ARENA - Center for European Studies, University of Oslo

ARENA is a research centre studying the dynamics of the evolving European systems of governance.
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Jeffrey T. Checkel

bilde checkel


Jeffrey T. Checkel is Professor of Political Science and a Research Professor at the ARENA Centre for European Studies, both at the University of Oslo. His research and teaching interests are international relations theory (international institutions, constructivism, transnational politics, civil war), European integration (research methods, socialization dynamics, identity), politics in East and West Europe (former USSR, Germany), and qualitative methods.

Prof. Checkel's reviews and articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of International Relations, European Union Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Journal of European Public Policy, Review of International Studies, Slavic Review and World Politics. In addition, he is the author of Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (Yale University Press, 1997), and editor of International Institutions and Socialization in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Checkel serves on the Board of Editors of International Organization, and co-edits the Sage series Foundations of International Relations. He is the recipient of fellowships and grants from numerous European and US funders, including the Social Science Research Council, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Academic Council on the United Nations System - American Society of International Law, European University Institute, and Commission of the European Union.

Click here for complete CV

Click here for Checkel's Political Science homepage

bilde jeff og matterhorn

Checkel's true identity - as lover of all things alpine - revealed. Here pictured before Cervin/Matterhorn (4478 meters) on 28.07.04, 7 hours after successfully summitting it.

Full size picture

Academic/Employment History

* 2002-Present: Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo

* 1998-2001: Senior Researcher and then Research Professor of International Politics at ARENA, University of Oslo

* 1996-98: Visiting Scholar and Humboldt Fellow, Fakultaet fuer Verwaltungswissenschaft, Universitaet Konstanz

* 1991-96: Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh

* 1991: PhD in Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

* 1981-83: Synchrotron Operator, Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, Cornell University

* 1981: Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics, Cornell University

Current Projects

The More the Better? Human Rights Law in a Changing Europe

This project explores the consequences of the growing amount of human-rights lawmaking at the European regional level, specifically examining the EU/ECJ (Charter of Fundamental Rights) and the Council-of-Europe/ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). Using various theoretical lenses (symbolic interactionism and role conflict from sociology; forum shopping and institutional nesting from rational choice), it seeks to offer a net assessment of the good and possible bad of the EU’s forceful move into the area of basic rights. Click here for Policy Memo


European Identity: Between Cosmopolitanism and Localism

A collaboraton with Peter Katzenstein of Cornell University, this project provides an overview, synthesis and exploration of the politics of two radically different European identity projects. One is outward-looking, cosmopolitan, and elitist, and is captured by the European Union’s efforts at supranational polity- and constitution-building. A second is inward-looking, nationalist and populist, and has been (re-) activated by the Cold War’s end and the concomitant process of European enlargement. Exploring the interaction between these opposing identity projects has two signal benefits. Empirically, it captures the on-the-ground reality of contemporary Europe, where debates over the EU and its constitutionalization increasingly intersect with populist mobilization. Analytically, it has the potential to correct a significant bias in much of the Europeanist and comparative literatures, which too often theorize only one of these identity dynamics in isolation. Forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2008. Click here for 10.06 Cornell workshop program


International Institutions and Socialization in Europe

This project unpacks the socialization dynamic invoked -- but undertheorized -- in nearly all current work on European interest and identity change. Analytically, it explores the mechanisms of socialization from several different perspectives, including organizational theory, social constructivist, rational choice and social psychology. Empirically, this diversity helps capture the reality of contemporary Europe, where a variety of mechanisms are socializing states and individuals/groups within them. We analyze the socialization potential and practices of a number of European institutions, and do so in both West and East Europe. First published as a special issue of International Organization (Fall 2005), and now forthcoming as International Institutions and Socialization in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007).


Social Mechanisms and the Quality of Cooperation

This project places the EU and other European institutions in a broader, comparative perspective. In terms of mechanisms and outcomes, what is it - if anything - that makes Europe different when compared to other regions? Forthcoming in Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston, Editors, Crafting Cooperation: Regional Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Click here for 9.06 draft chapter

Selected Publications (2001 - Present)

Online Papers

Courses Offered

Annotated Bibliographies