Claudio M. Radaelli
Professor
of Public Policy
Director,
Centre for European Studies,
Bradford University
Focus and aims
Focus on political science, the state of European studies, and teaching European studies
Some notes on the UK and Italy
Aim: to discuss the trade-offs in the field. There are no simple answers, but it would be useful to agree on a set of criteria that can be used to make choices in relations to the trade-offs
Background: an elusive topic ?
Both area studies and horizontal subject (Wolfgang Wessels)
European integration curricula: a prism, not a one-dimension approach (Heather Field):
(Old) institutional approach (descriptive)
Policy approach
Interest-group, IPE, Marxist approaches
Debates cutting across the approaches: rationalist versus ideationalist school, intergovernmentalist versus neo-functionalist, Europeanisation…..
‘Research base’ of European Studies: the British case
RAE (Dyson report): 30 units in 1996, 41 in 2001
639 staff submitted in 2001 (543 for French studies, 322 for Germany studies)
Successful ‘mixed submissions’ (social sciences, languages, and humanities) in 2001
Successful submissions by departments including East European - ‘Post-Communist studies’ staff
but ‘problems of recruitment, sharp contraction, declining morale, and painful restructuring (RAE panel report 2001). Is the research base withering away?
Michael Smith report for SCHES (UACES, UK, see http://www.uaces.org/SCHES.htm)
Notes on the Italian case
Similar to France in terms of number of politics - IR chairs dedicated to European Studies. Low number of Jean Monnet Chairs in politics (Lucarelli-Menotti report on IR in Italy: Journal of International Relations and Development, 2002)
Translations and Italian manuals on the EU are available: contrast with the French case
Recent increase of ES courses, some of them with an Eastern European focus (especially in the University of the North East like Padova, but also Ancona, etc)
WHAT IS THE BEST ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE TO TEACH EUROPEAN STUDIES ?
Make or buy?
Flexibility or credits assembled here and there without real focus?
Inter or multi-disciplinary?
Contrast: EUI-type of structure versus typical European studies departments in the UK
WHAT IS THE EUROPE WE WANT TO TEACH ?
The macro-perspective
Political processes of open coordination (Sorbonne process, Bologna declaration, Graz 2003)
Teaching Europe, European integration, or the EU?
Debate on the core curriculum (projects in progress, relationships with the emerging EU policy in this field)
Europe we want to teach (2)
Comparative social sciences or area studies approach?
Risk of compartmentalising students (the EU-focused students with their own vocabulary, normative stance, myths… but then can these students read the American Political Science Review? Are they professional political scientists)
Normative issues and the debate on (good) governance: the importance of identifying the intellectual mission (University of Maastricht example)
Europe we want to teach (3)
The focus on Europeanisation: a valuable opportunity?
Contextualising Europe: one starts from the domestic level and examines when and how Europe matters
We always teach the EU ‘locally’, that is in France, UK etc. not in abstract places. Exceptions: Bruges, LSE,…
Conversant research agenda
WHY DO WE TEACH EUROPE?
International civil service: the ‘I want to get a job in Brussels’ syndrome (MA students). Declining, but important for students from new member states (Estonia, Poland, Hungary, etc.)
Part of a professional-educational background that is not grounded in EU affairs: how do we get EU-specific knowledge to travel well to these students?
Role of policy-analytic skills. Contrast with the neglect of the policy sciences in traditional European studies curricula
SUGGESTIONS
Criteria to handle the trade-offs
Getting the right organisational structure: abstract criteria should be weighted by the resources available and the degree of autonomy of individual universities. Contrast France, Italy, and the UK
Suggested Criterion: Integrate ‘European studies’ with the social sciences and cultural studies
Suggested Criterion: Stress the components of EU scholarly work that travel well (conceptually and analytically) outside the EU. We are still trying to produce professional political scientists!
Suggested Criterion: Less Brussels-centred than in the past. The potential of Europeanisation
Suggestions (2)
Get the European dimension in a bottom-up fashion, for example by proposing modules on French politics, comparative public policy etc that stress the role of Europeanisation and EU politics-policy in general. Indeed, it would be good to have EU-focused professors to teach comparative politics courses and involved classic comparative politics experts in teaching the EU
Identify the intellectual mission
Address the normative issues: our students are more engaged and less interested in becoming technocrats than in the past. Avoid the impression of ‘aseptic approaches’
Critical approaches should not be neglected
Does EU funding flow in the right direction ?
The case of Jean Monnet chairs:
applicants are required to focus exclusively on EU teaching. Teaching the member states, public policy analysis, comparative state-society relations, etc does not qualify for JM Chairs applications (even if one can demonstrate that this teaching has a strong EU component)
EU support (2)
Funding seems to some observers (especially economists) more hierarchical than market-oriented
The insistence on ‘developing positive attitudes towards EU institutions’ does not work in the long run
Often, funding measures do not address core areas of EU economic integration, but prefer to encourage research in culture, identity, citizenship: excessively adventurous?