Debating Myself

My second senior thesis is finished. This paper, written in German, was much more of a challenge in some ways than the Politics and Government thesis. Having chosen specifically to write two senior theses instead of simply writing one larger thesis on a topic that overlaps both subjects, I had a hard time finding my way to a topic of interest to me involving Germany.

My main problem was finding available resources in German to conduct strong academic research from. In the end I chose as similar road as my POLS thesis–namely reanalyzing an existing case-study.

I am interested in theories of federalism, generally, and the European Union as a sort of interesting new experiment in multi-level governance. However, looking specifically at environmental policy within Germany and the EU is ironic, because it is perhaps the type of politics that interests me the least. Luckily I was able to focus my paper on the theoretical implications of the division of power between Germany, the EU and the German Länder in the realm of environmental policy, and avoid tedious discussions of allowable levels of pollutants in rivers and streams.

Mainly, it is just really hard to write a substantial research paper in a foreign language you have studied for only four years–and I am probably most proud of my thesis not for its clear and original analysis (of which it has much less than my POLS thesis) but for my use of the German language. Since coming back to Germany I think my mastery of written German has probably increased significantly due to the outstanding support of my German professor (Professor Lorely French) and the insane amount of papers I had to write in German this year.

Oddly, I wrote more pages/papers in German this academic year than in English. Crazy.

For comparison’s sake, here are the vital stats on my German thesis:

• Pages: 43
• Words: 10,773
• Footnotes: 30
• Words (with footnotes): 11, 476
• Sources Cited: ??
• Sources Consulted: 83
• Appendixes: 0

And, I’m done. If anyone out there is fluent in German and interested, please feel free to read the attached PDF below. For those of you not fluent in German here is an English description of the theme of the paper:

The Federal Republic of Germany is a founding member of the European integration project and a strong supporter of the European Union. Yet the rapidly increasing centralization of European policy in the form of mandates from the EU is particularly complicated for Germany due to its federal structure. The sixteen German states, or Länder, have become increasingly active in the politics of integration in the last twenty years in an attempt to protect their traditional constitutional sovereignty. The Länder have been particularly active, sometimes against the wishes of the federal German government. The struggle against European environmental standards exemplifies how integration can be burdensome and costly for the Länder to implement. This study analyzes the different strategies employed by the Länder in defending their sovereignty.

“Purely Administrative Entities”? The Role of the German Länder in the European Union (PDF)