Political Science

This course provides an overview of the European Union (history, institutions, and evolution) and discusses the EU on the global stage including geopolitical challenges, politics, and strategic autonomy. It delves into the EU migration and asylum policy as well as the digital future of Europe. This course discusses industry and defense and how they shape an industrial policy for Europe's security. Lastly, it explores the EU climate policy, its implementation, and challenges.

The course provides students with a basic knowledge of key concepts of administrative law (public entity/body, administrative act/action, public contracts) and market regulation tools, taking into account the switch from a pure national model of market regulation to a mixed model of supranational public regulation. At the end of the course students are able to understand how market regulation affects the public/private relations and how public and private law instruments are used by to achieve policy goals. The course provides students with an in-depth understanding of the legal framework and principles governing global administrative law and market regulation. It describes the evolution of global administrative law and explains key concepts of administrative law, then focusing on the regulatory environment that influences market operations.

Supranational and international institutions, with a specific focus on the WTO, are examined and the relevance of market regulation in the relationship between private and public is discussed, is examined, and the relevance of market regulation in the relationship between private and public is discussed. Topics include: public body; administrative act/action; judicial review of administrative decisions; institutional structures focusing on the WTO and regulatory authorities; tariffs and customs regulations; antidumping, countervailing duties, subsidies; products safety regulations and environmental restrictions (SPS and TBT Agreements); TRIPS; labor standards and human rights; and exceptions art. 

This course offers an in-depth empirical analysis of key issues in contemporary world politics. It examines challenges of international cooperation in response to various growing global issues in the 21st century. Topics include: China and US relations; Post-Soviet Russia and the reconfiguration of Eurasian geopolitics; the European Union and the challenges of a common foreign and security policy.  

This course examines the foreign relations between the People’s Republic of China’s and the Third World during the Cold War. The course will place a particular emphasis on the following topics: China’s position in the Cold War, the role of ideology, decolonization and the response of the Cold War powers, and the political economy of the Third World during the Cold War. A particular emphasis will be placed on Sino-African relations and less so on Latin America.

This course is an introduction to race and colonial studies. Why do ideas about race feature in social relations today? What structures of knowledge do ideas about racial difference rely upon? How do historical projects of race-making come to be refashioned in contemporary social life? This course engages with such questions by examining the provenance of race and its defining role in the formation of colonial modernity. It provides an overview of key theoretical approaches and methodological debates in the study of race, racism, and colonial formations across various disciplines and intersecting sites of modern power.

This course introduces students to the forces that made, upheld, and unmade empires in modern global history (c. 1780-present). The course approaches empires in a global historical perspective, looking at them as frameworks of power and resistance, and identifying connections and comparisons. Transformations in world order is a central concern. The course begins with imperial expansion, resistance and independence movements during the global period of revolution and global war in the 1780s. It traces the growth and consolidation of formal and informal empire through conquest and trade in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Pacific, examining how changing conceptions of identity, race, nation, and belonging intersected with modes of political and economic power. The course also examines the impact of European imperial expansion on the empires of Asia and their transition from empire to nation-state in the international society of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

This course introduces students to the study of the relationship between religion and politics. The course is structured around key research areas in the field such as the conditions under which societies or the institutions that govern them become secularized, the emergence and persistence of the religious-secular divide as a salient political cleavage, the formation and electoral performance of religious parties, the relationship between religion and regime type, the potential implications of religious doctrines for public policy and economic outcomes, the causes of religious violence, as well as the historical and contemporary role of religion in the international sphere.

This course examines the foundations of the modern Human Rights regime, and address important controversies for Human Rights, including, accusations of Western-Centrism; protections for gender and sexuality; and issues of self-determination.

This course is an introduction to political geography. Topics covered include power and states, nationalism, collective mobilization and social movements, elections, and democratization.