Le mercredi 7 octobre à 17h30, Wolfram Kaiser (University of Porthsmouth / College of Europe, Brugge) interviendra au sujet de « Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union ».
For a long time the historiography of the European Union was very state-centric. It also explained the origins of the ECSC and the EEC in the 1950s predominantly as the outcome of inter-state negotiations of "national interests". This paper will argue that transnational networks, esp. Christian democratic party cooperation, influenced the early stages of integration, esp. before its institutionalization. Based on conceptual insights from network research in political science, it demonstrates how the transnational networks of Christian democrats generated common guiding political ideas, set agendas for integration and coordinated government policy-making on "Europe", with a strong impact on core features of the ECSC/EEC such as sectoral integration, supranational features and the exclusion of the United Kingdom.
Wolfram Kaiser has been Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth since 2000. He also teaches courses at the College of Europe in Bruges and the universities of Bonn and Trondheim. He has published widely esp. on the history of the present-day EU including (ed. with B. Leucht and M. Rasmussen), The History of the European Union. Origins of a trans- and supranational polity 1950-1972 (Routledge 09); (ed. with M. Gehler and B. Leucht), Netzwerke im europäischen Mehrebenensystem. Von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (Böhlau 09); Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union (CUP 07).
Attention: cette séance se tiendra exceptionnellement un MERCREDI. Elle débutera à 17h30 précises.
Lieu: Département d'histoire, local D 243, deuxième étage
Collège Érasme, Place Blaise Pascal, 1, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve