Political Science

This course explores Japan’s evolving relationship with the world by examining its historical nation-building, post–World War II reconstruction, and contemporary foreign policy challenges. Through analyses of regional relations, national security issues, and Japan’s growing international role — especially in the context of China and the United States — students gain a deeper understanding of how Japan seeks to maintain autonomy and shape its place in global affairs.

This course interrogates the significance of climate change for International Relations as a discipline and for international relations as a set of global political practices. The course explores the relationship between natural science and international relations, and what this means for making sense of the international politics of the environment. It examines the implications of climate change through several lenses including international theory, international institutions and governance, conflict, negotiations and communications, social movements and protest, inequality and justice, and discourses of crisis. The course seeks to facilitate student independence in exploring the international relations of climate change, as well as transferable writing skills, through the creation of a blog post on one of the security implications of climate change and developing an essay on any single climatic process and its implications for international relations. 

This course covers major issues and historical backgrounds of contemporary East Asian politics, with a particular focus on Northeast Asia.  

Students explore regional politics and the unique development paths and key issues shaping East Asia today. Upon completion of the course, students may be better prepared for careers in East Asia-related fields, including government, diplomacy, defense, the private sector, and academia.  

The course covers a range of topics, including the early 20th-century historical background, postwar decolonization, political transformation and democratization in East Asia, China’s assertive foreign policy and its challenges to the current regional order, the reemergence of nationalism and historical disputes, the US–China rivalry and its regional impact, and territorial disputes in East Asia. 

This course is structured in three parts. First, it introduces the key concepts, structures, and historical backgrounds that underpin contemporary East Asian dynamics. Second, it examines various issues and case studies related to the politics, defense, and diplomacy of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China, as well as their bilateral and multilateral relations. Third, it explores the future of East Asia in terms of regional power dynamics. Students are expected to develop a foundational yet comprehensive understanding of contemporary East Asian power dynamics, the policies of major countries (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China), and their historical contexts.  

Additionally, the course addresses the historical roots of current territorial and diplomatic disputes among major East Asian powers, political transformations in East Asian democracies, and China’s assertive challenge to the existing regional order. Through this course, students develop the ability to form their own perspectives on East Asian regional dynamics and political systems, as well as their implications for both East Asia and global politics. 

This course introduces the nature and function of international, universal, and regional organizations, and the political, economic and social reality in which they are framed. Students learn legal terminology in the field of international organizations and study legal sources (statutory, jurisprudential and doctrinal) to be able to identify the characteristic features of an international organization, understand the scope of its legal status in domestic legal systems and in the international legal system, and recognize its distinct nature.

Public administration in Hong Kong is shaped by its colonial legacies and by the Hong Kong government’s position as a local government of the People’s Republic of China. Since 2020, authorities have centralized power over Hong Kong and within Hong Kong to implement executive-led government. Political appointees and civil servants play critical roles in the policy process, but they co-produce most policy with civil society. This course examines the role of civic engagement and elite cooptation in the policy process. The course combines extensive reviews of scholarly research on Hong Kong with lectures (including guest lectures), discussion, and a group project that helps expand the collection of articles about public 102 administration in Hong Kong on Wikipedia.

This course covers topics including the evolution of modern China's political and economic system, the Chinese state in comparative perspective, and issues and problems of China's political and economic development. Upon successful completion of this course students should be able to explain the Chinese political system and state administration, explain the characteristics of China's socialist market economy, analyze the role of the Communist Party of China, critically assess different theoretical approaches used in current research on modern China, and develop and present individual research interests on China's political system.

Political leaders use architecture to convey power, to express political ideas, and to influence how people think and act. In twentieth-century Europe, political ideologies including fascism, communism, colonialism, and democracy influenced the creation of new buildings and cities. This course explores those ideologies through the spaces that they produced, and a selection of examples spanning between Hitler’s plans to transform Berlin to public swimming pools in post-war Britain. Under the banner of democracy, it also explores how forces within Irish politics impacted the Dublin cityscape. This is a history of modern Europe told through the mark left by political actors upon architecture and cities. This same course exists as a 5-credit option - UCEAP Course 133A.

This course focuses on the politics of the contemporary Arab world in its three regional dimensions: the Maghreb, the Mashreq, and the Persian Gulf. Emphasis is placed on describing the main political and ideological trends and the power dynamics in inter-Arab relations. 

This course examines nationality and immigration law within the Spanish legal system and the means of acquiring, retaining, losing, and recovering Spanish nationality and the administrative status of non-nationals. Topics include the rise in international migratory movements, its impact on Spain as a migration destination, and the legal framework of the rights of both citizens and non-citizens in Spain.

This course focuses on the surprisingly long history of facts and truths in the public sphere. Study how politicians and philosophers devised ways to counter populism without touching the vital democratic principles of freedom of speech or the right to vote.  In this course, conduct a research project that explores the intricate relationship between press (media) and politics through analyzing the power of rumor, researching how representative political systems in the past have tried to avert the dangers of fake news and information, and researching news media in all ages in digitized collections across the globe or in the physical archives in The Netherlands. The course answers questions such as what is public opinion? Where and when does it take shape? If freedom of speech is a necessary condition for representative democratic systems, does it automatically breed populism? Did people in the past assess the information that they had to base their political opinions on differently than we do today? The course has entry requirements.