Political Science

This course examines the evolution of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from a revolutionary power to a reformist socialist power to a major global power on the world stage. It provides an analytical framework and tools for analyzing Chinese international power. Topics covered include key factors that have driven and shaped the PRC's foreign policy, the structural forces and institutional processes of foreign policy-making in the PRC, the development of key foreign policy issues confronting the PRC today, the future role of the PRC in the world, and the relationship between the PRC and various world powers, including the United States, Russia, Japan, and ASEAN. Students also examine the impact of international organizations, globalization, technological advancement, and economic developments.

As immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees move within and across Italian urban borders, they impact the familiar and the "rigid orders of the self"- to borrow the words of the German novelist Günter Grass. This course examines the fundamental links between immigration across the Mediterranean Basin with globalization, development, climate change, poverty, and present-day domestic politics. Considering the latest Italian elections, this course also analyzes how immigration incites everyday an array of responses in different contexts and forms. From the Vatican to the government, sometimes those responses are even antithetical, but they always meet in that discursive space where concepts like home, identity, subjectivity, and citizenship unravel. These concepts are shaped by various structures of power and are continuously migrating from earlier patterns and processes. This course ultimately aims at revealing them as a subject of both public concern on the one hand and violence for many migrants on the other.

One of the oldest traditions in France has been la contestation: a word that can be translated as questioning, entering into a dispute, confronting, protesting, or simply contesting. French history has consequently borne the imprint of this long and lively history. More often than not these movements have been led by the youth, for whom protest was a means to bring about change and right what they viewed as wrong. This course journeys through a number of such movements and investigates what was being contested and why, what was being proposed in its place and why, and what was achieved as a result. The course begins with the French Revolution of 1789. In the 19th century, the course visits the barricades of 1848 and the Paris Commune, where the youth often paid with their lives for their ideals. It analyzes the texts of the thinkers and intellectuals who gave the youth the tools to question the status quo. Following these upheavals, the course continues into the 20th century, when the youth were faced with two cataclysmic wars in which their contestation became synonymous with choice, freedom, and resistance. The course then concentrates on the movement that culminated in the year 1968, when the streets of Paris and other major cities witnessed an unprecedented level of contestation, challenging the all-powerful government of General de Gaulle. Here, too, the course studies the texts that questioned authority. It ends with a glance at the beginning of the 21st century, where the youth—faced with the consequences of globalization, ecological concerns, unemployment at home, and wars beyond their borders leading to major waves of migration—continue to confront and question what they view as unfair and unjust.

The course focuses on the evolution of Russia’s federal system after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the nature of center-regional relations in present-day Russia, in the comparative context of post-Soviet Eurasia. The course attends to key institutions, trends, and reforms underpinning the process of regionalization in Russia during the 1990s and the subsequent recentralization during the 2000s. The prism of center-regional relations and federalism provides an additional perspective on the political economy of post-Soviet Russia, including issues such as the nature and extent of social, political, and economic reforms; the importance of structural preconditions and legacies inherited from the Soviet economy; resource-dependence and the politics of energy; and relations between the state and businesses in Russia. 

This course introduces the arts of diplomacy and negotiation. To this end, the course offers both a theoretical and practical approach and presents the key concepts and tools behind the arts of diplomacy and negotiation. It analyzes the links between diplomacy and negotiation as well as the main challenges attached to traditional and modern diplomatic practices; discusses the impacts of globalization on the evolution of diplomatic practices and more specifically the impact of culture on international negotiation; identifies the main tools and strategies for successful negotiations: therefore, the course also serves as an introduction to communication techniques. It provides an opportunity to practice all these tools and concepts during workshop sessions, exchange in group debates, crisis and negotiation simulations. The course is designed to be very interactive: students are expected to actively participate in class and their communication skills will be assessed.

This course is designed for students wishing to clarify and advance their career goals through a 16-week internship in Thailand. It provides a structured learning environment to help students make the most of their internship experience. While there are no regularly scheduled class meetings, internships are conducted under the close academic supervision of the Social Policy & Development department at Thammasat University. An assigned internship coordinator provides oversight and guidance for the duration of the internship. The course requires a minimum of 128 total work hours. To facilitate the completion of the internship and maximize skill acquisition, students are required to work at least one full day per week at their internships. Graded Pass/No pass only.