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Teaching

Europe and the World  

Current international events have intensified focus on the European Union’s foreign and security policies. The standard view presents EU efforts to develop a united and coherent foreign policy identity as relatively unsuccessful. This view judges differences between national European governments to be significant and EU institutions to have failed in encouraging convergence and compromise between these embedded national interests. A contrasting view has emerged suggesting that the EU has gradually developed a distinctive identity in international affairs, predicated upon an increasing degree of unity on core foreign policy values. From this perspective, the EU is seen as developing soft power and normative approaches to international affairs that compare favourably with US policies. This module will explore these debates over the EU’s effectiveness as a foreign policy actor, and assess the nature of recent European policies in a number of strategically important areas of the world.

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 2009/10 first research essay titles.