About the project
Processes of European integration have been developing in multiple and varying directions in recent decades. Countries in Europe have been developing various forms of attachment to the institutional arrangements of political and economic governance in the European Union. European integration, in short, is not and for the foreseeable future will not be a unifying and coherent process leading towards one dominant type of political unification process across countries in Europe. Slovakia and Norway are examples of countries with various degrees of integration into the EU’s political order. A comparative approach using the two country contexts as a point of departure and extending the research scope towards other country contexts in Europe and beyond provides a fertile ground for the study of differentiation and democratic governance in today’s Europe.
Outcomes
The current project addresses this issue area and seeks to establish lasting cooperation between Comenius University as the leading political science milieu in Slovakia and ARENA at the University of Oslo as a leading European center of research excellence on democratic governance in Europe. The project sets up frameworks for transfer of a successful set of best practices in managing research and teaching excellence on the PhD level in the field of democratic governance. Project activities include lectures, PhD courses and common publications as well as a guest researcher’s scheme at ARENA.
Previous events
PhD School: Crises, Democracy and Governance in a Differentiated EU
Time and place: June 20, 2016 – June 24, 2016, Comenius University
Comenius University in Bratislava organises a PhD Summer School on political integration and differentiation in Europe in June.
The Department of Political Science, Comenius University and Centre for Territorial and International Studies FiF UK in cooperation with ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo invite you to join the PhD Summer School on political integration and differentiation in Europe "Crises, Democracy and Governance in a Differentiated EU" in Bratislava.
Academic programme
The EU as a political structure offers a variety of forms of cooperation and integration, ranging from association agreements, membership in the European Economic Area, membership in the EU to membership in the Schengen Area and Eurozone. During the Summer School we will cover each individual forms of association and their consequences for the respective member states.
Participating PhD students will learn crucial insights from the most up to date theoretical developments and analytical approaches within the field of studying institutional change in democratic governance in Europe. At the same time, the Summer School will offer PhD students, as well as experienced foreign and Slovak academics, platform to exchange ideas and gain new perspectives on differentiation in Europe. The Summer School is open to all PhD students, in relevant fields of study, interested (not only) in European integration, democratic governance and legitimacy.
John Erik Fossum, Espen D. H. Olsen and Bent Sofus Tranøy from ARENA will contribute to the academic programme with lectures on the EU’s parliamentary dimension, the political economy of the Eurocrisis and on EU citizenship.
About
The PhD school is organised as part of the inter-institutional cooperation project Democratic Governance and Differentiation in Europe between ARENA and Comenius University. The project is co-funded by the EEA Grants and the state budget of the Slovak Republic from the EEA Scholarship Program Slovakia.
News
TV debate on EU disintegration
Jozef Bátora from Comenius University took part in a TV debate on the future of the European Union in the discussion programme "Vecèera s Havranom" on Slovakian TV.
Jozef Bátora is coordinator of the programme Democratic Governance and Differentiation in Europe. The other participants in the debate are the Czech journalist Katerina Safarikova and the Austrian writer Robert Menasse.
The programme was aired on RTVS on 3 May 2016.
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