European Politics

POLS 480 treats Europe as a single political space rather than a collection of national case studies, asking how the post-war split between East and West shaped today's institutions, welfare models, and the half-finished EU project. The semester runs as a lecture-seminar where you're expected to come having done the reading, hold your end of the discussion, give a presentation, and write up a project on a contemporary issue like the eurozone crisis, enlargement, migration, or emerging EU foreign policy. It pairs naturally with comparative politics and IR electives, and is the course where students with a Türkiye-EU or accession interest usually land before moving to thesis work.