Robert Harmsen

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 He joined the University of Luxembourg in November 2008 as Professor of Political Science.

 Professor Harmsen completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Alberta (Canada), and then undertook his doctoral work as a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Kent at Canterbury (United Kingdom). After defending his doctoral thesis (on the historical and intellectual origins of the constitution of the French Fifth Republic) in 1988, he then returned to Canada as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Université de Montréal, subsequently holding teaching positions at McGill and Laurentian Universities.

Crossing the Atlantic again, he joined Queen’s University Belfast in 1993, as a founding member of the Institute of European Studies. During his time at Queen’s, Dr. Harmsen served as the initial co-ordinator of the university’s now well-established MA programme in European Integration and Public Policy. He also held a number of key administrative posts, including those of Acting Director of the Institute of European Studies, Head of Teaching in the School of Politics and International Studies, and Director of Research for the European Governance and Gender Group in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy.

Professor Harmsen has been a recurring visiting professor at the Collège Doctoral Européen des Universités de Strasbourg, a visiting researcher at the Faculty of Humanities of the University Amsterdam, and Researcher-in-Residence at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. He is also a co-editor of the Amsterdam-based Editions Rodopi European Studies series.

Professor Harmsen’s research interests have spanned a broad range of topics concerned with the contemporary processes of European integration, at both the national and the supranational levels. He has written on the constitutional development of the European Union (including logics of ‘variable geometry’) and on the politico-legal dynamics of the European Human Rights regime (with particular reference to the post-enlargement challenges faced by the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights). He has also published extensively on the themes of ‘Europeanisation’ (notably examining the ‘path dependent’ logics of administrative adaptation to the EU decision-making process) and ‘Euroscepticism’ (specifically in relation to developments in Britain, France, and the Netherlands).

At the University of Luxembourg, Professor Harmsen’s research activities will be centred on the development of the newly created ‘Public Policy Analysis’ concentration within the wider European Governance programme. The core agenda of this research group may be understood as that of contributing to a revitalisation of Europeanisation research, seeking both to develop innovative methodological cross-fertilisations (notably as between institutional and sociological approaches) and to place European developments in wider comparative perspectives (particularly by way of explicitly developed comparisons with other post-industrial political systems). Initial projects are planned to look at: The Bologna Process and the Domestic Determinants of Higher Education Policy; National Experiences of Multilingualism and their Possible Lessons for European Language Policy; and Discourses of Multiculturalism and the Framing of National Immigration Policies.

Selected Publications by Theme

  Euroscepticism and the Party Politics of European Integration  

1). ‘French Euroscepticisms and the Construction of National Exceptionalism’, in Tony Chafer and Emmanuel Godin (eds.), The End of the French Exception? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming).

 2). ‘The Evolution of Dutch European Discourse: Defining the “Limits of Europe”’, Perspectives on European Politics and Society: Journal of Intra-European Dialogue., vol. 8 no. 3 (2008), pp. 316-341.

3). ‘Is British Euroscepticism Still Unique?: National Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective’, in Ramona Coman and Justine Lacroix (eds.), Les Résistances à l’Europe: Cultures nationales, idéologies et stratégies d’acteurs (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2007), pp 69-92.

4). ‘L’Europe et les partis politiques nationaux: Les leçons d’un «non-clivage»’, Revue internationale de politique comparée, vol. 12 no. 1 (2005), pp. 77-94.

5). ‘Euroscepticism in the Netherlands: Stirrings of Dissent’ in Robert Harmsen and Menno Spiering (eds.), Euroscepticism: Party Politics, National Identity and European Integration, European Studies no. 20 (Amsterdam/New York: Editions Rodopi, 2004), pp. 99-126.

  Europeanisation and the Adaptation National Politico-Administrative Orders  

1). ‘Les limites de l'européanisation: les administrations nationales face à la construction européenne’ in Didier Georgakakis (ed.), Les métiers de l'Europe politique: Acteurs et professionnalisations de l'Union européenne (Strasbourg: Presses de l'Université de Strasbourg/Collection ‘Sociologie politique de l'Europe’, 2002), pp. 297-315.

3). ‘The Europeanization of National Administrations: A Comparative Study of France and the Netherlands’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration vol. 12 no. 1 (January 1999), pp. 81-113.

4). ‘European Integration and the Adaptation of Domestic Constitutional Orders: An Anglo-French Comparison’, Journal of European Integration/Revue d’Intégration européenne vol. 17 no. 1 (1993), pp. 71-99.

  The European Human Rights Regime  

1). ‘The European Court of Human Rights as a “Constitutional Court”: Definitional Debates and the Dynamics of Reform’, in John Morison, Kieran McEvoy and Gordon Anthony (eds.), Judges, Transition and Human Rights Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 33-53.

2). ‘National Responsibility for European Community Acts under the European Convention on Human Rights: Recasting the Accession Debate’, European Public Law vol. 7 no. 4 (2001), pp. 623-647.

3). ‘The European Convention on Human Rights after Enlargement’, The International Journal of Human Rights vol. 5 no. 4 (Winter 2001), pp. 18-43.

  The Constitutional Development of the European Union  

1). ‘Negotiating the Intergovernmental Conferences: Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Beyond’, in Klaus Larres and Elizabeth Meehan (eds.), Uneasy Allies: British-German Relations and European Integration Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 277-298. [With Nickolas Reinhardt]

2). ‘The Puzzle of Constitutional Asymmetry: Recent Canadian and European Debates’, Review of Constitutional Studies/Revue d’études constitutionnelles vol. 2 no. 2 (1995), pp. 305-341.

3). ‘A European Union of Variable Geometry: Problems and Perspectives’, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly vol. 45 no. 2 (1994), pp. 109-133. Also extracted in, inter alia., Stephen Weatherill (ed.), Cases and Materials on EU Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006/Seventh Edition), pp. 675-677.

last modified:05 Jul 2011