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The Fall of European Orders from the Roman Empire Until Today

6/9 ECTS

Seminar: BA, Sozialwissenschaften-Vertiefung Block, Ort: GD 204, Veranstaltungsbeginn: 04.06.2018

The class discusses the current crisis of the European Union by putting it in theoretical and historical perspective. In the first session, we will discuss two prominent voices that emphasize the depth of the European crisis and the risk that the whole integration project might fail. This is followed by a second session in which we will read similarly prominent voices that claim quite the opposite. According to them, Europe is the future rather than the past of modern development of democracy. The third session puts both voices in theoretical context and asks for the reasons that stimulated revolutions and the fall of political orders in the past. The sessions four and five deal with the historical cases of the end of the Roman Republic and of the failure of the Weimar Republic. The final session concludes the class by answering the question of whether the EU is in a deep crisis and likely to fall or whether its future is as bright as its past. 

Literatur: Flower, Harriet I. 2009: Roman Republics, Princeton University Press. Gurr, Ted 1970: Why Men Rebel, Princeton University Press, 1970. Henig, Ruth 1998, The Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, London, New York. Krastev, Ivan 2017, After Europe, Princeton University Press. Leonard, Mark 2005: Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century, Harper Collins. Mommsen, Hans 1996: Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, The University of North Carolina Press. Moravcscik, Andrew 2009: Europe: the Quiet Superpower, in French Politics 7, 3/4, 403-422. file:///Users/jneyer/Downloads/Europe_The_quiet_superpower.pdf. Offe, Claus 2017: Europe Entrapped, Polity. Shotter, David 1994, The Fall of the Roman Republic, London, http://ebooks.bharathuniv.ac.in/gdlc1/gdlc4/Arts_and_Science_Books/arts/history/History%20and%20Archaeology/Books/Fall%20of%2 0Roman%20the%20Republic.pdf. Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Hinweise zum Blockseminar: 04.06, 11.06., 18.06., 25.06., 02.07., 09.07., always 9am-1pm

Leistungsnachweis: 6 ECTS: Home essay (8 pp.) (optional) 33.3 %; 1 presentation (10 minutes) 33.3 %; Participation/Engagement 33.3 % // 9 ECTS: Home essay (16 pp.) (optional) 33.3 %; 1 presentation (10 minutes) 33.3 %; Participation/Engagement 33.3 % Sprache: English