Utrecht University – University College Utrecht

Comparative politics aims to explain differences between and similarities among countries and utilizes comparison as a tool for social science research to understand broader trends in world politics.  The course draws from both theoretical work and country and regional case studies that cover both advanced industrialized and developing world states. The core question comparative politics ask is "why politics is different across countries"?  Questions explored in this course include: What explains democratization? Are countries with prime ministers more stable than ones in which the president heads the executive branch? Why do some countries have extensive welfare states while others do not? Are multi-ethnic societies more or less prone to civil wars? Why are some countries poorer than others?

After completing this course students are able to:

• Think conceptually as a micro-economist and as a macro-economist
• Have an understanding of the main differences between different schools of thought in economics
• Apply the relevant economic perspective to problems on the level of the individual actor, market(s), the economy(ies), and government(s).

Content

Economists develop theories aiming to explain human behavior, especially – although not exclusively – when they operate in the context of markets and market economies. The course Introduction to Economics provides an introduction to the fundamentals of economics as a science. The course covers   mainstream neoclassical and Keynesian micro- and macro-economics, as well as other schools of thought.
 

Microeconomics focuses on the functioning of a single market and the way governments could promote it. Economic phenomena are explained from the perspective of individual behavior in a market setting. When some goods cannot be produced by private firms and sold via the market, the government can take the initiative to provide these goods, e.g. public utilities and collective goods such as dikes, defense, and justice.

Macroeconomics explains the functioning of a set of interrelated markets at the national or the international level. Also in this perspective the potential role of government is introduced e.g.  in keeping a system of markets stable or in reaching economic growth.

The last weeks in the course will be dedicated to the topic of "Rethinking Economics", covering a.o., but not exclusively, institutional economics, feminist economics, Marxist economics and econological economics.

This course introduces students to the dynamic, diverse, often colorful, and surprising world of global religions. It addresses religious traditions that have a huge influence on the world as we know it: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, but also local traditions in, e.g., Sub-Sahara Africa. The course integrates two components or perspectives: an ideational perspective that concerns religious beliefs and doctrines, and a practical “lived religions” perspective that concerns religious acts and rituals. Both components are approached from a transnational perspective that investigates how religions develop, and interact with each other and with other cultural phenomena and political institutions on a global scale.

This course examines the linguistic processes in language contact situations and how these relate to both societal and individual aspects of multilingualism. The first part of the course introduces the concepts of sociolinguistics that are needed to address issues of multilingualism and language contact, while the last part of the course develops this interdisciplinary perspective further by treating as a case study the island of Aruba, where multiple languages are spoken by overlapping linguistic communities.