Models of Regionalism: The African Union and the European Union (LAW-723SA-001)
Patrick Ukata, Daniele Gallo
Meets: (Cancelled)
Enrolled: / Limit:
Notices
Meets from 6/5-6/16. Students may earn academic credit for up to two credits per week in the summer semester (excluding full semester courses). This course counts toward the two credit per week limit. To register, email registrationservices@wcl.american.edu.
Description
The African Union course will analyze the efforts by African states to manage their external relations through continent-wide and regional organizations. It specifically seeks to appraise the workings of the African Union (AU) and the regional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as they deal with political, legal, economic, security, social and cultural issues affecting their respective member states. The course also aims to deepen the student’s understanding of the environment within which African states, whether at the regional or at the continental level, conduct their diplomatic relations with particular attention being paid to providing a good understanding of the actors, contexts and outcomes. We shall identify patterns of change, examine constraints, and give careful attention to some of the processes that influence policy outcomes. The European Union (EU) is an organization which began as the European Coal and Steel Community of six states in 1952, but which has greatly expanded in both its membership and the scope of its activities since then. There are currently twenty-eight member states with applications for membership pending from several others, including candidate states such as Turkey, Serbia, and FYROM (Macedonia). The scope of the EU’s powers, which are shared with member states in a set of arrangements even more complex than that of the US’s ‘marble-cake federalism’, ranges from core market-integration and market-liberalization activities to the growing field of ‘justice and home affairs’ (including immigration, policing, criminal and civil law coordination, fundamental rights), as well as to foreign policy and defense. The law of the EU, a complex edifice which has been constructed alongside and over the law of its member states, comprises a vast and detailed body of treaties, case law and regulation of every kind. For instance, in the aftermath of the European financial crisis there are newly created measures designed to reinforce the architecture of the economic and monetary Union while creating a new “fiscal compact” under which countries in the euro zone are bound to write a ‘golden rule’ on balanced budget into their national constitution with automatic correction mechanisms if the law is breached. Any introductory course will necessarily be very selective, and this course provides simply a first look at the EU. The course aims primarily to provide an entry point into the study of this unique political arrangement which, despite the various labels – super state, federation, international organization – which are sometimes used to describe it, continues to defy ready categorization.
Textbooks and Other Materials
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First Class Readings
Not available at this time.
Syllabus
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Microsoft Word 2007 (DOCX)