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/ EUROPEAN UNIONDELEGATION TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Press and Public Diplomacy
EU CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE 2011-14
Proposal Narrative Form[1]
Receipt Deadline June 20, 2011
Project Title: The University of Texas European Union Center of Excellence – Grant ProposalStart Date and End Date of Project:
September 1st, 2011 – August 31st, 2014
Contact Details for Project Principal Investigator:
Douglas Biow, Director
Superior Oil Company-Linward Shivers Centennial Professor
Center for European Studies
The University of Texas at Austin
MEZ 3.126
1 University Station A1800
Austin, TX 78712Austin, Texas 78713-8925
512-232-4311 (Phone)
512-232-3470 (Phone)
Signature of Project Principal Investigator:
EU CENTERS 2011-14
Proposal Narrative
Summary Overview of the Project. Briefly describe the major themes to be addressed, major research, teaching, and outreach activities to be undertaken, and the expected impact of the program upon the university community and external outreach constituencies, and any activities that will be delegated to sub-contractors. Attach additional page(s) if necessary.MAJOR THEMES:
The theme of globalization has dominated the last two decades of post-Cold War era scholarship and policy studies to a point where it has become ubiquitous. With globalization came opportunities for economic growth and prosperity that have been unparalleled in recent modern history. However, globalization has also brought a number of novel challenges such as climate change, terrorism, currency fluctuations, financial crisis contagion, and infectious diseases. Just as the growth opportunities are globalized, so too are the problems of today’s era. These challenges and crises have little respect for the traditional notions of state borders and they resist unilateral solutions. In today’s globalized world, events far beyond one’s borders may have profound consequences for security and prosperity at home. Similarly, policy solutions to problems are not confined by political lines of demarcation and countries have plenty to learn from each others’ solutions.
Policymakers increasingly recognize that global interconnectedness makes cooperation among countries essential, regardless of whether the issue is terrorism or financial regulatory practices. But policymakers are also discovering that views on which issues should take priority and which solutions are most likely to work, vary from capital to capital.Meanwhile, publics around the world increasingly worry that interdependence has gone too far, exposing them to dangers they would rather avoid and undermining their way of life. These citizensknow that globalization has eroded national borders, in turn making it impossible for any country, however powerful, to operate in a vacuum. And these people are not sure they like it.Nowhere is this rise of populism more evident than in the revival of the small-government movement in the US and in the renewed vigor for a Euroskepticist rhetoric, which is espousedin Europe from Finland to Germany.
The proposed EU Center of Excellence (“Center”) at the University of Texas at Austin (“UT”) will explore European and American responses to the pressures created by global interconnectedness. The Center will work to spur dialogue on the common challenges facing the EU and the US and to create opportunities for Europeans and Americans to discuss and evaluate contending policy solutions. In doing so, the Center will engage the best minds in academia, government, business, and the not-for-profit sectors in its activities. The Center will work strenuously to publicize its events, competitions, and research with an active outreach program that will take full advantage of the powers of the Internet.
As its main overarching theme, the Center will specifically undertake the idea of Trans-National Policy Challenges. The Center will examine policy issues and challenges that eschew national-level policy responses. The EU will serve as an ideal case-study for the purposes of this overarching theme. Its very existence ultimately hinges on the concept that European sovereign states abrogate their sovereignty in order to maximize policy-making effectiveness on a number of policy challenges that are otherwise impossible to limit merely to national government.Since 2008, the world has seen a number of such policy challenges and the consequences of those challenges. The economic crisis is perhaps the most obvious policy challenge, but how to deal with energy dependency in a geopolitically unstable region, or with a regional power seeking nuclear weapons, are just few of the many other challenges that cannot be resolved by one country alone.
Across the board, the economic crisis has created a call for smaller government and for more national level policy responses. In the US, the bailouts of the financial sector in 2008 and mounting budget deficits have revitalized the “small government” movement. In the EU, a number of Eurozone bailouts have caused rancor across the continent—both in the countries being bailed out due to the imposition of austerity measures and in the countries contributing to the bailout due to the perceived costs of the financial rescue. Thus, Euroskepticism is on the rise again. Certain policy responses, however, are impossible to be undertaken at a local and/or national level. Global cooperation and supranationalismare the only way to[MP1] deal with challenges that necessarily cross borders.
