International Politics BSc

Compulsory

• Conflict in the Modern World

  The module aims to provide an overview of how conflicts are studied - practically show how conflicts are measured, illustrate how conflicts occur, who are involved and how they stop.

• Introduction to American Politics

  This module introduces students to the institutions and processes of the modern American political system. It relates these institutions and processes to the diversity and complexity of turn-of-the-century U.S. society. Students learn about a range of methodologies and research skills relevant to the discipline of political science and begin to develop an interdisciplinary approach to understanding American politicians and voters.

• Introduction to Comparative Politics

  The module introduces students to the study of comparative politics and examine how the design of political institutions reflects competing visions of democracy and the implications this has for the processes that link citizens and policymakers. Students will focus on various aspects of the political system such as the differences between parliamentary and presidential systems, federal and unitary systems, electoral rules, party systems.

• Introduction to World Politics

  This module explains why we have war, peace and events in between in the international system. It examines concepts such as power, the environment, race and gender through lenses provided by International Relations, Comparative Politics and Geopolitics. It presents the latest methods to understand world politics at the global and ultra-local levels, and begins to provide tools to understand and analyse politics on the inter and intranational levels.

• Reason, Unreason, and the People: Political Thought from Hobbes to Freud

  This module introduces students to the main thinkers in political thought through the idea of reason and unreason, and asks: who are the people?

• Global London

  Through focusing on the concept of ‘Global London’, this module shows you how the social sciences can enable you to better understand their lived social environment. It introduces you to the techniques used by a range of disciplines within social science for gaining and validating knowledge of the social world and equips you with an academic skill base appropriate for university study. 

Compulsory

• From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World

  Preparing students for their final year dissertation begins in the second year in From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World. This module introduces students to a variety of analytical perspectives, research methods and techniques used in designing a research project in politics, international relations and international politics.

• Theories of International Relations

  This module introduces students to major theoretical approaches in the study of International Relations. These theories are employed to examine and understand contemporary actors in world politics such as states, international organisations, non-governmental actors as well as major issues and problems such as war, terrorism, climate change or nuclear proliferation. The aim is to give students a critical understanding of IR theory

Optional

• Climate Politics

  This module aims to enable students to attain a comprehensive understanding of key concepts and theories in the politics and political economy of climate change. It will provide students with resources to assist them in making informed judgments on a range of questions and debates.  

• Colonialism and Decolonization in Africa

  Africa is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented regions of the modern world. More often than not, its history is presented as a long series of human disasters, conflict, and disorder. However, Africa’s modern history is also one of resistance, and dynamic and creative responses to changing circumstances. This module examines Africa’s multifaceted history since about 1800.

• Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

  This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

• Comparative Electoral Systems

  This module aims to provide students with an understanding of political institutions and their impact through institutional analysis and modern institutional theory and explores single case studies, cross-case and cross-temporal comparisons. The module is divided in three parts; part one covers the theoretical approaches in new institutionalism, part two covers specific institutions and part three covers the influence of institutions on policy.

• Explaining Politics: Quantitative Political Science in Practice

  This modules aims to provide students with the skills to analyse political data and introduce methods for gathering and understanding data. Students will be encouraged to critically engage with the use of existing statistical data in political discourse and demonstrate the importance of quantitative analysis in domestic and international politics.

• Insurgency and Counter-insurgency

  This module examines the concept and development of insurgency and counter-insurgency from the classical period to the present, with an emphasis on the post-1789 period, especially the post-1945 wars of decolonisation. The module will conclude with the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ and current examples of insurgency and counter-insurgency. 

• Issues in American Politics

  This module familiarises students with contemporary issues on the American political agenda and demonstrates how politicians adapt policy stances and organisational and electoral strategies to accommodate change in political debate. Students are encouraged to adopt a more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to learning about American politics by examining social, moral, cultural and economic issues through a partisan political perspective.

• National Security Intelligence

  This module furnishes students with an overview to the field of national security intelligence. It also examines in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.

• Plato’s Republic

  This module involves a close reading of the foundatonal text in political thought: Plato's Republic.

• The State and Revolution

  This module provides students with an understanding of the historical emergence of two of the central concepts of modern political thought: the state and revolution, or the constitution of political order and the process of fundamental political transformation. We study the development of these concepts in some of the major events of political modernity, from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

• Unity and Cultural Diversity

  In this module students will gain an understanding of the texts of political theorists who focus on the issue of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity. Students will also gain an understanding of case studies that help to illuminate the difficulties of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity.

