Research and teaching the European Union in Latin America. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Special, December 2012

NOTE: there is an appendix to this document on the Archive at ei.pitt.edu/29784/ From the Introduction. The tasks of research, teaching and public opinion outreach activities on the European Union in the Latin American subcontinent2 are propelled by two principal motivations. In the first place, interest on the EU originates from the historical proximity between Europe and Latin America. There are no other two regions in the world with a deeper mutual affinity than the one existing between Europe and the conglomerate composed by Latin America and the Caribbean. Only the intimate relationship forged by the United States with the Europe continent is perhaps stronger, and even more special with the United Kingdom.

Debating the European debt crisis: Government leadership, party ideology and supranational integration as focal points of parliamentary debates in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. ACES Cases No. 2012.3

Parliamentary debates about the resolution of the EU debt crisis seem to provide a good example for the frequently assumed “politicizationˮ of European governance. Against this background, the paper argues that in order to make sense of this assumption, a clearer differentiation of three thematic focal points of controversies – with regard to the assessment of government leadership, concerning the debate between competing party ideologies within the left/right dimension, and with regard to the assessment of supranational integration – is needed. Applying this threefold distinction, the paper uses a theory of differential Europeanization to explain differences in the thematic structure of debates in the Austrian Nationalrat, the British House of Commons, and the German Bundestag. Empirically, the paper is based on data gained from the computer-based coding of plenary debates about the resolution of the European debt crisis between 2010 and 2011.