Course schedule (2019) 1. Course introduction and requirements (21.2.2019)
Bloc I: Basis for cooperation - dialectics of the Transatlantic relations 2. Searching for narratives: US identity (28.2.2019)
Discussion:
Huntington, Samuel P., Who are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). Chapters 3 and 4 - "Components of American Identity" and "Anglo-Protestant Culture".
Optional:
Foner, Eric, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002). Chapter 6 - "Why is there no socialism".
Deudney, Daniel H., "The Philadelphian system: sovereignty, arms control, and balance of power in the American states-union, circa 1787–1861," International Organization 49 (2), 1995, 191-228. 3. Searching for narratives: Europe vs. EU identity (7.3.2019)
Discussion:
Diez, Thomas, "Europe’s Others and the Return of Geopolitics," Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17 (2), 2004: 319–335.
Optional:
Smith, Anthony D. "National Identity and the Idea of European Unity," International Affairs 68 (1), 1992: 55-76.
Bottici, Chiara and Benoit Challand, Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Chapter 4 - "Myths of Europe".
Green, David Michael, The Europeans: Political Identity in an Emerging Polity (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). Chapters 2 and 7 - "The Idea of European Identity" and "Conclusion: European Identity and its Context". 4. Europe in the perspective of the postwar American-led order: US and European integration from Truman to Trump (14.3.2019)
Discussion:
Lundestad, Geir, "Empire" by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945-1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 1-28.
Optional:
Ikenberry, John G., Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). Chapter 5 – "The Rise of the American System".
Agnew, John and J. Nicholas Entrikin (eds.), The Marshall Plan Today: Model and Metaphor (New York: Routledge, 2004). Chapter 4 – "The Marshall Plan and European Integration: Limits of an Ambition" by Gérard Bossuat.
Bloc II: Society 5. Anti-Europeanism in the US and anti-Americanism in Europe (21.3.2019)
Discussion:
Markovits, Andrei S., Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Chapter 1 - "Anti-Americanism as a European Lingua Franca".
Optional:
Ash, Timothy Garton, "Anti-Europeanism in America", The New York Review of Books, February 2003.
Patrick Chamorel, "Anti-Europeanism and Euroscepticism in the United States", EUI Working Papers 25, 2004.
OR 6. Class cancelled (28.3.2019) 7. American and European Populisms: Growing Convergence? (4.4.2019)
Discussion:
Wodak, Ruth, "The ‘Establishment’, the ‘Élites’, and the ‘People’: Who’s Who?" Journal of Language & Politics 16 (4), 2017: 551–65.
Optional:
Judis, John B., The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (New York: Colombia Global Reports, 2016), 12-61,89-108 and 131-163.
Bonikowski, Bart, "Three Lessons of Contemporary Populism in Europe and the United States", Brown Journal of World Affairs 23 (1), 2016: 9-24. 8. “In Europe, we don’t do God”: The Role of Religion in Politics (11.4.2018)
Discussion:
Kopstein, Jeffrey and Sven Steinmo (eds.), Growing Apart? America and Europe in the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Chapter 1 - "The Religious Divide: Why Religion Seems to Be Thriving in the United States and Waning in Europe" by Steven Pfaff.
Optional:
Phillips, Kevin, "Church, State, and National Decline" in American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 218-262.
Gonzalez, Michelle A., "Religion and the US Presidency: Politics, the Media, and Religious Identity," Political Theology 13 (5), 2012: 568–585.
Bloc III: Security 9. Easter holiday - class cancelled (18.4.2019) 10. Divergent threat and security perceptions across the Atlantic (25.4.2019)
Discussion:
Hampton, Mary N., A Thorn in Transatlantic Relations: American and European Perceptions of Threat and Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 1-22.
Optional:
Sarotte, Mary Elise, "Transatlantic Tension and Threat Perception," Naval War College Review 58 (4), 2005: 25–37. 11. Are “Americans from Mars and Europeans from Venus”? Civilian power Europe vs. military power US (2.5.2019)
Discussion:
Biscop, Sven, "European Defence: Give PESCO a Chance", Survival 60 (3), 2018: 161-180.
Optional:
Kagan, Robert, "Power and Weakness", Policy Review 113 (3), 2002: 3-28.
Scheipers Sibylle and Daniela Sicurelli, "Normative Power Europe: A Credible Utopia?" Journal of Common Market Studies 45 (2), 2007: 435-457.
Bloc IV: Economy 12. The past and present of the Transatlantic economic relationship (9.5.2019)
Discussion:
Kopstein, Jeffrey and Sven Steinmo (eds.), Growing Apart? America and Europe in the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Chapter 4 - "One Ring to Bind Them All: American Power and Neoliberal Capitalism" by Mark Blyth.
Optional:
Harris, Jennifer M., "America, Europe and the Necessary Geopolitics of Trade", Survival 58 (6), 2016: 63-92. 13. The state, the market and redistribution (16.5.2019)
Discussion:
Kingston, Paul W. and Laura M. Holian, "Inequality" in Alberto Martinelli (ed.), Transatlantic Divide: Comparing American and European Society (oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2007).
Optional:
Alesina, Alberto and Edward Glaeser, "Why are welfare states in the US and Europe so different: What do we learn?" Horizons stratégiques 2 (2), 2006: 51-61.
Alber, Jens, "What the European and American Welfare States Have in Common and Where They Differ: Facts and Fiction in Comparisons of the European Social Model and the United States," Journal of European Social Policy 20 (2), 2010: 102–125.
Annotation
Relations between the United States and Europe are based on common values, security concerns and cultural and historical ties. The relationship has led to the creation of a security, political and economic community that forms a tandem of two entities accounting for over 50 percent of world GDP in terms of value and 40 percent in terms of purchasing power.
Formal institutions such as NATO further strengthen this historical partnership. Yet a closer look reveals that a number of these presumptions are not as evident as one would assume.
Various dividing lines run through the relationship and sometimes hinder mutual cooperation - this can be demonstrated with 21st century crises ranging from the split over the US intervention in Iraq to the latest NSA spying scandal. Adopting both constructivist and realist perspectives on the relations between the US and Europe (the EU in particular), the course will examine the sources of discrepancies in the perceptions of international and domestic affairs of the two actors.
Identities and values that shape these perceptions will be analysed on the one hand and on the other hand the course will focus on the material and structural factors that influence the decision-making of both actors.