Political Science

This course explores the relationship between the police, the judicial system, and policy makers in London. Students learn the history of the police force in the UK and the developments that have formed the Metropolitan Police in London today. Topics covered include corruption, race relations, policing major demonstrations and riots, and the impact of government policy on policing. Students explore the politics behind decisions and the framework of the law.

The course explores development and social change in and from the Global South. The course adopts a critical political economy perspective to trace the recent history, politics, and power relations which, following the 1980s debt crisis, saw the Global South integrated into neoliberal globalization. The course starts by locating the globalization project in the Global South and provides two further weeks of critical theory introducing students to the economic and political processes that makes development in the Global South a profoundly unequal, gendered, and racialized project. 

Students pursue an area of study in their major which is not available in the normal framework of the Undergraduate Study Abroad Program. Applicants for such study are expected to develop a sound rationale for their individual research project which requires faculty guidance and must reflect an intensive research project. This course is supervised one hour weekly for the duration of the 11 week semester.

This course analyzes the success of development strategies in relation to when and where they were used throughout Africa. It studies the factors contributing to why certain development strategies were chosen and under what circumstances, as well as the factors that impacted the success of each of these strategies. It focuses on the main approaches to development including neo-liberal, import substitution industrialization, export- and state-led industrialization, basic needs, ERP/SAPs, HIPC, and African-based strategies from the Lagos Plan to NEPAD.

This course provides an introduction to the methods of inquiry that are appropriate to the study of politics. While the material introduces fundamental topics in research design and choice of methods that are relevant to both quantitative and qualitative research, this course emphasizes quantitative methods and provides an introduction to basic data analysis. 

This course examines major trends and issues in international relations of East Asia. Instead of providing a comprehensive survey of the history, culture, and national policies of countries in the region, it mainly addresses four issues in the course: What are major trends in regional IR? What is the source of conflict in the region? What are the common interests that unite peoples and states of East Asia? How does the region organize itself? It explains dynamics and patterns of regional international relations in a broad geopolitical and geoeconomic context. Topics in discussion include major powers’ role in the region, the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, ASEAN, Southeastern Asia and regional institution-building.

This course explores major political ideas and concepts from the modern Western tradition. Key political constructs such as power, authority, justice, liberty and democracy are examined in intellectual and historical context. Reading Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan and John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, among other influential writings, students are exposed to the broader themes and ideas that have shaped political life in the West since 1600.