European Union's External Relations and Regional Cooperation, 5 cr

The course addresses the ways in which Europe and the Nordic region can be analysed as political arenas of both cooperation and conflict in the past and present. The course focuses on various forms of cooperative and conflictual processes and their various causes and consequences in the regions. It examines ideas, institutions, and practices that produce, manage, and reinforce forms of cooperation and conflict in the Nordics and Europe. The course covers formal representation practices in party politics as well as narrative representations of the Nordic region and Europe in different eras. It looks at institutional arrangements, norm diffusion, and ideological factors in facilitating political change in the regions. The stability of institutional and normative structures has been jeopardised by both external and internal factors, which will be examined in more detail during the classes.