The Jean Monnet Chair LEMONADE aims to contribute to study EU democracy adopting a Comparative Politics perspective – which has authoritatively shaped our understanding of European integration and EU politics since the mid-1990s.
In particular, the Chair envisages a bloc of courses for university students, as well as formative experiences for high school students, and presentations in social events open to the wider public, which apply accumulated knowledge on multi-national (state) democracies to EU democracy.
Key priorities are: participation in democratic life, common values and civic engagement.
The aim is three-fold:
- to promote excellence in teaching/learning experiences on the EU at higher education level, with a specific focus on the inter-play between ethno-national identities, institutional structure, democratic politics and public policies, that places a reflection on the social and institutional foundations for a sustainable EU political system centre-stage, in a particular juncture in which further European integration is considered both functionally needed and politically controversial;
- to contribute to academic research and debates on the democratic politics of integration and disintegration in multi-national political systems, by adopting a multi-level and comparative perspective. It will pursue this objective by organizing international workshops that will bring together a wide and varied (both disciplinary and geographic) range of scholars;
- to promote a cycle of classes to High School students in the Trento Province, as well as to enhance a dialogue between the academic world and society at large, in collaboration with associations of the territory.