2025/2026
Politics and Society in the Baltic Countries
Type:
Mago-Lego
When:
3, 4 module
Open to:
students of one campus
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
6
Contact hours:
48
Course Syllabus
Abstract
The Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) represent a particular region for studying by political scientists and scholars in International Relations. Being tied to the complicated legacies of Soviet times, this region has succeeded in developing a European integrationist course of foreign policy. However, despite positive developments in building new societal identities and democratization of the region, there is a number of societal and political problems, which are the focus of the proposed course, that these countries need to handle. The following course explores politics and society in modern Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It will briefly cover the history of the region, paying special attention to the Soviet period, before proceeding to an analysis of their post-Soviet political, societal, economic, and cultural transformation(s). The course aims to provide students with a deeper understanding of key issues in political and societal developments in these countries. It covers a number of political and societal issues that will be listed as follows: Russian/Soviet legacies; post-colonial/post-Soviet identities; state building; ethnicity, language policy and minorities’ rights, nation building, nationalism, and citizenship issues; developing a rigid and well-functioning civil society, migration issues, foreign policy trajectories and the impact of the accession to the EU on the politics and society in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The course will help students acquire knowledge on the nature of state, politics and society in the Baltic countries, and develop critical thinking on variations in and drivers of political, economic, social, and cultural transformations in this part of the world.