Political Science

In the course, some key social institutions that together have come to be called the "Swedish" or "Scandinavian" Model, are presented. The course covers the historical development of the Swedish welfare state, both in relation to institutional changes and to the political project of the welfare state. It departs from an analytical and historical perspective where the internal contradictions and impetus for change of the Swedish Model are central. Therefore, the course includes recent developments such as the possible dismantling of the Swedish welfare state and emergence of a new welfare model. The emergence of social rights and social citizenship are included in this section. The course discusses welfare state policies directed towards the family, which includes a gender perspective in which feminist critique of the welfare state is introduced. The course also discusses the particularities and the development of the Swedish Model on labor market and labor relations, reviewing different theoretical perspectives on the triad state, capital, and labor.

This course provides an introduction to the EU and its policy on environmental protection and natural resources. After a brief recap of the basics of policy-making in the EU, students learn about the guiding principles and developments within the EU’s environmental policy. Subsequently, the course covers the major environmental challenges currently faced by the EU. The first part of the course discusses the functioning of the European Union to be able to better understand the factors influencing European environmental policy and politics. The course also looks at the European reaction to climate change and discusses the effectiveness of the main solutions to this global problem: the development of renewable sources of energy and the different ways of pricing carbon. The course devotes a special session to the EU’s role in climate negotiations. The second part of the course is devoted to different forms of pollution, such as air, noise, water, and soil pollution, as well as humanity’s impact on biodiversity loss. In this part of the course students discuss the main prerequisites for making the European transport sector more sustainable and European cities greener and smarter. The last session is devoted to discussing the challenges and the opportunities for the future of environmental policy.

This course examines historical and current health policy issues and their impacts. It covers health policies mainly in the U.S. and Taiwan, but also looks at global health topics. The first part of the course discusses health care systems, such as the public insurance structures in the U.S. and Taiwan, health care reforms, and the long term care systems. The second part introduces health behavior related topics from the economic perspective, including the prescription drug market, the effects of smoking and drinking age regulations on health, the factors and consequences (education, employment, crime, etc.) of risky health behaviors, and the impact of environment on health.

In this course students study the politics of developing nations from the perspective and theory of political development. Additionally, students examine and discuss the patterns of political rule and political economies of chosen state systems. The class focuses on several case studies from Latin America, Africa, and South Asia.

The course explores the core issues, important theories, research methods, and frontier development of electoral politics. It covers the economic, social, legal and other important aspects of political systems and examines the election system and election behavior. Students analyze the dilemma, limitations, and outlets of the elections in today's world.

This course is divided into two parts. The first half of the course offers a comparative modern history of East Asian countries, with a special focus on Hokkaido, Ryukyu-Okinawa, Taiwan, Korea and China, in the framework of Japanese “Nation-Empire” building. The course also explores categories of people, including trafficked children, peddlers, “abducted” women, the Ainu, Taiwan's indigenous people, Micronesians, and Okinawans. The second half of the course focuses on cultural studies (pop culture, movies, music manga, etc.), political economy (regional integration, ASEAN+3, TPP, RCEP, One Belt One Load), comparative politics (political regime, identity, nationalism, democracy), regional security (U.S.-Japan Alliance, U.S. military presence, military cooperation, South China and East China sea, bandwagoning or hedge). The course uses active learning in groups, making maximum use of the mixture of students from different regions and countries, and bringing out different perspectives, points of view, and opinions on various issues and topics.

This seminar aims to equip students with knowledge of institutional and politico-economic development of Asian regionalism and its role in world and regional politics. 
 

Ignorance looms large in our current political discourses. From the ignorance of epidemiological facts shaping pandemic policy and public compliance or willful ignorance of climate change which continues to perpetuate the reliance of fossil fuels to naive ignorance of epistemic exclusions that to reproduce marginalizations on the basis of race and gender, ignorance takes center stage in key public debates. With so much putative ignorance around, one might get the impression that ignorance more than knowledge gives shape to contemporary political cultures. Yet, with a more careful eye towards how ignorance functions, it is clear that we are not dealing with a singular idea. Rather, there are multiple discourses around, definitions of, and practices built on ignorance. This seminar distinguishes between two particular modalities of ignorance: positive and negative ignorance. That is, 1) ignorance defined through the absence of specific forms of knowledge, and 2) ignorance defined in terms of someone’s positionality in and situated knowledge of a complex system. The course traces the first modality of ignorance via its deployment in current political debates such as climate change, racial marginalization, and intersectional feminism. In these discourses, ignorance functions as a foundation for critique, as a moral imperative, and even as basis for political activism. The second modality of ignorance, perhaps better understood in terms of aporia, can be found today in a variety of positive programs for dealing with complexity (aporetics) such as administrative decentralization, neoliberal economics, and even public sector design. The course introduces some of the epistemological and practical preconditions for such aporetic governance. Finally, the seminar asks what forms of research, ethical conduct, and political practices may be mobilized in response to or built upon ignorance and aporia.