Political Science

Given the continuously growing impact of the European Union on business, attention to politics is warranted in international business studies. At the same time, governance in the EU is far from straightforward, as it is based on a very complex mixture of political principles, structures, and institutions. This course looks at the wider institutional environment of the firm and provides background for doing business in Europe.  This course is a good option for students aspiring to work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or business practitioners in Europe. A creative, multidisciplinary approach is taken, using original and challenging literature from the literature on international business, comparative politics, and comparative economic systems. The course material assists in understanding past and current changes in the broader European business & politics landscape.

Henry Kissinger might be the most controversial American statesman of the 20th century. More than 40 years since he left office, he remains the focus of intense popular and scholarly debate concerning the uses of American power during the Cold War. This course explores these controversies in the study of "America and the World" in the 1970s. The course begins by examining how Kissinger’s ideas about foreign policy evolved during his early life in wartime Germany and his career as a foreign policy intellectual at Harvard University. The majority of the course is then concerned with the central controversies of Kissinger’s time in office as national security adviser and secretary of state between 1969 and 1976. Each week students will examine Kissinger’s role in shaping and implementing American foreign policy in a particular theater of the global Cold War, focusing on the major crises and conflicts of the decade. Students read and reflect on extracts from Kissinger’s memoirs as a primary source, in conjunction with the latest historical research on that topic. 

This course analyzes the political economy of East Asia in the context of economic globalization and international political dynamics. It also focuses on globalization, economic crises, and other topics in political economy that revolves around the issue of power conflict between hegemonic countries like US and China and its effect on East Asian countries. The first part of this course focuses on major theories to study political economy in Asia, and the second part addresses various important issues in contemporary East Asia. 

Contemporary political debate remains indebted to concepts and arguments developed in the history of political thought. This course explores this history by examining a select number of signal figures and movements in the history of modern Western political thought. Students engage in close, critical reading of canonical texts. Students learn how to accurately interpret and critically evaluate the arguments in those texts, and thereby learn how to deal with the legacy those arguments have left for contemporary debates.
Thinkers to be studied might range from the well-known and canonical to the lesser-known and unjustly neglected. Possible figures might include: Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Catharine Macaulay, Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, G. W. F. Hegel, Flora Tristan, J. S. Mill, Frederick Douglass, and Karl Marx. Possible movements to be examined include: social contract theory; natural rights theory; republicanism and civic virtue; feminism and the rights of women; socialism and the emancipation of workers; and abolitionism and the emancipation of slaves.