Political Science

The course provides students with a theoretically-grounded understanding of the role of the European Union as an international actor. Using theories of international relations, European integration and Foreign Policy Analysis, it analyzse and evaluate the EU’s evolving external identity and policy capabilities across a range of external relations, including membership conditionality, trade and development, international crime and terrorism, asylum and immigration, foreign, security and defense policy, and democracy and human rights promotion. The course then examines the nature of key bilateral relationships between the EU and selected countries (US, Russia, and China) and regions (former colonies, regional groups), explaining the extent to which they have been institutionalized and the challenges that define them. It will end by assessing what sort of international actor the EU ‘is’ and ‘wants to be’ – namely civilian, normative or military – and evaluating the likelihood of the EU emerging as a global superpower in the future.

This course offers an exploration of the histories, theories and practices of democracy. It provides students with a systematic overview of the complex discourses on democracy today. What is democracy? Where does the idea of democracy come from? Has the idea one or many origins? Can democracy be justified, and if so, on what grounds? What are the limits of democracy? These, and many more, questions lie at the heart of democratic theory and of this course.

This course examines some fundamental questions about the nature of war and conflicts in international politics. It covers the following topics: whether war is part of human nature or a social invention; if democracies are less prone to fight than authoritarian regimes; whether war is an unavoidable consequence of anarchy, and if so, the role of human agency; what factors contribute to conflict among nations and how these factors have changed over time; if the nuclear shadow is back in our contemporary international security; has the window of humanitarian operations been closed; and whether we can speak of “new wars” in the 21st century. The course uses an interdisciplinary perspective, incorporating insights from political science, anthropology, psychology, and history to better understand our current international environment.

This course provides an introduction to the study of International Political Economy (IPE). IPE is a field of research that combines the study of politics and economics, exploring both domestic and international factors that impact preferences, behaviours, and policies relating to economic globalisation. The course will cover major topics of inquiry within IPE such as the politics and policies relating to international trade, international investment, and international finance. Students will be introduced to theoretical and empirical research analysing each topic covered. By the end of the term, you should have a firm understanding of IPE as a discipline, including ways in which the field’s insights can inform policy-making.

This course educates students on the history, process, and sources of American foreign policy. The course is divided into four sections. The first section focuses on the field of foreign policy analysis as a subfield in International Relations. An overview of the various analytical perspectives on U.S. foreign policy is covered. This first section also considers the importance of examining American foreign policy in today's world. Section two concentrates on the history of U.S. foreign policy, covering such events as the Founding of the United States, World War I, the inter-war years, World War II, the making of a Superpower, the Cold War, the Post-Cold War world, September 11th, and ending with recent world events, such as the Iraq War and the Global War on Terror. Part three examines the politics and the policy-making process of American foreign policy. Topics for discussion in this section include the institutions involved in the policy-making process, such as the President, various bureaucracies like the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the CIA, plus Congress and the Courts. This section also considers the role the American public plays in the process of making U.S. foreign policy. The final part of this course studies the instruments used to implement American Foreign Policy. This section includes a discussion of America's use of open or diplomatic instruments, secret instruments, economic instruments, and also its military instruments. This final section ends with a task that discusses the future of American Foreign Policy. Prerequisites for this course include an introductory international relations or political science course and at least one intermediate-level social science course.