Political Science

This course examines the intersection of international relations and global health. It introduces students to various issues and topics in global health. Questions include: What are the health threats and opportunities that arise with globalization? Who are the main actors and what are the major institutions influencing processes of global health governance? How do existing institutional arrangements function in responding to global health challenges? To engage comprehensive examination of these key issues, the course includes International Relations concepts, such as power, legitimacy, soft vs hard law, regime, and normative change.

In this course, students explore some of the most important texts in the history of western political philosophy, focusing on the work of seven major political thinkers. Students study the broad contours of modern political thought from the 17th to the 20th. Students learn to analyze philosophical arguments, situate the texts within their historical contexts, engage in close textual reading, and understand the wider themes and concepts that shape modern political thought.

.This course offers an overview of modern Japanese political history, focusing on Japan’s domestic and foreign challenges from the late 19th century to the postwar era. It examines key shifts between democratization and militarization, and between unilateralism and multilateralism, highlighting the interplay between domestic politics and diplomacy. Topics include nation-state building, the rise and fall of party politics, Japan’s imperial ambitions, and postwar political developments. The course aims to deepen students’ critical understanding of Japan’s historical trajectory and its impact on Asia.

What impact does war have on changing societal norms, such as sexual behaviour and the roles and status of women? How have societies altered the conduct of war, through the mobilization of resources or the persecution of minorities, for example? This course addresses these questions, exploring the dynamic relationship between culture, conflict and change to fully explore people at war. Through both a thematic and case study approach, it draws on a wide range of historic and contemporary conflicts to investigate the destructive and transformative power of conflict on social, cultural, and political life, as well as the ways that societies shape the motives, methods, and constraints of conflict. 

This course explores the rise and decline of democracy since the “third wave” of transitions in the late 20th century. It examines the causes of democratic backsliding, the resilience of democratic institutions, and strategies of resistance against authoritarianism. The course analyzes regime dynamics, civil society roles, and alternative authoritarian models shaping global politics today.

In this course, students compare and analyze European politics, mapping changes and identifying constants. Instead of taking a country-by-country approach, students address key themes that shape politics in general and Europe in particular. Students explore key comparative questions about governance across Europe, including institutions of politics and how society and politics interacts.

This course explores conceptual, theoretical, and accumulated knowledge of international security and conflict studies. It focuses on:

• The rise of emerging powers: How do emerging powers  change the international security order?
• Asymmetrical threats: terrorism and insurgency activities;
• Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons; and,
• Emerging importance of new domains (space and cyberspace).  

This course is mainly divided into two phases.  The first phase deals with contemporary nature of intra- and international conflicts; observing conceptual and empirical aspects of today’s conflict and discussing case studies in Asia, Middle East, and Africa as regions; and terrorism, proliferation of weapons, and ethnic and religious tensions as issue areas.  The second phase deals with security policy and strategy, investigating phase-dynamics approach (peacetime management, crisis management, deterrence, intervention, post-conflict operations) to security policy, specific sets of policy in each phase, then to evaluating the actual cases.

This course helps students understand the general history and the principal concepts and debates in International Relations. The first half of the course critically examines contemporary international history providing students the historical background and context for the issues that they study on the second half of the course and in future years. The second part of the course draws on themes from the first term and explores them through an examination of key concepts in International Relations: sovereignty, intervention, nationalism, identity, power, international institutions, human rights, globalization and new wars. The emphasis of the course is on understanding and questioning the concepts as well as exploring their use discussing key debates in global politics.

This course offers a broad survey on Modern European political, intellectual, social, and cultural history, from the end of the 18th century to the aftermath of the Cold War. The topics covered include the age of Revolutions (the French Revolution and its consequences, the Napoleonic era, the Industrial Revolution), the age of Nationalism, the age of Imperialism and Colonialism, World War I and II and the Cold War.

This course is designed to provide a thorough overview of Critical Security Studies. It introduces and discusses theoretical perspectives and research objects at the heart of this burgeoning academic field. In doing so, the course supports a reflexive approach to the transformation of security, its related concepts and their empirical applications in close connection with key issues such as development, environment, migration, citizenship, and finance. It is organized in two main sections: the first section looks at the variety of theoretical perspectives in critical security studies; the second section introduces students to ongoing critical security research objects.