A partnership between the European Commission and the flagship university of the State of Texas to tackle trans-national policy issues makes eminent sense. The EU is the world’s oldest and most successful trans-national, trans-border governance institution. Texas is by nature a frontier state—it has the longest international land border of any state in the US[MP2]—and it is open to trade and movement of people. UT has both a wide and deep array of talent and expertise on the themes outlined above, especially at its world-renowned professional schools. In short, we have much to learn from each other.An exchange of ideas between Europeans and Texans on trans-national policy challenges such as financial regulation, economic policy, immigration, legal issues, energy security, and trade would greatly enrich the public debate in the US and create possibilities for forging common ground within the transatlantic community.
The Center will address its overarching theme of trans-national policy opportunities and challenges by concentrating on three sub-themes: (1) Post-Recession Policy Challenges, (2) Geopolitics as Trans-National Policy Challenge, and (3)Law and Media.
- Post-Recession Policy Challenges
- Monetary and fiscal policy
- Intersections of local and global business practices
- Austerity implementation and deficit reduction measures
- Challenges to corporate/household deleveraging
- Financial sector regulation
- Exchange rate coordination
- Challenge of credit rating across continents
- Role of the investor community in shaping government responses
The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis has spurred Europe to undergo painful austerity measures and government balance sheet fiscal consolidation efforts—policy responses that have largely been lacking in the US. While investors continue to focus on Europe in a negative light, there is in fact much that Europe, led by the European Commission, has done right. Its statistical body—Eurostat—has begun consolidating new accounting standards, and new enforcement mechanisms for Maastricht criteria have been agreed upon. The US, meanwhile, remains politically divided over the issue of deficit reduction and has largely failed to mobilize a response that even remotely mirrors that of the EU. The Center will look to learn from the EU response to the crisis and to inform the domestic debates in the US with a number of conferences and events[MP3].
- Geopolitics as Trans-National Policy Challenge
Many Americans, and especially many Texans, do not understand or appreciate Europe’s emergence as a global power—a power that in many respects rivals[MP4] that of the US. They are still wedded to a cold war view in which Europe is a decidedly junior partner to America, despite the roles being reversed to a large extent in the ongoing Libyan intervention. And they certainly do not understand the EU and its crucial role in European life. This tendency to see Europe as it was, rather than as it is and will be, has played a role in many of the trans-Atlantic disputes of recent years.
The Center will address these issues by examining Europe’s evolution and emergence as a major global actor, seeking to understand Europe’s responses to a number of geopolitical issues as instructive case studies. The Center will help UT faculty and students, as well as the broader Central Texas community, to understand the current state of play in Europe’s capacities to respond to geopolitical crises—from the 2008 Russo-Georgian war to the ongoing situation in Libya—as well as the global reach of the EU. The Center will pay special attention to the rich and varied debates within Europe over the future evolution of the EU, including issues such as the EU’s enlargement policy and the development and maturation of its Common Foreign and Security Policy, and to the EU’s critical role in dealing with secessionist regions and frozen conflicts on its borders. In pursuing these efforts, the Center will draw heavily on its professional schools, especially the schools of business, law, and public affairs, all of which have considerable expertise and interest in these areas.
In looking at the evolution of Europe as a geopolitical actor, the Center will examine Europe’s relations with nations of the former Soviet Union and the post-Communist Central/Eastern Europe. There is a divergence within Europe on what role Russia should play in this region. The Central/Eastern European members of the EU have a different perception of Moscow’s interests in the post-Soviet sphere than the West European member states.Indeed, Europe’s growing economic ties with Russia have outpaced its political ties. Further, Russia is Europe’s main supplier of natural gas and a consumer for European exports. But Russian leaders dismiss European concerns about anti-democratic developments in Russia and criticize Europe for being too willing to follow the US in international affairs. The Center will examinethe Russian-European relationship, particularly in the cases of energy security and frozen conflict management, both in the Balkans and in the Caucasus.
