Political Science

This course introduces, discusses and works with the key concepts, wide-ranging debates and on-going processes in the realm of international security. It revisits classic security issues and explores newer ones – from terrorism and pandemics – to highlight continuities and discontinuities in international security. The course pays special attention to the proliferation of the types of actors, sectors, rationales and technologies now associated with security practices. It sees that these developments have consequences as they further cut across and reconfigure well-known divides between internal and external security concerns, between policing and military operations, and between public and private spheres to name a few. In order to address these questions, among others, the course is organized in two sections, with weekly debates as a common thread. The first section looks at both the diversity of international security institutions and theoretical foundations of security studies. The second section confronts new international security issues and related developments.

British living standards have stagnated for almost fifteen years, and on present trends will be the same as Poland's by 2030. What has gone "wrong" with the quality of Government in Britain? What errors and mistakes have its governments made? What lessons can be learned for other nations? Is relative British decline reversible? This interdisciplinary course draws on intellectual traditions in history, political science, economic history and economics to explore how the Academy explains the perpetual British crisis, drawing on the course leader's research in modern British history and politics at the University of Oxford. Its method is case study-based, beginning with the First World War (the conceptual, introductory topic) and passing through other "failures" of the British State since 1914, including Appeasement; the Suez Crisis; Concorde, the Community Charge (the "Poll Tax"); Rail Privatization; the Iraq War; and the Great Financial Crisis of 2007/8. An overview of "public policy failure" literature is integral to the course.

The course begins with a theoretical review of the concepts of nationalism and communism – the predominant ideological concepts of twentieth-century Central Europe, i.e. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. This is followed by study of the origins, development, and present-day heritage of nationalism and communism in the region. The topics described and problematized include concrete manifestations of nationalism and communism in Central Europe, such as the creation of new nation states after World War I, the introduction of communist regimes after 1945 and the impact of these regimes on political, economic, social and cultural development. The course is concluded with a general discussion of the heritage and consequences of nationalism and communism in present-day Central Europe.

The course tackles a highly topical issue - nationalism and its relationship to gender - enabling students to critically engage with current public debates on the global surge of right-wing populist forces and, more specifically, with recent gendered developments in anti-immigration politics in European societies. The course engages with feminist theories of nationalism, which have conceptualized the ways in which women are mobilized by nationalist movements as well as the relationship between feminisms and nationalisms across different contexts including Europe, the Americas, and Asia.