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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 small states and the challenges they face in the contemporary international system.
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.
This course will provide students with general knowledge about the characteristics of small states in the post-Cold War international system. It will focus on the foreign and security policies of small states, and the challenges they face in an increasingly interdependent and globalized world.
The course will first provide a definition of small states. It will then examine the different theoretical approaches to small states security, and explain what is meant by the terms and concepts used by IR scholars working in this field. However, the bulk of the course will examine many aspects of the foreign and security policies of small states, including (but not limited to) the factors that influence their international behaviour. Of course, these include obvious traditional security and military factors, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the subsequent period of American hegemony, and internal and external threats to national security. However, the foreign and security policies of small states are also affected by the economic, political, social, cultural and environmental effects of globalization. This course will examine these non-traditional factors in significant detail.
The course ends with a comparative analysis of Denmark and Canada. The foreign and security policies of the two countries, and the factors that influence these policies, will be compared and contrasted. Although the two countries are admittedly influential small states, they are by no means great powers, and they face many of the same challenges confronted by small states in general. Their relative smallness becomes more apparent when compared on a variety of indicators with their large southern neighbours, Germany and the United States. When it comes to security, economic and environmental policies, the influence of larger states, and the structure of the international system, limits the ability of both states to formulate strictly independent policies. Thus, the concluding part of the course will provide concrete illustrations of the place and roles of two influential small states in international institutions and politics.
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.
Hey, Jeanne A.K. Small States in World Politics: Explaining Foreign Policy Behaviour . London: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2003. (ISBN: 1555879438)
Ingebritsen, Christine, Iver Neumann, Sieglinde Gstohl, and Jessica Beyer. Small States in International Relations . University of Washington Press, 2006. (ISBN: 0295985240)
PLUS a compendium
