The weekly essay assignments all have the same format: a mini-essay about the literature
assigned for that week. These small assignments must fit the following requirements:
– Maximum length: 1x A4, font size 12, normal margins, single spaced. If you clearly
exceed this limit, only the first page will be considered.
– All essays must have a title, an introduction, an analysis and a conclusion. References
to literature must be complete and consistent, but do not count towards the total of 1x
A4. You are free to decide your own referencing style (APA, Chicago, Harvard; intext or in footnoted), but please be consistent.
– The essays need to analyse (aspects of) the literature that has been prescribed for that
week and argue towards a conclusion. They cannot be limited to a summary of the
literature only. You need to make your own (critical, sharp) analysis on the basis of the
literature. This may for instance include assessing an empirical situation given theory
or a critical appreciation of theory given empirics. So, look out for communalities in
the literature, and then for similar conclusions, important differences, falsifications,
novel points of departure, important things that some of the literature seems to ignore,
et cetera.
– This still gives you a lot of freedom, and numerous different analyses are possible
using the same literature. In order to help you out a bit if you are out of inspiration, the
calendar below offers some suggestions of arguments that might possibly be of help.
But please note, they are just suggestions! If you prefer to address a different theme, or
if you think the suggested argument is wrong and you want to fiercely argue against it,
please do. What matters is the quality of your argument.
Essay must use a total of three articles out of this list:
– Bondarouk, E. and E. Mastenbroek (2018), Reconsidering EU Compliance: Implementation performance in the field of environmental policy, Environmental Policy and Governance, Vol. 28: 1, pp. 15-27.
– Fernndez Pasarn, A. M., R. Dehousse and J. Plaza (2020), Comitology: the strength of
dissent, Journal of European Integration, forthcoming
– Egeberg, M. and J. Trondal (2017), Researching European Union Agencies: What have we learnt (and where do we go from here)?, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol.
55: 4, pp. 675-690.
– Levi-Faur, D. (2011), Regulatory networks and regulatory agencification: towards a Single European Regulatory Space, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 18: 6, pp. 810-
829.
– Thomann, E. (2015) Customizing Europe: transposition as bottom-up implementation,
Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 22: 10, pp. 1368-1387.
