Political Science

This course examines different philosophies and political theories of how to foster belief and fashion deception in politics, while asking how we might be more ethical and honest in a post-truth context and in the university.

This course introduces the topics and theories in the study of international political economy. It introduces the history of international political economics to show how the world's economy got to the contemporary stage. Course topics include: US-Iraq war and cross-strait relations; bias and politics; knowledge vs. wisdom; reflections to methodology and research methods; reflections on the level of scientific paradigms: fact-oriented vs. theory-oriented; the political economic analysis on organization and institution; bias and mobilization of bias; the formulation of international political economic order after WWII East-West confrontation and north-south conflicts; international monetary fund and international monetary system after WWII; GATT and international trade system after WWII; peaceful coexistence and economic development theory; north-south conflicts and dependency theory; oil crisis and dependent development; world system theory; the end of cold war, regionalism, and the clash of civilization; globalization and national development; Asia-Pacific political economy; and PRC economic reform and cross-strait relations. Assessment: discussion and attendance (20%), midterm (40%) and final (40%).

Spanning political theory and practice, the course begins with an assessment of influential 19th-century critiques of capitalism and industrialism. Students then consider the rise of modern ecologism and the recent turn to green capitalism, which in turn sets the stage for in depth engagement with ecology and the politics of technology, contemporary anarchist ecologies, post-capitalist and post-industrial utopian imagination, and contemporary anti-capitalist and ecological social movements.