Political Science

Many people believe that citizens, and especially citizens in democratic states, have a duty to accept the authority of the law and to support and comply with the institutions of their state. In this course students examine this assumption in depth, and from various perspectives. They engage with recent philosophical discussions on the nature of political authority, on the legitimacy of democracy and on the duty to resist state injustices.

This course aligns Political Sociology to the social scientific study of political issues by other disciplines such as Political Psychology and Political Science, and seeks to develop a broad account of politics that can be used to understand contemporary social and political themes. The course combines the study of institutional and everyday politics, focusing on topics such as formal and informal types of political participation, political partisanship, elites and the distribution of power, the rise of populism, the politics of emotion and identity politics. Students taking this course learn about the theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects of research in Political Sociology and related disciplines.

Position with a member of the Irish parliament or with a nongovernmental organization affiliated with the EU government. The internship is an officially authorized program working within the Irish Houses of Parliament: the Dail and the Senate. It is governed by the House Committee on Procedures and Privileges. Interns have the status of adjunct staff. Work in parliament is subject to conditions laid down by the Committee on Procedures and Privileges covering such matters as access to facilities, dress code, dealings with press and televised media etc. Each intern is part of a small staff: Irish parliamentarians commonly have a staff complement of just one or two. Interns are expected to work between two and three days per week. The nature of the work varies greatly but can be summarized as either administration or research. Typically a student will undertake some combination of these research and administration tasks. Throughout the internship, students are required to give an account of progress to the program director.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the law and practice of international dispute settlement. The course begins with an introduction to the obligation to settle international disputes peacefully and an overview of the fundamental principles of dispute settlement. The course then explores the non-judicial means of dispute settlement: negotiation, mediation, good offices, inquiry, and conciliation. Thereafter, the course focuses on the judicial settlement of disputes by international courts and tribunals, in particular the International Court of Justice, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea dispute settlement mechanisms, the dispute settlement procedures and mechanisms of the World Trade Organization, and arbitral tribunals in both inter-State and investor-State disputes. The course concludes by addressing select issues related to international dispute settlement, namely provisional measures, landmark cases (such as the South China Sea arbitration), and contemporary issues such as compliance with judicial and arbitral decisions, and the politics of international investment law. Throughout the course, not only the “law,” but also the “politics” of dispute settlement are addressed.

This course introduces students to international questions of security and policing. In light of an interdisciplinary approach, the course thus focuses on the way in which current topics of interest are politically and operationally addressed, from criminal and political violence to illicit finance and global infectious diseases. In this regard, it fosters a capacity of analysis and independent judgement on the politics and everyday practices of transnational policing, border and migration control, surveillance, and security intelligence in the digital age.