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The seminar module offers a more extensive and more thorough analysis of a topic from within political science. To this end, the seminar module provides an overview and a critical discussion of the literature and the issues relevant for the topic of the seminar.
The objectives for this module are:
1. The student will gain a broad and detailed knowledge of the evolving international security environment of the post-Cold War period.
2. The student will be able to explain and apply theories, methods and facts from the field of study.
The student will be able to understand, compare and critique various theories, methods and facts covered in the course.
The political, economic and socio-cultural transformations effected by the end of the Cold War, and the processes of globalization, have dramatically altered the security challenges facing state and non-state actors in the contemporary world. These challenges are global and indiscriminate in nature and their resolution typically requires collective approaches.
This course examines the 'new security agenda' of the post-cold war global world, and particularly since 9/11. We will first consider how thinking about security has changed in this period, and how this has influenced the ways that scholars and policymakers theorize about security. The bulk of the course will be devoted to examining many of the security challenges currently facing state and non-state actors. Conflicts between states - a traditional source of insecurity and primary focus of security studies - will not be ignored, and should not be as the 2008 Georgian War clearly illustrated. Small states are still threatened by larger ones and this will remain a characteristic of international relations for the foreseeable future. However, the majority of our focus will be on the so-called 'new security agenda', a loose term used to describe a range of security issues which are largely global and indiscriminate in nature. Although not new problems, international terrorism, ethnic and religious conflict, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, drug and weapons trafficking, international crime, population growth and migration are now explicitly treated as security issues in the fields of International Relations and Security Studies. The course will examine many of these issues in detail, including: the root causes of 'new wars', including intra-state political, ethnic and religious conflicts, and the debates surrounding controversial humanitarian interventions; environmental security, including the impact of climate change on small island developing states (SIDS) and the threat of resource-based conflict; the challenges posed by international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); among others.
This course aims to provide students with an introduction to the most pressing threats to security in today's globalized world, and in the process, an appreciation of their diversity and the complexity of their resolution.
International Relations
Of the nine seminars the student has to pass as part of the MA degree, at least six seminar modules have to be in political science.
Mark Eaton
The assessment method is 7-days home assignment.
External examiner/Graded marking.
The seminar module requires active participation of students. At the beginning of the seminar module the lecturer and the students agree on specific "activity requirements" that the students have to fulfill.
The seminars will include a mixture of lectures, class-wide discussion and student presentations.
The module compendium consists of about 1,200 pages.
A reading compendium will be available for purchase.
