210136 SE M9: Eastern European Studies (2022S)

Few regions in the world have been so deeply and thoroughly shaped by international actors and influences as Eastern and Southeastern Europe since the 1990s. As Mitchell Orenstein and his co-authors noted in 2009, “at first ignored, transnational actors turned out to be the dark matter that held the various aspects of postcommunist transition together in Central and Eastern Europe”. The European Union in particular has played a major role in this process. What has made international actors, and the EU become such decisive actors in the post-communist transformation? How has the EU affected politics and political economy in Eastern and Southeastern Europe? How have the fall of the Wall, and the aspiration for EU membership in many Eastern and Southeastern European countries in turn shaped European integration? Finally, how to explain that in the last decade, the European integration process has become increasingly fraught with East-West tensions? The seminar will seek to address these questions by revisiting European integration before and after the Cold War, examining the origins and unfolding of its enlargement strategy, analyzing the effects of the accession process on East European transformation, and studying how countries in Eastern and South Eastern Europe have sought to shape European integration. The thematic focus of the class will be the politics and political economy of the dual processes of European integration and East European transformations, and geographically it will mostly cover current EU member states and the Western Balkans.