The Center’s work on transnational policy challenges will also investigate specific instances of US-European cooperation on so-called out of area issues. One such topic involves the whole constellation of issues subsumed under the umbrella of peacekeeping and post-conflict governance. First in the Balkans,then in Afghanistan, and currently in Libya, US and European governments, both through NATO and independently of it, are working cooperatively to reduce ethnic and sectarian violence and to build lasting structures of peace. These efforts have gone well beyond—indeed, have had to go well-beyond—“ordinary” military deployments to encompass a broad array of diplomatic, economic, social, and judicial initiatives. The Center’s efforts in this area will seek to identify what lessons Europeans and Americans have learned over the past decade and to assess what new steps need be taken.
3.Law and Media
Globalization is doing more than simply eroding physical borders.It is also dissolving the boundariesthat separate nations and cultures and the norms and morals that bind them. Ideas now traverse political borders with the touch of a button on a computer. Meanwhile, all people, from the poorest migrants to the wealthiest hedge-fund managers, cross borders in ever growing numbers looking for opportunity. These varied people bring different views and attitudes to their new homes, while technology allows them (if they so choose) to remain emotionally and culturally connected to their old homes.
The movement of ideas and people stimulates creativity and innovation. It also challenges traditional notions of group identity. Do (and should) citizens of Denmark think of themselves primarily as Danes or as Europeans? Will Muslim immigrants in Rotterdam and, Hamburg and Pariscome to see themselves as part of Europe or as separate from it? Do Poles, Bulgarians, and citizens from other new entrants to the EU see the European project in the same way that citizens in Western Europe do?
The Center will examine these questions of identity and citizenship. Identity politics (defined broadly), aided by the trans-border nature of information technology, is of great importance to a frontier state like Texas, which has the second largest foreign-born population in the US. The University of Texas is home to some of the world’s leading researchers on the formation, expression, and evolution of identity. The Center will provide UT students, faculty, and staff—as well as the wider Central Texas community of business people, policymakers, and not-for-profit leaders—with a forum through which to learn about Europe’s experience with identity politics and to share their own experience and knowledge. The US and Europe can learn much from each other about different migrant experiences, and Austin is an ideal vantage point from which to explore changing group identities in a comparative manner.
In exploring culture, citizenship, and identity, the Center will place particular emphasis on the role played by journalists and the media. We will provide a conduit through which practitioners, industry leaders, students, researchers, and faculty at UT’s professional schoolof Journalism as well as Radio, Television and Film can access and discuss the academic scholarship and practices in Europe. The Center will encourage and support student exchanges and cooperation with universities in the EU. In short, we will provide UT students, faculty, and researchers, as well as Europeanvisitors in Austin, with a trans-national platform for the study of new mediums in radio, television, film, and journalism.
The Center will also emphasize how legal practices in Europe and the US are comparable and how the twomodels can learn from one another. Adhering to the theme of identity politics, we will examine law and sexual citizenship and how these are perceived in Europe and the US. We will also emphasize the European perception of humanitarian and international law, particularly in the context of the post-global war on terror.
Finally, the Center will provide the UT community specifically and Central Texas as a whole with information about exhibitions and performances that will highlight the incredible depth and volume of European art and culture. The Center will work with the world-famous Blanton Museum of Art and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center to attract European artists and art works to the UT campus to add to the already significant European art exhibitions and performances these institutions currently offer[MP5].
MAJOR RESEARCH, TEACHING, AND OUTREACH ACTIVITIES
TO BE UNDERTAKEN DURING THE GRANT CYCLE:
The EU Center of Excellence at the University of Texas will use a variety of activities to cover the main themes of Trans-National Policy Challenges and Opportunities. In doing so, the Center will continuously seek to fulfill its main mission of involving the university student, faculty, and researcher community in outreach efforts to the wider community of policy makers, stake holders, diplomats,business people, local institutions of higher education, and educational professionals.