Summary, Research Design and Assessment

In this session, everyone will be asked to reflect on the previous seminars and pose a provisional research question that they intend to answer in their assignment. This may or many not be related to your doctoral thesis.

The convener will then outline the core steps of research design to be considered when constructing your assignment:

7. What is the puzzle?
8. What is the social scientific debate in the literature?
9. What is your specific question?
10. What empirical data will you use?
11. What are your tentative conclusions?
12. Why does this matter?
Readings

Bob Hancké (2009). Intelligent Research Design. Oxford University Press

Henry E Brady and David Collier (eds) 2004 (or 2010). Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools and Shared Standards. Lahman, MD: Roman and Littlefield.
Essay Questions:

Researchers are encouraged to design and answer their own question.

This is a list of questions that will help guide you in your selection. For almost all the questions researchers are encouraged to select their own case studies. These can be policy areas, member-states, sectors, institutions, or even change over-time.

1. Is there a tension between markets and politics in how the EU has responded to the crisis?

2. What is the asymmetry between negative and positive integration in Europe?

3. Explore the changing dynamic between the EU Council, Parliament and Commission since the founding Treaties.

4. Which theory of European integration can best explain recent changes to Euro governance?

5. What has the concept ‘multi-level polity’ contributed to our understanding of Europe?

6. Is the EU Council the central actor in European multi-level governance?

7. Analyse the dynamics of European integration with reference to two or more policy areas of your choice.

8. Does European integration take place among socio-economic unequals?

Does the EU suffer from a democratic deficit