Four disciplines

Europe cannot be understood when it is approached merely from the perspective of law, economics, political science or sociology. All these disciplines can only explain part of how Europe works. And they often even come up with different explanations. The European Public Administration programme is designed to combine the insights offered by the various approaches. It links law, economics, political science and sociology, confronts these disciplines with their differences and uses them to understand how Europe works.

The rules and policies of the European Union in particular have become as important as the rules and policies that are made at the national level. One may even argue that European rules and policies are more important and may supersede national legislation. The fact is that in many national functions, policy-makers need to know how Europe works in order to be able to make the right decisions.

The State, Europe and the World

The programme does not focus exclusively on the European Union in Brussels. It also addresses the impact of EU policy on the national systems (and vice versa). To this end, the programme’s approach reflects what we call today the ‘multi-level’ nature of European governance. This approach acknowledges that it has become increasingly difficult to draw clear, separating lines between the different levels of decision-making: sub-national (Länder, provinces, cities), national (the state), regional (the European Union) and global (the United Nations, for example). The institutions and their agents operate in an open, ‘multi-level’ structure rather than in closed (sub‑)state and interstate structures.

In this multi-level setting, we focus on Europe and pose two questions:

In other words: to what extent are nation-states confronted with decisions taken at European level (on social policies, the internal market, foreign and security policy, democracy and environmental issues, for example) and what can they do to influence these decisions? And, what is the role of Europe in the world and how can it contribute to the further development of global governance (in relation to North-South issues, global economic developments, the development of international law, the study of violent conflict and of human rights issues, for example).

International organizations

Apart from the European Union, other international organizations are becoming more important as well. In this programme, we will therefore not limit ourselves to the European Union, but we will also look at the tasks and competences of other international organizations, such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the African Union (AU).