History 244 - European Public Policy, West and East

In 1968, the USSR commenced a strategy of consumerist depoliticization in its European satellites. Around the same time, states on the other side of the Iron Curtain saw the postwar era of rapid economic growth and social consensus close. This course, reaching across the revolutionary break of 1989 up to the present, raises questions of convergence and continuity in European public policy, West and East. Paired case studies from a variety of countries in fields such as energy, the environment, minority rights, and housing serve to clarify rules and patterns to the politics of policy, from Cold War to European Union and beyond.