SPI 556e: TOPICS IN IR: EXTREME RIGHT POPULISM AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

This course addresses one of the major political concerns of our times: the rise of extreme‐right populist parties (ERPs). Over the last several decades, support for such parties and movements has grown, and politicians such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Giorgia Meloni, Narendra Modi, and Benjamin Netanyahu have risen to govern many established democracies. We don’t know what the future will bring, but few deny that the consequences of populist movements could potentially be large for some time to come. Over the past generation, more scholarship, political analysis, and journalism has been devoted to extreme‐right parties than all other party families combined.

Semester: Fall

Offered: 2024
Syllabus

POL 551: SEMINAR IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

This seminar critically examines fundamental theories of international relations (IR). Unlike most other graduate courses in the Politics Department, this one does not focus either on empirical assessments of narrower problems or on the application of specific methodological techniques. Rather, it introduces foundational concepts, causal mechanisms, broad regularities, and conditional claims that scholars have proposed over the years as vital underlying drivers of world politics. The assigned readings span a century, starting with classics by E.H. Carr, Hans
Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz to articles that just appeared this year.

Semester: Fall

Offered: 2024
Syllabus

POL 240/SPI 312: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

This course offers an introduction to international relations (IR) beginning with its pre-history and ending with crises today. It investigates the diverse substantive interests, ideals, and beliefs that motivate foreign-policy makers, the changing balance of geopolitical power and influence, the nature of global institutions, and the non-rational beliefs of decision-makers. This course also aims to strengthen concrete skills designed to be helpful in your future activities, whether reading the daily news feed, designing the strategy of an international company, or advising a president: deploying basic social scientific theory, recalling basic events in the history of world politics, conducting policy analysis, and writing policy memos, opinion pieces and other forms of political communication. An elaboration follows.

Semester: Fall

Offered: 2022
Syllabus