Course schedule (2024)

Bloc I: Introduction

1. Course introduction and requirements (19.2.2024)

2. Searching for narratives: Debates about the American and European identities (26.2.2024)

Discussion:

Huntington, Samuel P., Who are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). Chapter 3 – “Components of American Identity”.
Diez, Thomas, "Europe’s Others and the Return of Geopolitics," Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17 (2), 2004: 319–335.

Optional:

Smith, Anthony D. "National Identity and the Idea of European Unity," International Affairs 68 (1), 1992: 55-76.
Bottici, Chiara and Benoit Challand, Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Chapter 4 - "Myths of Europe".
Green, David Michael, The Europeans: Political Identity in an Emerging Polity (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). Chapters 2 and 7 - "The Idea of European Identity" and "Conclusion: European Identity and its Context".

Bloc II: Organizing territory – The United States vs. the United States of Europe

3. Building a federation (4.3.2024)

Discussion:

Deudney, Daniel H., “The Philadelphian system: sovereignty, arms control, and balance of power in the American states-union, circa 1787–1861,” International Organization 49 (2), 1995, 191-228.

Optional:

Lundestad, Geir, "Empire" by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945-1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 1-28.
Hendrickson, David C., Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003), pp. 3-32.

4. Regionalism in the US (11.3.2024)

Discussion:

Woodard, Colin, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good (New York: Viking, 2016). Chapter 3 – “Rival Americas”.

Optional:

Harrington, Jesse R. and Michele J. Gelfand, "Tightness–looseness across the 50 united states", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (22), 2014: 7990-7995.

Bloc III: Organizing society – Dialogues over solidarity, equality and liberalism

5. Conceptualizing solidarity (18.3.2024)

Discussion:

Jacobs, Lawrence and Theda Skocpol, Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Chapter 1 - "Why Now? Broken Health Care and an Opportunity for Change".

Optional:

Foner, Eric, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002). Chapter 6 - "Why is there no socialism".

6. “In Europe, we don’t do God”: The Role of Religion in Society and Politics (25.3.2024)

Discussion:

Kopstein, Jeffrey and Sven Steinmo (eds.), Growing Apart? America and Europe in the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Chapter 1 - "The Religious Divide: Why Religion Seems to Be Thriving in the United States and Waning in Europe" by Steven Pfaff.

Optional:

Phillips, Kevin, "Church, State, and National Decline" in American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21^st Century (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 218-262.
Gonzalez, Michelle A., "Religion and the US Presidency: Politics, the Media, and Religious Identity," Political Theology 13 (5), 2012: 568–585.

7. Easter Monday - No class (1.4.2024)

8. Fighting the government, the elites or foreigners? Convergence of American and European Populisms (8.4.2024)

Discussion:

Bonikowski, Bart, "Three Lessons of Contemporary Populism in Europe and the United States", Brown Journal of World Affairs 23 (1), 2016: 9-24.
Samuels, Robert, “(Liberal) Narcissism” in Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 151-161.

Optional:

Judis, John B., The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (New York: Colombia Global Reports, 2016), 12-61,89-108 and 131-163.
Berlet, Chip and Spencer Sunshine, “Rural rage: the roots of rightwing populism in the United States”, The Journal of Peasant Studies 46 (3), 2019: 480-513.
Wodak, Ruth, "The ‘Establishment’, the ‘Élites’, and the ‘People’: Who’s Who?" Journal of Language & Politics 16 (4), 2017: 551–65.

Bloc IV: Organizing the economy – Welfare states and Neoliberalism

9. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome (15.4.2024)

Discussion:

Verba, Sidney, and Gary R. Orren, “The Meaning of Equality in America”, Political Science Quarterly 100 (3), 1985: 369-387.

Optional:

Kingston, Paul W. and Laura M. Holian, "Inequality" in Alberto Martinelli (ed.), Transatlantic Divide: Comparing American and European Society (oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

10. Ideology, politics and identity in the economy (22.4.2024)

Discussion:

Kopstein, Jeffrey and Sven Steinmo (eds.), Growing Apart? America and Europe in the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Chapter 4 - "One Ring to Bind Them All: American Power and Neoliberal Capitalism" by Mark Blyth.

Optional:

Alesina, Alberto and Edward Glaeser, "Why are welfare states in the US and Europe so different: What do we learn?" Horizons stratégiques 2 (2), 2006: 51-61.
Alber, Jens, "What the European and American Welfare States Have in Common and Where They Differ: Facts and Fiction in Comparisons of the European Social Model and the United States," Journal of European Social Policy 20 (2), 2010: 102–125.
Kousser, Thad, "How America's 'Devolution Revolution' Reshaped Its Federalism", Revue Francaise de Science Politique 64 (2), 2014: 65-83.

Bloc V: Ensuring security – Dealing with differing threat perceptions

11. Divergent threat and security perceptions across the Atlantic (29.4.2024)

Discussion:

Hampton, Mary N., A Thorn in Transatlantic Relations: American and European Perceptions of Threat and Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 1-22.

Optional:

Sarotte, Mary Elise, "Transatlantic Tension and Threat Perception," Naval War College Review 58 (4), 2005: 25–37.

12. Are “Americans from Mars and Europeans from Venus”? Civilian power Europe vs. military power US (6.5.2024)

Discussion:

Briggs, William, How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017). Chapters 1 and 2 – “Guns in America” and “The Advantage of Being Armed”.

Optional:

Kagan, Robert, “Power and Weakness”, Policy Review 113 (3), 2002: 3-28.

Bloc VI: Transatlantic Dialogues

13. Anti-Americanism and Anti-Europeanism and Transatlantic “Othering”(Bonus reading - no class)

Discussion:

Markovits, Andrei S., Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Chapter 1 - "Anti-Americanism as a European Lingua Franca".

Optional:

Ash, Timothy Garton, "Anti-Europeanism in America", The New York Review of Books, February 2003.
Woodward, C. Vann, The Old World’s New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Chapter 6 – “Tantalus Americanus”.
Patrick Chamorel, "Anti-Europeanism and Euroscepticism in the United States",