Political Science

This course examines the role of the City of London in the broader context of social, political, and economic transformations. 

This course provides students with an introduction to central themes and concepts in Sociology, and applies them to particular cases. Students learn what is distinctive about a sociological imagination of contemporary and historical concerns and helps them see how our individual lives are connected to global developments such as climate change, migration, and the advancement of digital technology. Students are also introduced to how class, gender, race, identity, and religion organize relations in an era of globalization. 

This course introduces students to the basic concepts and issues in contemporary political economy, with a particular focus on the political economy of the contemporary social democratic state. The course introduces students to the concepts of economic analysis and the relevance of these concepts to the study of government and politics. It provide students with an understanding of the problems of market failure and government failure and provides a scholarly framework to comparatively evaluate these problems. It provides students with a familiarity with a number of classic and key contemporary readings in political economy. 

States spend a great deal of time and effort justifying their actions with law, yet international relations scholars have often doubted international law's ability to shape state behavior. This course examines this paradox by introducing the major debates about the politics of international law. These perspectives are applied to the history of international organizations and (legal) order since 1919, including the development of collective security and humanitarianism at the League of Nations and United Nations., particularly since the creation of the United Nations in 1945.

This course provides an overview of the British political system in theory and in practice. Students learn about the key British institutional structures such as the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Civil Service, and Parliament. They learn about key areas of change: the development of devolution, nationalist movements, and parliamentary reform. The course provides an insight into the party and electoral systems. It also considers how the British political system relates with the outside world, including the aftermath of the vote to leave the European Union of June 2016. Students combine empirical study with the application of a variety of theoretical approaches.