EU489      Half Unit
Analytical Politics and Policymaking in Europe

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course introduces students to governance in Europe at the national and European Union levels. This course has two objectives, one substantive and one methodological. First, students learn about politics and policymaking in European democracies and the European Union. Topics include the demand for and supply of policy options: e.g., public policy preferences, government formation and duration, representation and accountability, and supranational policy formulation. Second, this course is intended to introduce students to a set of analytical and empirical tools and concepts for understanding how political institutions and political agents jointly generate public policy, and to apply these tools in examining political and policy outcomes in European states. Lessons about political decision making, institutions, and the policy making process will be understood from the perspective of decision makers – that is, an individual or organisation that develops strategy in order to achieve political ends or advance policy change. 

15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.
1.5 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

A review session will be held at the start of the Spring Term to prepare for the e-exam.

Presentation

Students will be expected to produce 1 presentation in the AT (including slides).

• Budge, Ian. 2019. Politics: A Unified Introduction to How Democracy Works. Routledge.
• Powell, G. Bingham. 2019. Ideological Representation: Achieved and Astray: Elections, Institutions, and the Breakdown of Ideological Congruence in Parliamentary Democracies. Cambridge University Press.
• Putnam, R. (1988). Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games. In International Organizations, 42(3), pp. 427-460.
• Tsebelis, G. (2002). Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton University Press.
• Pollack, M. (2015). Theorizing EU Policy-Making. In Wallace et al. (Eds). (2015). Policy-making in the European Union. Oxford: OUP.
• Moravcsik, A. (1998). The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. Cornell University Press.
• Hagemann, S., Bailer, S. and Herzog, A. (2019) ‘Signals to their parliaments?: Governments’ use of votes and policy statements in the EU Council, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 57 (3), 634-650
• Boerzel, T., Hofmann, T. Panke, D. and Sprungk, K. (2010). Obstinate and Inefficient: Why Member States Do Not Comply With European Law. In Comparative Political Studies, 43(11), pp. 1363-1390.
• Schneider, C. and Slantchev, B. (2018). The Domestic Politics of International Cooperation: Germany and the European Debt Crisis. In International Organization, 72(1), pp. 1-31.
• Hobolt, S. (2016). The Brexit Vote: A Divided Nation, A Divided Continent. In Journal of European Public Policy, 23(9), pp. 1259-1277.
• De Vries, C. (2018). Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Oxford: OUP.

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period

The summative assessment will take the form of an e-exam in the Spring Term. E-exams are assessments run under invigilated exam conditions on campus. Students will complete the assessment using software downloaded to their personal laptops.