• The African American Struggle for Civil Rights, 1941-1992

  This module aims to examine the tactics and strategies employed by African Americans during the period 1941 to 1992, thereby helping students to gain a critical understanding of the roles of various groups within African American society in the pursuit of civil rights. 

Compulsory

• Advanced Research Skills for Politics and International Politics
• Dissertation in International Politics

Optional

• Advanced Applied Quantitative Methods

  This module will introduce methods suited to analysing complex political data as well as encouraging students to engage with and communicate the use of existing statistical data in the study of political science and in practical application in the political world.

• Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• Borders, Nations and Belonging in Modern Europe

  From Brexit to the wall between the USA and Mexico, borders are an important part of contemporary political debate. But where do our ideas about borders come from? Why do borders represent such powerful symbols? And who makes decisions about who can and cannot cross? This module explores these questions (and others) through the history of borders in modern Europe.

• Crisis and Critique

  The main aim of the module is to provide students with an understanding of some of the major socio-political crises in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the ways in which they have been understood by political theorists.

• Critical Perspectives on International Development

  You will gain a theoretical and historical overview of the changing relationship between anthropology and international development as you learn to understand the multiple ways in which anthropological research can enhance our understanding of contemporary policies and practices in international development. 

• European Union Politics: Problems and Prospects

  In this module students will discuss the development and functioning of the EU from its inception to the present day and be introduced to and learn to evaluate a range of theoretical perspectives on the EU’s creation, development and functioning. Students will examine a range of political problems in the European integration process, such as legitimacy, domestic and social impact, institutional and policy reform, enlargement, and future directions.

• Fascist Italy, 1919-1945: Revolution, Conflict and Collapse

  This module explores the rise and fall of Fascist Italy through political, socio-cultural, economic and military perspectives, among others.

• Marx and the Critique of Political Economy

  This module involves reading several key works by Marx, culminating in several weeks on Das Kapital

• Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the modern world-system

  This module will explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.

• Long Walk to Freedom: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid in South Africa

  Encouraging students to consider the extent to which the current situation in South Africa is a product of the colonial era, postcolonial circumstance, or Africa’s deeper past. It will familiarise students with the main developments in Africanist and South Africanist historiography and encourage students to study South African history from both an Afro-centric and European perspective.

• Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• Media, Politics & Power in America

  This module seeks to familiarise students with the contemporary issues agenda in American politics. It seeks to demonstrate the ways in which politicians and institutions adapt policy stances and organisational strategies to accommodate changes in the nature, content and direction of political debate.

• Parliamentary Studies

  This module aims to provide students with a detailed understanding of the UK Parliament by examining its structure, internal processes, and different committees, and to give students an understanding how to transfer the skills they have acquired when thinking about social, historical and political issues to practical ongoing issues that parliament is encountering in its committees or in legislation it is devising.

• Public Policy Analysis

  How do governments make public policy? Why do public policies vary across countries? How can public policy be analysed? These are the questions that will be explored in this module. The module will provide the participants with a strong theoretical foundation for analysing public policy and skills to communicate the analyses to non-academic stakeholders in public policy.

• South Asia – Societies and Development

  In this module we explore the theoretical and empirical debates surrounding the politics, society and economics of South Asia as a region and its place in the larger world. We focus in particular on countries of the Indian subcontinent that were former colonies of the British Raj – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

• Terrorism and Counterterrorism

  This module aims to address a series of empirical questions regarding the causes, conduct, and consequences of campaigns of terrorism in the modern world. It provides students with an understanding of a series of key debates in the social science literature.

• The Arab-Israeli Conflict

  We survey the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering three overarching themes: 1) Origins of the Conflict; 2) Evolution of the Conflict; and 3) Peace and its Limits. The module covers the origins of both national movements, the development of the conflict under British rule, the major Arab-Israeli wars, peace agreements, and it ends with recent events. 

• Violence and Conflict in Eastern Africa

  In this module students will explore the role of violence and conflict in the course of eastern Africa’s modern history. Students will gain an in depth understanding of the ways in which violence and conflict have influenced economy, society and polity in the modern era, through a consideration of broad themes, such as age, ethnicity, and resources, as well as specific case studies taken from across the region.

• War and Humanitarianism

  This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of the main themes in the anthropology of war and humanitarian assistance. These include the anthropology of violence, how societies respond in the aftermath of violence, the origins of humanitarianism, the concept of emergency, refugees and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’.