Political Science

This course seeks to engage with feminist global political economy and feminist security studies scholarship to offer students a more nuanced account of war and security markets.  

This course examines Korean development and capitalism from the political economy perspective, exploring how Korean capitalism emerged, what pathway it has taken, and how it will continue to evolve. This course covers various topics in the international and domestic political economy such as economic growth, culture and network, international investment and trade, democratization, globalization, the currency crisis in 1997 and the economic crash of 2008, institutional change and economic reform, restoring democracy in 2016-2017, global pandemic, social justice, and fairness. The main focus is on the roles and interests of governments, businesses, civil society, and foreign investors.

In Germany, the field of Intelligence Studies is marginalized in academic curricula. This seminar tries to fill the gap and introduces students to the emerging and complex field of Intelligence Studies. Students will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the academic field and about its main theoretical debates. Emphasis will be put on the development of theories of international intelligence relations. One session will reflect on the methods and methodology in intelligence studies. Students will study the historical origins of intelligence agencies in the Middle East, especially within the Cold War context, and their role up until today (for example, OSINT + AI). Further, students will explore diverse themes such as covert action campaigns, the institutions’ highly bureaucratic set-up and their exercise of repression and violence. Within the course of the seminar, we will give a broad overview of several Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. We will highlight two examples: Iraqi and Syrian intelligence agencies. The examples will serve to illustrate the aforementioned themes. Further, students will be familiarized with the involvement of Western intelligence agencies in the Middle East, with a focus on both Germany's during the Cold War: German foreign intelligence (BND), East German State Security (MfS). Additionally, we will look at the new trends in Intelligence Studies and, for instance, investigate how intelligence is portrayed in literature and films.

This course considers how European integration has affected European citizens, their identities, their resistances, and collective representations. It analyzes the construction of the European Union as a community and as a political order with particular emphasis on its social and political dimensions. To understand the reactions of ordinary citizens towards European integration, and in addition to the existing explanatory strands focusing on interests and institutions, the political sociology of the EU questions the weight of socio-political variables that hinder or favor the Europeanization of European societies. Topics under scrutiny include: the modes of interaction between elites and masses at the EU level; citizen identifications' levels and models to understand the attitudes of citizens towards European integration; the process of (de-)politicization of European integration; and the impact of Europeanization (mainly in terms of public policies) on European public opinion. 

This course examines transitional justice measures implemented in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to face the grave human rights violations committed during the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s, and their relationship with the transition to democracy in these countries between 1983 and 2014. 

This course analyzes how policy making and artificial intelligence may be intertwined in a dynamic that has major impacts on the definition of public service itself. It investigates the integration of artificial intelligence related tools: how they are likely to affect policy making processes, whether they will change the relationship between the administration and citizens, and if they enable the delivery of new public services. The course emphasizes the adoption of artificial intelligence in a historical context of the progressive adoption of technologies, from traditional bureaucracies to essentially digital governance and e-bureaucratic forms. It focuses on the study of major artificial intelligence technologies and their potential uses, the value of data as a resource and product of administrations, as well as data ethics. The course analyzes use cases of artificial intelligence adoption in major policies such as health, education, bureaucracies, security, and climate change mitigation in the context of their implementation, from international to citizen-related approaches. It critically assesses the relationship between public-based policies and the creation of public value; the potential leverages, risks, or barriers; and the geopolitics of public artificial intelligence. Finally, the course develops a critical approach on how not only public agents, but also citizens, have major roles to play in the adoption of these technologies.

This course analyzes Kim Jong Un’s summit diplomacy with South Korea and the United States as an approach to simultaneously pursue security and economic development. North Korea`s nuclear diplomacy with regard to the United States will be the core part of this course. The first half of the course focuses on Kremlinology, leadership analysis, and the succession of the Kim dynasty. In the latter half, historical reviews on North Korea`s foreign policy during the Cold War period as well as post-Cold War period will demonstrate how North Korea`s threat perception influences its provocative foreign policy. Then, the course moves to discuss influences of surrounding countries, namely, China, Japan, and Russia. Lastly, class discussions will be held on the future of North Korea, unification, and inter-Korean relations.

This course focuses on ethical and philosophical approaches to democracy. It introduces students to major theories of democracy, as well as major critiques of democracy. 

The course familiarizes students with theoretical perspectives that explain the emergence and change of modern welfare states. To this end, the course typically outlines the development of European welfare states, and discusses the emergence of different types of welfare states. The course usually covers core theoretical approaches to understand welfare state politics, which may include economic models of inequality and redistribution, party politics and public opinion, the influence of political institutions, and the role of immigration, race, and gender. The course may also include case studies of specific policy fields or social policy reforms, such as the Universal Credit reforms in the United Kingdom. Students learn a set of theoretical tools that help them understand past, present, and future debates about social policy and the welfare state, and evaluate social policies in a comparative perspective.

This course introduces the study of educational inequality and education policy. It begins by reviewing the main goals, achievements, and outstanding challenges in education policy at the beginning of the 21st century. Specifically, it takes a historical perspective to review the progress made with respect to providing education to large parts of the world's population and with respect to reducing gender inequality in education. The course then turns to one key policy challenge of the early 21st century: reducing the inequalities in education between individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds. It examines the social processes that may account for these educational inequalities and discusses whether and how different policies can address them.