Political Science

*This course has been offered as an optional summer intensive course at Hitotsubashi, meaning that the course meets for only one week after the UCEAP program end dates. 

This course is designed to provide students with a fundamental understanding of international political theories while engaging them in practical analysis of political scenarios using data science methodologies. While no prior knowledge of data science is required, a certain level of information literacy is expected to assimilate and interpret data-driven insights effectively.

This course provides fundamental knowledge of media history in Japan and Asia from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, discussing the historical process of the transformation of relations between media, governments and peoples. The focus is to promote historical understanding and analysis of media development with influences in political process.

The European Union is an important actor when it comes to law-making. While this often appears to be very abstract, it does impact our lives as European citizens very much, also on the national level. In 2021, the European Commission opened a series of citizen-led debates, the Conference on the Future of Europe. These meetings, taking place in various formats, allowed citizens from all over Europe to share their ideas and provide suggestions on how to improve their future in Europe. This seminar will offer students the opportunity to investigate this process more closely, its results, achievements and implications for all inhabitants of European member states. Connecting them in a better was with EU institutions is crucial considering that European elections will take place in May 2024 and that Eurosceptical voices are rising in many European societies. At the end of the seminar, students will have fostered their background on theoretical perspectives to critically analyze Europeanization, integration and multi-level governance, including institutional, feminist and sociological approaches.

Students complete a total of 100-120 hours of research and meet regularly with an advisor to complete an academically rigorous, ethically sound, and culturally appropriate research project and final research paper. The course provides an opportunity to conduct ethical research; analyze primary and secondary source materials; extrapolate relevant content; make contributions to current research; exchange ideas with professionals in prospective fields; develop a scholarly research paper with a defensible argument, supported by evidence and accurate citations; and suggest additional research to be conducted in prospective fields. The research project must be approved by the CIEE Center Director and the student's home school IRB committee. Assessment is based on a research paper that evidences the proposed project, including a literature review, an explanation of the methodology, and suggestions for future research. In addition, students present their findings in a presentation to a panel of academics for feedback and keep a well-documented journal of field notes and findings. 

This course offers a study of the place that Latin America and the Caribbean occupies in international dynamics, its geopolitical and geostrategic position, the importance of its natural resources, the processes of interventionism by the U.S.A., among other mechanisms of integration and international relations.
 

To understand contemporary international society in the wave of globalization, it is no longer enough to follow behavior and interaction of governments. Other actors, such as NGOs, supranational organizations, migrant or indigenous communities, as well as other cultural entities including minorities and individuals, have transnational networks and influences. After defining globalization and methodology, the course sheds light on transnational influence of international migration and cultural exchanges through colonization, decolonization, and structural changes of postwar international politics. The latter half analyzes reasons and solutions for contemporary issues concerning international migration. This course focuses on the Asia-Pacific region with examples from former British colonies and Japanese policies. 

The course focuses on the principal elements of EU constitutional law, namely: sources of EU law, EU competences, institutions, law-making procedures, judicial procedures, implementation of EU law in the Member States, and the essential aspects of the main EU policies. The course helps develop the ability to analyze the main implications of the EU institutional structure and to determine the overall effects of the law into the municipal legal orders of the Member States; and to illustrate the main trends of the interplay between the Union and its Member States (both internally and on the international scene).

This course introduces students to the inter-disciplinary field of peace and conflict studies, and the range of practices that have developed to make peace in different parts of the world. These include international peacekeeping, mediation, peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and peace formation, among others. In particular, the unit sets such practices in the context of the key political science and international relations’ dynamics of power, international and state design, rights, resistance, and socio-political agency. It does so in the context of inter-disciplinary, multi-methodological, approaches, as well as a wide range of empirical case studies. The course outlines insights from a range of disciplines (social psychology, economy, anthropology, philosophy, sociology and geography) and places them in the context of insights from different conflict-affected regions around the world where various methods associated with peace processes have been applied.  

This course, together with International Relations (I) in the autumn semester, provides an overview of International Relations for political science majors and other interested students. The course aims to provide the following: a foundation in the study of international relations; an ability to apply international relations theory to discuss real-world politics; an overview of global politics; the ability to read academic texts in English, and oral and written communication skills in the English language.