Andrew Moravcsik, a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School and Director of Princeton's European Union Program, is teaching a special WWS seminar in public affairs on the EU. The course explores the political history of European integration in the post-war era, examines the EU's core institutions and policy making, and analyzes the key challenges facing the EU in the coming years.

As part of a video feature, Prof. Moravcsik and his students discussed the substance of the seminar,  the challenges of European institution-building and policy making, and how and where theoretical and applied approaches to policy may meet.

Woodrow Wilson School (WWS): Where do you see the theoretical and applied approaches meeting in this course on the EU?

Andrew Moravcsik (AM):  Well, I strongly believe like most of my colleagues that you can't really understand an institution unless you understand where it comes from, and the deeper structures that make it function in the way that it does. And I think that one of the things that many people who are active in political life are very good at is dealing with issues that are immediately in front of them, but they often don't understand the broader structures in which they're acting - the limits and possibilities of the institution, where it comes from, and that's particularly true for people who are younger in their careers [and] don't have a broader range of experiences with an institution.

And I think there's a great example of that in recent EU history, which is the attempt by the EU to promulgate the so-called Constitution for the European Union - and that's a classic example of a very "big-think" project that politicians embarked upon, and I think they embarked upon it for largely short term, very focused reasons. They wanted to build more popularity, more legitimacy for the institutions, but they didn't think about the complicated, complex and big-think implications of embarking on a constitutional project for a political institution - and that's precisely the kind of area where theoretical knowledge, comparative knowledge, the kinds of things that political scientists specialize in can be an advantage.

WWS:  Please tell us about the recent visit to the class by Dr. Kalypso Nicolaidis, to discuss European integration.

AM:  We've been very lucky to have Prof. Nicolaidis, who's a member of this European Reflection Group, that was named by the heads of state in Europe to chart the future path of Europe, or to provide a report that sets forth that future path.

Dr. Kalypso Nicolaidis: We are not democratically elected, we are not representative of anything. We may be coming from a very wide array of sectors, as you wrote in your memo, but that‚s it. Nobody elected us, the European peoples don‚t really know who we are. But, we are lucky enough to have a mandate from the heads of state. So that is our only asset.

Tamara Spitzer-Hobeika '10: The example of  the class that we had is a representative of this reflection group of the EU is really an example of how this improves your knowledge. It's really an approach to the EU that is not only historical but also practical. [Prof. Moravcsik] wants us to understand the current implications, the current challenges  for the EU. So really it's a two-fold seminar that really gives you a broad prospective on what the EU was, and potentially what it is going to be.

WWS:  What are you trying to convey to students as part of this course?

AM:  The most important thing is to give students some idea about how the European Union works because it's an institution with which most Americans have very little experience. It’s an institution that creates a single currency for countries, eliminates all their borders, does 10 or 20 percent of their law-making for them, and that-s the kind of thing that Americans really don’t understand.

So I try to give the students some sense of what it's like to make laws in an institution like that - how politics is done, what interest groups do, what politicians do, what the public does, [and] give them some familiarity with it and then give them some deeper sense of where the history comes from in that institution. How it functions so that they’ll be more familiar with it when they encounter it in various capacities in later life.

Christopher Molosso '09: 

Working it out in small class setting, getting into the issues is really helpful.  Every week we do a different main portion of the EU, so this week we talked about European security and defense policy, the week before we talked about something called the "democratic deficit." So, working through a different issue every week is really, really helpful. I have taken a lot of classes on Europe, on European history, on European politics, but none of them have actually tackled the EU in particular. So, tackling the European Union the way it exists now and the way it will exist after the next treaty is ratified is really very helpful.