Political Science

This course explores how the post-colonial Middle East has evolved and examines key issues dominating politics in the region.

The first part of the course gives a general introduction to the study of the European Union (EU) including the central theories applied in the field. Key questions include the following: What should the focus be in studying the European Union and how should significant developments be analyzed? How can the EU be theorized and analyzed as a political system, including its institutions and decision-making processes? The second part of the course deals with the current challenges and changes in the EU related to the Lisbon Treaty. How do these elements influence the structures and processes of the present EU? How can the effects of these be conceptualized theoretically? The third part of the course considers other challenges and changes within the EU: namely, specific policy areas (for example, agricultural policy); relations between the different institutions of the Union and between the institutions and the member states; processes of Europeanisation in individual member states. The first part of the course will give a general introduction to the study of the European Union including the central theories applied in the field. Key questions include the following: What should the focus be when we study the European Union and how should we analyse significant developments? How can we theorize and analyze the EU as a political system, including its institutions and decision-making processes? The second part of the course will deal with the current challenges and changes in the EU related to the Lisbon Treaty. How will these elements influence the structures and processes of the present EU? How can the effects of these be conceptualized theoretically? The third part of the course will consider other challenges and changes within the EU: namely, specific policy areas (for example, agricultural policy); relations between the different institutions of the Union and between the institutions and the member states; processes of Europeanisation in individual member states.

This course focuses on the legal, political and institutional structure of the Hong Kong government. The course examines the political culture and attitudes of the Hong Kong people. Other topics include the Chief Executive, legislative politics, constitutional politics, public opinion, pressure groups, political parties, mass media, and Beijing's policy toward Hong Kong.

This course explores the range of institutions created in response to various economic, security, and environmental challenges faced by states and other actors in the global system, and some of the most prominent theories aimed at explaining them. Students analyze a series of case studies of particular issue areas, from international peacekeeping, to the regulation of multinational corporations, and the struggle to slow global warming. More broadly, this course examines whether international organisations are instruments of or rivals to sovereign states, and whether they reflect the hegemony of the West, solutions to international collective problems, or are agents of new transnational communities.

Global challenges are nearly all at some level issues of governance and development. This course considers the following questions: Why are some countries poor while others are wealthy? Why do well-established seemingly well-functioning countries not tackle serious challenges like climate change more aggressively? Why are human rights enforced by governments in some countries, while not in others? Why are some diverse communities pacific and cooperative, while others are divisive and violent? This course aims to provide students with a foundational understanding of how to tackle these questions. This course does this by introducing students to the institutional perspective, which focuses on the formal and informal rules that structure human interaction. Development of communities across time provides strong testable inferences about the origins of problems. More importantly, perhaps, the institutional perspective suggests an avenue by which we can look for solutions to these challenges because many institutions are of intentional human design, and thus can be designed differently. In other cases, a scientific understanding of the constraints facing human individuals may not point the way to solutions, but at least suggest which solutions are unlikely to work or worse, may have less desirable consequences.

This course helps students engage with current debates around the perceived failures of contemporary democratic systems and the reforms that are sometimes proposed to address those failures. It focuses on problems and reform proposals in "established" democracies rather than in new or fragile democracies – though many of the discussions may well be relevant to the latter as well. It is divided into two parts: the first focuses on some of the major (alleged) challenges facing contemporary democracies; the second turns to a range of the (proposed) solutions to these challenges. The approach taken is comparative throughout: students are encouraged to engage critically with the many arguments and counterarguments that are made through both theoretical reflection and engagement with empirical evidence from across the democratic world.

Geopolitics focuses on the spatial dimensions of power and in particular on States' policies and strategies designed to establish and secure control over areas and resources. Geopolitics studies the dynamics of the establishment of spheres of influence at the international level, and has close relations with the disciplines of geography and international relations. The World's geopolitical multiple equilibria are continuously evolving and recombining, making political geography also a field concerned with the longitudinal, historical dimension. The twentieth century has witnessed an outstanding acceleration in the transformations in the World's geopolitical framework: starting from the break-up of the old geopolitical order preceeding the Great War, the rise of new powers, the Cold War, and to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today, the global geopolitical order is again under radical transformation. This course provides an overview of the key issues in contemporary geopolitics and places them within a broad historical context, focusing on critical areas and players. Assessment of this course consists of a final written exam, individual workgroups, and collective workgroups.

This course examines comparative politics: the study of domestic politics in different countries. Comparative politics emphasizes the similarities and differences between states' political systems, both as important content about how politics is conducted around the world, and as a method for understanding general political processes. The module covers formal political institutions and aspects of civil society, public attitudes, and political culture, and how they interact to produce political and policy outcomes. Institutional topics include the nature of states and their development, democracy and dictatorship, and variation in democratic institutions and decision-making processes.