Period as exchange student at Freie Universität Berlin as part of mastersdegree in political science at the Universtity of Oslo

I would like to take a part of my mastersdegree in political science at Freie Univeristät Berlin. My master thesis will have a clear focus on policy nettworks role in EU policy making, and I believe being part of a german research environment would be mo st helpfull for writing the thesis I wish to write. My goal is to take a closer look at the use of policy nettworks in european policy making within EU institutions. The research problem and basis for discussion in the thesis will be to critically ask if policy nettworks can be understodd as a source of enhanced input legitimasy in european policymaking. The theoretical starting point will be Fritz Scharpfs complexe theory of democracy and the functional divide between input- and output-legitimacy. In this context it will perhaps be naturally with a comparativ approach to the discussion, where policy nettworks as a source of enhanced democratic legitimacy more or less explicitly will be compared and contrasted with existing intergovernmental prosedures . Althoug policy networks in some cases can contribute to an enhancement of input-legitimacy, this may not always be the case, especially as they are situated "in the shadow of hierarchies". I find it important that more research be done on this field, e specially because of the importance of the EU. My knowledge on this field is limited, but I persieve Tanja A. Börzel at FU Berlin to be one of the leading figures in policy nettwork research. More importantly, I believe that it will be of immence importa nce to be a part of a German political science envioronment, as I accumulate more knowledge in this field, esspecially as I wish to base certain parts of my thesis on German political scientists such as Fritz Scharph and Beate Kohler-Koch. I speak fluen t German, after having spent an Erasmus year at the University of Heidelberg, and I have also lived in order Berlin to learn German.