210073 SE BAK11: European Union and Europeanisation (2021S)

European integration is subject to manifold and in many ways diversifying challenges. This course aims to evaluate such challenges in the context of digital governance, a policy sector that due to its cross-cutting character and rising importance touches upon a broad range of issues and topics. This includes, for example, (digital) sovereignty, security and surveillance, trade and the power of tech companies, and human rights like freedom of speech or privacy online. Each seminar session will introduce a European integration challenge established in the academic literature and analyze its potential empirical manifestations in the area of digital governance. In three phases, we will identify and analyze the main challenges of and to European integration and discuss potential conceptual and empirical insights and limits that arise in the context of digital governance. First, we focus on the (political) identity of the EU problematizing its core features and potential for legal, social and political unity, for example in academic debates on digital sovereignty and democratic legitimacy. Second, we evaluate the emergence of and responses to crises, such as Brexit or the current pandemic, which has in many ways amplified power asymmetries in the digital context. Third, we will zoom in on contested policy areas, such as the challenges of taxation of transnational platforms, and specific policies, such as the digital services act and the reform of the copyright directive. The seminar explores diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, drawing on classic European Studies literature as well as insights from International Relations and International Political Sociology to illustrate conceptualizations of crises and problems from a variety of perspectives. The readings explicitly include policy literature that address contemporary political challenges to help students develop the analytic and conceptual skills to apply their theoretical insights to recent empirical phenomena.

Learning outcomes:

The course aims to introduce students to central challenges of European integration particularly in the context of digital governance. It further provides students with the conceptual tools and analytic skills to pursue their own projects. At the end of the course, students should be able to
• identify and describe some of the main challenges of European integration;
• summarize and critically assess the strengths and weakness of theoretical approaches that try make sense of European integration and potential challenges and crises;
• apply the insights they gained from these approaches to the area of digital governance and identify potential political, legal, and social consequences.