Political Science

This course explores the key problems that the oceans are contemporarily facing and how global governors, law enforcement agencies, and other actors intend to address them. The course is organized in three blocks. In the first part, it revisits the contemporary foundations of ocean governance, including international organizations and the law of the sea. It then revisits the key contemporary ocean discourses. In part two, the course investigates major issues on the ocean agenda, such as shipping, fishing, piracy, smuggling, or deep seabed mining and how international actors address them. Following an independent writing period, the course concludes with a workshop where case studies are presented. The course is assessed on the basis of participation and the independent project.

This course offers a study of the theory of social movements including features of social movements and key components for the emergence and development of social movements. It examines the history of social movements in three periods: 19th and 20th centuries (up to the 1960s); 1960s-1980s; 1990 to present. Finally, this course discusses specific social movements such as labor, racial and cultural rights, nationalism, feminism, environmentalism, LGBT, etc. 

This course examines the impact of religion, culture, and identity on global politics. International Relations (IR) conventionally refers to relations between sovereign states in an anarchic world. The sovereign state is assumed to be the natural political community of humankind and to command the allegiance of those subject to its rule. The culture, identity and religion of states are not conventionally considered relevant to how states interact with other states.  

However, since the events of September 11, 2001 (9/11), there has been renewed interest in culture, religion, and identity in global politics. The resultant US-led ‘War on Terror’ have reinforced the importance of religion to collective identities and rekindled the specter of a ‘clash of civilizations’ (Huntington 1996) pitting a Judeo-Christian West against a resurgent Islamic civilization. Echoes of the clash of civilizations but can be found in the policies of the Israeli state under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu towards Gaza after the attacks of October 7, 2023, by Hamas and in the policies towards migrants from Muslim majority states in the US under (ex) President Donald Trump and in many European Union (EU) states. In India, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi views Islam as a threat to India's national identity based on "Hindutva" (Hindu values). Religion has moved from the margins of global politics to its center-stage.  

But did it really go away? The modern international order instituted in Westphalia in 1648 was itself an attempt to contain religious and cultural conflict in Europe. How will the increasing resurgence of the non-western world and China and India in particular transform global politics? Will the eclipse of the West lead to a 'post-western' (Shani 2008) or 'global' (Acharya 2014, Acharya and Buzan 2020) IR? And will it be 'post-secular'? (Habermas 2008, Mavelli and Petito 2012, Shani 2014)? 

The course discusses these questions with reference to a series of historical and contemporary case studies in global politics. These will include Human Rights in the EU, the global "War on Terror," and Religious Nationalism in South Asia. 

This course explores the factors that have triggered the evolution of environmental law and governance beyond state (since the development of the UN Sustainable Development Goals), and how the theoretical approaches of environmental studies developed in that context. Additionally, it reflects on how and to what extent environmental law and governance can be resilient and adaptive in facing global challenges.

This course introduces students to an approach to politics which emphasizes a global perspective. Postcolonial studies moves beyond both International Relations, which tends to discuss relations between states or great powers, and Third World Studies, which isolates certain parts of  the world and discusses them separately. In contrast to a view of the world as split into the industrialized, developed West and the underdeveloped or developing South, what this course explores is the relationships between these two areas, seeing them as mutually constitutive: they produce each other. It examines how they have come to be produced as distinct, and how these differences are perpetuated as well as resisted through practices of development, race, gender, and neocolonialism. 

This course dives into the complexity of globalization. It explores in-depth fundamental concepts such as multiculturalism, diversity, inter-culturalism, and superdiversity, highlighting their dynamic evolution and their profound impact on the business fabric. It offers a comprehensive analysis of disparities between countries, addressing crucial aspects such as political economy, country risks and diverse cultural and social heterogeneities. Class sessions introduce essential debates related to cultural construction, formal and informal institutions, economic development, and regional integrations.

This course is also referred to as International Dynamics and Cross-Cultural Negotiation: Global Environment.

Hannah Arendt's work has become a classic of modern political theory, drawing on themes of totalitarian rule, flight, and statelessness. In the context of current crises, such as the climate crisis and the global conflict between authoritarianism and liberal democracy, Arendt's concept of politics reemerges as relevant.  At the heart of this conflict is Russia's attack on Ukraine and Hamas's attack on Israel. Moscow has become the center of a new form of fascism. Russia's aggression against Ukraine is, alongside man-made climate change, the greatest catastrophe of our time. Why were we unable to recognize the signs of impending disaster? Everything is possible, even in this century. The elements and origins of totalitarian rule remain relevant. "The meaning of politics is freedom," wrote Hannah Arendt, a meaning that we have lost sight of in times of peace and prosperity. But what does the controversial term freedom actually mean? How is the distortion of freedom at the expense of people and nature connected to the destruction of a free society? Arendt's thoughts on freedom go beyond today's understanding of liberalism: individual freedom and community spirit are interdependent. Hannah Arendt allows us to rethink freedom.

This course investigates the economic and political causes and consequences of rising economic inequality. In doing so, it reviews and discusses both classic and recent work that seeks to provide answers to the questions: what is driving dramatic changes in economic inequality, and how does rising economic inequality affect democracy, politics, and political preferences? Specifically, the course discusses how the post-1980 era is different from the one that came before; how economic inequality affects the redistribution of income from the rich to the poor; how it transforms preferences for redistribution and taxation; whether rising inequality is a democratic problem; and whether it increases political inequality and the distribution of political power.

This course focuses on different ways of writing about politics through critical analysis. Topics include: the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns; power in suspense and the vertigo of democracy; the literary genres of political thought; philosophy of history and political philosophy; philosophy, politics, and religion in contemporary Spain; totalitarianism and democracy.

This course explores the normative dynamics of distributive justice. First, it explores the question of how much government ought to redistribute; then, it examines the currency and limits of distributive justice. Third, the course explores the question, "What does distributive justice look like across borders, and does tension exist between domestic and global distributive justice?"