The Fall of European Orders from the Roman Empire Until Today

About

The class discusses the current crisis of the European Union by putting it in theoretical and historical perspective. In the first session, we will discuss two prominent voices that emphasize the depth of the European crisis and the risk that the whole integration project might fail. This is followed by a second session in which we will read similarly prominent voices that claim quite the opposite. According to them, Europe is the future rather than the past of modern development of democracy. The third session puts both voices in theoretical context and asks for the reasons that stimulated revolutions and the fall of political orders in the past. The sessions four and five deal with the historical cases of the end of the Roman Republic and of the failure of the Weimar Republic. The final session concludes the class by answering the question of whether the EU is in a deep crisis and likely to fall or whether its future is as bright as its past.

Course leader

Prof. Dr. J. Neyer

Target group

This course is part of the summer program "The Liberal Order in Crisis: Authoritarian, Radical, and Populist Challenges to Democracy in Europe".

Fee info