This elective course explores the making of contemporary Europe diachronically and in global context through four modules. It considers the plurality of “Europes” that emerged in the postwar period, including the institutional evolution of the European Communities and European Union, their challenges and their achievements. It situates the development of regional cooperation agreements within the global context of World War, decolonization, Cold War, economic crises, globalization, the Soviet collapse, and the turmoil of the early 21st century. It evaluates the roles that different actors – including multilateral organizations and multinational corporations – played in shaping European governance. And it equips students to apply this knowledge to their own analyses of contemporary political debates.

We live in a “global” world in the 21st century, characterized by global supply chains and global trade, global norms and global institutions. But what does all of that mean, exactly, and how did we get here? This course examines two forces – sometimes in conflict and sometimes in concert – that shaped the global economy into its present form: global capitalism and global governance. It uniquely approaches these forces through the lenses of their agents and institutions: thinkers, policymakers, firms, and business groups on the one hand, and international organizations, supranational institutions, global trade frameworks, and international laws and regulations on the other. By taking a long historical view, reading a wide variety of sources, and engaging in open discussion, students of this course can gain valuable perspectives for understanding the relationships between concepts like empire and trade, war and peace, business and regulation, economic growth and human rights, on a global scale.

The graduate course on the ‘Future of Europe’ is the first Europeanship Multi-Campus course, one of the flagship initiatives of the CIVICA project, an alliance of ten leading European higher education Institutions in social sciences. The course critically explores the main European policy challenges (see infra), and is designed and taught jointly by a team of professors from the different Institutions of the alliance. The course is delivered synchronously across all the campuses of the CIVICA consortium as a series of live on-line lectures, integrated with local activities. On top of lectures, the course spurs students to work in teams across countries and disciplines, with the aim of completing a final capstone project assignment related to specific and concrete EU-related policy challenges. CIVICA was selected in 2019 by the European Commission as one of the pilot European Universities, funded under the Erasmus+ programme. It is an alliance composed of Bocconi University (Italy), Sciences Po (France), Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden), The London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), Central European University (Austria and Hungary), European University Institute (Florence), IE University (Spain), Warsaw School of Economics (Poland), Hertie School (Germany), National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania).