Analysis in International Relations, Security and Development
Code: 42986 ECTS Credits: 15| Degree | Type | Year | Semester |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4313800 International Relations, Security and Development | OB | 0 | 1 |
Contact
- Name:
- Oriol Costa Fernandez
- Email:
- oriol.costa@uab.cat
Teaching groups languages
You can check it through this link. To consult the language you will need to enter the CODE of the subject. Please note that this information is provisional until 30 November 2023.
Teachers
- Rafael Grasa Hernández
- Eduard Soler Lecha
- Juan Pablo Soriano Gatica
- Blanca Camps Febrer
- Lluc Vidal López
Prerequisites
In order to lay the foundations of the course and homogenise the starting level of the group, before the start of the sessions students should read the book by Esther Barbé (2007), Relaciones Internacionales, 3rd edition, Madrid: Tecnos. It is also advisable to read, during the course, the book Del Arenal, Celestino and Sanahuja, José Antonio (2015), Teorías de las Relaciones Internacionales, Madrid: Tecnos. For the methodological sessions, the support book is the following one: Zapata Barrero, Ricard and Sánchez Montijano, Elena (2011), Manual de investigación cualitativa en la ciencia política, Madrid: Tecnos.
Objectives and Contextualisation
This course provides an introduction to some of the main theoretical perspectives on the study of international relations and their research methods. Students will learn new ways of thinking about and analysing international society, increase their ability to evaluate the main theoretical ideas and apply these perspectives to analyse specific issues in contemporary international politics. The course also aims to provide conceptual and methodological tools and guidelines to enable students to better prepare their final master's thesis.
Competences
- Analyse the international situation and recognise its complexity, using the theoretical tools seen in the master's programme, and base one's vision of the future on sound knowledge of preceding periods.
- Analyse, synthesise, organise and plan projects and assignments related to the area of study.
- Apply the necessary methodological instruments for systematic and rigorous analysis of international relations (observation, comparison, formulation of hypotheses, etc.), and intervention tools (policy and strategy making, planning, negotiation and mediation techniques, etc.).
- Continue the learning process, to a large extent autonomously
- Design, plan and conduct a project on international relations that meets the criteria of academic rigour and excellence.
- Know theoretical frameworks and approaches and conceptual constructs for analysing international relations, and know the different fields of international activity and the main geographical areas.
- Seek out information in the scientific literature, skilfully handling specialised documentary and bibliographic sources on international relations, and integrate this information to formulate and contextualise a research topic.
- Solve problems in new or little-known situations within broader (or multidisciplinary) contexts related to the field of study.
- Use acquired knowledge as a basis for originality in the application of ideas, often in a research context.
- Work in multidisciplinary teams.
Learning Outcomes
- Analyse, synthesise, organise and plan projects and assignments related to the area of study.
- Continue the learning process, to a large extent autonomously
- Correctly identify the different theoretical approaches of articles of analysis, reports, etc. and assess the different consequences of the policies and strategies proposed by these approaches.
- Display familiarity with the main elements of any rigorous research, from a methodological standpoint.
- Identify the research question and the dependent or independent variables of a research project.
- Know the logic of case study selection.
- Seek out information in the scientific literature, skilfully handling specialised documentary and bibliographic sources on international relations, and integrate this information to formulate and contextualise a research topic.
- Solve problems in new or little-known situations within broader (or multidisciplinary) contexts related to the field of study.
- Use acquired knowledge as a basis for originality in the application of ideas, often in a research context.
- Use analytic constructs for understanding international relations, especially in the problem areas associated with security and development.
- Work in multidisciplinary teams.
Content
INTRODUCTION
Session 1: The discipline of IR: emergence and general key arguments
Required reading:
- Viewing this video on the book Hathaway, O. A., & Shapiro, S. J. (2017). The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. Simon and Schuster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2tfebkUbPo&feature=emb_title (can be found on the New America channel, under the same title as the book).
Session 2: International Relations, Security and Development: Contexts, Major Concepts, Approaches and Debates from 1919 to 2023
Required reading
-Rafael Grasa. “Cien años después de la I guerra mundial. Las Relaciones Internacionales y la comprensión de las causas de la guerra y las condiciones de la paz”. See https://ifc.dpz.es/recursos/publicaciones/35/22/02grasa.pdf.
- Buzan, B. "Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations, in Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 21, No. 2, Special Issue on Alternative Defense (Jun., 1984), pp. 109-125. Sage Publications
BLOCK I: Major Theoretical Approaches in International Relations
Session 3. Realism(s)
Required reading
- Moure Peñín, L. (2015), "El realismo en la teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales: génesis, evolución y aportaciones actuales", in C. del Arenal and J. A. Sanahuja, coords., Teorías de las Relaciones Internacionales, Madrid, Tecnos, pp. 61-96.
- Smith, N. & Dawson, G. (2022). "Mearsheimer, Realism, and the Ukraine War". Analyse & Kritik. https://doi.org/10.1515/auk-2022-2023
Session 4: Liberalism (s)
Required reading:
- Grasa, Rafael (2015), “Neoliberalismo e institucionalismo, La reconstrucción del liberalismo como teoría sistémica internacional”, cap. En Arenal/Sanahuja (eds), Teorías de las Relaciones Internacionales, Tecnos, pp. 97-126
- Moravcsik, A. (1997). Taking preferences seriously: Aliberal theory of international politics. International organization, 51(4), 513-553.
Session 5: Marxism, Structuralism and Critical Theory
Required reading:
- Cox, R. (1981) 'Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory', