Political Science

In 2017 for the first time since World War II, a right-wing populist party entered the German Bundestag. What came as a massive shock to many political observers in Germany, was merely the expression of a trend stretching across industrialized countries for a couple of decades now: the return of the illiberal right. This course tries to find explanations for the success of the AfD and other right-wing movements or parties, with a specific focus on Germany and the East-West divide that less than 35 years ago still cut Europe and Germany in two halves. This looks for answers to questions such as: Why do people vote for right-wing populist parties? What lesson can the history of right-wing extremism offer for contemporary politics? Can the experience of forceful and rapid change among citizens of formerly Communist states explain the prominence of Illiberalism in Eastern Germany and, potentially, beyond? The course is divided into three parts, which deal with the past, present and future of Illiberalism respectively. For each part, the course undertakes an excursion within Berlin and discuss a Berlin-based movie to demonstrate how the traces of Illiberalism can be found throughout the city.

Contemporary International Relations refers to the span of time from about 70 years after the end of the Second World War to the present, that is, from 1945 to 2016. From the perspective of the history of international relations, this course introduces the evolution of international relations since World War II through the comprehensive use of a variety of materials, including declassified government archives. This course is divided into two parts, the Cold War and the post-Cold War, marked by the disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991. In terms of content, it involves three aspects: the evolution of great power relations characterized by the "Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union; the regional integration process with the EU as the main representative; the evolution of international mechanisms with global governance as the main expression.

The course provides a broad overview of how citizens, politicians, and the media interact across Western democracies during both electoral and governing periods. While the course covers key aspects of political communication in the United Kingdom, the focus is mostly on the differences that exist in media-politics relationships across the Western world.

Why and how do resource use and other human footprints generate international governance challenges – and in what ways does the globalization of the world economy affect such challenges? How important are international institutions for the management of the world's petroleum resources? What is meant by ‘regime effectiveness’ – and what conditions can explain success or failure in efforts to establish or strengthen international cooperative arrangements on natural resources and the environment? This course offers an introduction to important characteristics of international environmental and resource politics and provides tools for explaining differences in international negotiation processes and their outputs, outcomes and impacts. The roles and significance of international institutions are central, with special attention to processes of formation, change and interplay as well as various conditions that can affect their operation and effectiveness. The course provides insight into the roles transnational companies and environmental organizations play in international environmental and resource negotiations and how the positions and influences of main actors such as the USA, the EU, and China are affected by domestic political and economic conditions. The course demonstrates how broader scholarly debates, like those between realists, liberalists, and constructivists, can illuminate processes and outcomes in international environmental and resource politics.

In this course, students read works on German democracy written in American perspective. Students alternate between theoretical texts and those which cover pivotal moments in German history: the revolution of 1848, the institution of democracy in the German Empire, its suspension under Hitler, and the fate of democracy in Germany divided.