Teaching
JMCoE Member: Javier Arregui
Role: Academic Coordinator
Degree/Master: Compulsory undergraduate course in the BA in Political and Administration Sciences (UPF)
Years of Execution: Since 2015
European Politics
The main objective of the course is to provide a critical insight into the emerging political system of the European Union. By using some of the most relevant concepts, theories and analytical frameworks of Political Science discipline, the course is aimed at examining and explaining the main political processes of the EU. At the end of the course, students should have a clear and concise understanding of what the process of European integration is and represents. Students will also be asked to increase their critical understanding as regards to what extent the EU is a political system, the competing interests that may influence EU policies, the political functioning of EU institutions as well as the capacity for action that different agents have at different stages of the political process.
JMCoE Member: Javier Arregui
Role: Academic Coordinator
Degree/Master: Elective graduate course in the BA in Political and Administration Sciences (UPF)
Years of Execution: Since 2017
Experiencing the EU: a Simulation of Council Negotiations and Decision-making
The aim of this course is to teach, through the medium of a simulation game, the principal concepts, models and themes in international negotiations. We focus on negotiation in the European Union (EU) as the most developed rule-making international organization, whose extensive policy outputs in a broad range of policy areas have important consequences for its citizens. The course provides an overview of negotiation theories and practices. The emphasis is on what drives negotiation processes and what explains the outcomes of EU decision-making.
JMCoE Member: Javier Arregui
Role: Academic Coordinator
Degree/Master: Elective graduate course in the BA in Political and Administration Sciences (UPF) and in the BA in Global Studies (UPF)
Years of Execution: 2021-2022 onwards
Contemporary European Issues
The target groups of this course are USA and Canadian undergraduate students (coming from different disciplines) who want to increase their knowledge about the EU integration process from a political science perspective. The main objectives of this seminar are the following: 1) to trace, critically analyse and explain the process of European integration from a historical and a political science perspective; 2) to compare and contrast the US and the EU political systems in order to highlight points of convergence and divergence; 3) to show a capacity for synthesis as regards the politics and the institutions of the process of European integration and of the EU itself; 4) to understand the key concepts used in traditional European integration studies; 5) to demonstrate an appropriate use of political vocabulary when referring to the European Union integration process; 6) to understand the day-to-day functioning of the most relevant European institutions; 7) to develop further university level research skills in essay presentation, library source searches and critical thought.
JMCoE Member: Fernando Guirao
Role: Deputy Coordinator (with Oriol Garcés)
Degree/Master: Elective undergraduate course in the BA International Business Economics (UPF)
Years of Execution: Since 2015
European Economy: Present and Future of European Integration
This course analyses the emergence of a European economy and the nature of the institutional devices, which have been designed to manage it collectively, from the war to the present. The course deals with the development of the various European national economies placing the focus on the specific connections among them (in the East and West) as well as on the relationship between the European economies and the international economy. This course is a sort of economic history of European integration in a global context with the declared aim of not describing the events but to explain why the Europeans co-operate among themselves the very strange way they do.
JMC Member: Javier Arregui
Role: Academic Coordinator
Degree/Master: MA of Research in Political Sciences (UPF) and Erasmus Mundus EPS Master
Years of Execution: 2020-2023
The Consequences of the European Integration on EU Citizens
This seminar course is oriented to Masters students who would like to do research on EU politics and/or wish to substantively improve their knowledge and understanding on the policy outputs (and their political consequences) produced by the EU governance. It focuses on discourses on institutions, democracy, policy-making and public policy. The approach of the course is to establish a substantive link between the theoretical, empirical and normative analysis of the European Union policy process. The course analyses the modes of governance in Europe. The focus of the course rests on the existing relationship between institutions and the outputs of the public policies implemented in the EU.
JMCoE Member: Javier Arregui
Role: Academic Coordinator
Degree/Master: Elective post-graduate course in the MA in Public and Social Policy
(UPF/Johns Hopkins Centre)
Years of Execution: 2009-2019
The European integration process and its economic and social impact
To know the functioning of the European political system, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of the public policies that are elaborated and decided in Brussels, as well as the political logic of why states have decided to transfer those policies to Brussels. The main objective of the course is that students have a systematic knowledge of the governance model that exists in Europe at the end of the course, as well as the main results of the public policies that it implements.
JMCoE Member: Javier Arregui
Role: External professor
Degree/Master: MA in European Integration (UAB)
Years of Execution: Since 2015
European Integration: Theory and Political Process
The purpose of this module is to introduce students with the history and institutional processes of the European Union, as well as to provide them with theoretical and methodological tools that are required for studying the process of European Integration. The module is intended to help students successfully write a research paper and develop research skills for PhD applications. The module overviews the different phases of European Integration, the modes of EU governance and the different conceptualizations applied to EU policy, politics and policies. The module is divided in a set of thematic lectures by professors from the UAB and visiting scholars from other universities.
JMCoE Member: Fernando Guirao
Role: Academic Coordinator
Degree/Master: MA in World History UPF
Years of Execution: Since 2014
Contemporary Europe Facing Globalisation since 1945
‘Globalisation’ is one of the most commonly used concepts by authors, journalists and commentators as of today. This course will confront students with the contrast between facts and interpretations so that they can reach their own opinion. Understanding increasing regulated inter-dependence—a more neutral way of describing ‘globalisation’—requires understanding the economic logic of events. Political historians’ traditional uneasiness with economics has limited their scope to understand a great deal of contemporary policy action.
JMCoE Member: Fernando Guirao
Role: Academic Coordinator
Degree/Master: Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) offered at UK-based Future Learn digital platform
Years of Execution: Previously 2016-2018. New edition to be decided.
Why The European Union?
The main thesis of the course was that European integration, as we know it, is the result of a historical process which is not lineaL and that, therefore, it is not one hundred percent rational or logical. The European Union — or the Euro zone — is not a complex institutional structure designed rationally from a specific economic rationality or political theory, but the result of a multiplicity of Governments’ actions in the face of very diverse situations, the consequences of which had built up over time, as the geological strata below the visible surface. The main objective of the MOOC is that students understand and know how to analyse the complexity of the current situation.
JMCoE Member: Javier Arregui; Andrea Noferini (JMC EUGOV)
Role: Academic Coordinator; Lecturer
Degree/Master: Barcelona International Summer School (BiSS UPF)
Years of Execution: 2019-2020 (Summer)
Brexit, EU and Global World: Current Challenges in European Politics and Society
The course aims at providing a critical overview on the current challenges that national democracies will have to face in the next years. Social inequalities, global pandemic, gender equality, migrations, climate change and sustainability, the rise of nationalism(s) and populism(s) are some of these tremendous challenges. By applying a plural and interdisciplinary approach, the course combines analytical tools and categories stemming from political science, international relations, economics, European Integration studies, public policies and development economics. By providing critical tools for understanding complex phenomena (such as the European integration process, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, the challenges of global governance, etc…) the course aims at preparing students as informed citizens and lifelong learners who care and act for the future of the planet and humanity.