Mark Gilbert

This course is concerned with the historical process by which European nation-states have constructed the institution known as the European Union (EU). It deals primarily with political, diplomatic, and economic history, not legal history or the history of European public policy. By the end of the course, students will have a clear picture of principal forces that have driven European integration at the various stages in the 'European Project's' development.

This course is designed to do four things. (1) teach the key concepts of democratic politics; (2) perfect writing and presentation skills; (3) underline that it is impossible to speak authoritatively and convincingly about a given country unless one has understood its recent political history; (4) explain the method of historical analysis. The course, in effect, is “history for policy makers” (with a dash of political theory, which is indispensable for any would-be analyst).

This course also asks why democracies become subject to severe political upheaval and sometimes fall apart. Such a question cannot be reduced to a few simple variables in a rigid formula. It can only be answered by reconstructing (simulating) events and trying to figure out what was important and what was not in particular cases. Analysts should look at the constitutional frameworks, the expected and unexpected consequences of legislation, the moods of public opinion, the solidity of the public finances, the perception of social justice, the personal qualities of political leaders, the ambitions and self-image of the political class, the changing character of the population and so on. We should, in short, multiply variables, not reduce them, if we want to explain and analyze political upheaval.

This course analyzes in historical context the major ethical questions posed by modern warfare. The course addresses in detail such issues as the right to self-defence to aggression, humanitarian intervention, preventive war, the status of civilians in warfare, and non-violent resistance. The course is a seminar and will be taught primarily through the structured discussion of the set texts.

This course is part of the MAGR program

This course uses case studies to examine the causes of political change in consolidated democracies. The cases it looks at in detail are: Great Britain, 1964–1979 and Italy, 1979–1994. Why these two cases? Britain was a by-word for political stability in the 1950s. Yet by the mid–1970s it was regarded as the 'sick man of Europe.' The Heath government fought the 1974 elections on the theme of 'who governs Britain' (the voters decided it was not the government); Britain was forced to have recourse to the IMF in 1976; Mrs. Thatcher was elected to office in May 1979 with a specific mandate to stop the decline. The country, in short, had gone from being a paragon of stability to a pioneer of radical political change in the space of a decade, or little more. Italy, by contrast, was reputed to be the most unstable West European country. In fact, in the 1980s, political commentators noted that it was a very stable instability. The country's much-maligned democracy had, in fact, delivered the economic goods and turned Italy into a highly successful economy and society. The country naturally proceeded to collapse. Between 1989 and 1994 Italy experienced, IV Republic France apart, the worst crisis of any post-war European democracy.

The thesis of this course is that by looking at these two empirical cases one can develop a tentative method for the political analysis of advanced democracies. We are going to ask 'why did Britain (Italy) become politically unstable?' This question cannot be reduced to a few simple variables in a rigid formula. It can only be answered by reconstructing (simulating) the events and trying to figure out what was important and what was not. Our point is, however, that it is possible to generalize from these experiences to other cases. Analysts should look at the constitutional frameworks, the expected and unexpected consequences of legislation, the moods of public opinion, the solidity of the public finances, the perception of social justice, the personal qualities of political leaders, the ambitions and self-image of the political class, the changing character of the population and so on. We should, in short, multiply variables, not reduce them, if we want to understand the direction that particular societies are taking. If we want to gauge political risk — and gauge is a much better word than calculate since it implies using or judgment rather than some mechanical formula — there is no alternative to simulating complexity.

This course provides an overview of the chief political developments in West European politics since the 1970s. The first half of the course is lecture-based and deals with most of the principal nations of western Europe: the democratization of Spain and Portugal, the impact of Thatcher and Blair on the United Kingdom, the unification of Germany and after, the collapse of Italy’s first republic in the early 1990s and its failure to build a stable democracy thereafter, the evolution of presidentialism in France. There will also be a lecture on the transformation of the European Community into the EU. The second half of the course will deal with issues and will be in seminar format. Topics discussed may include: Geopolitics, changes in social policy, populism, intellectuals and politics, migration and multiculturalism.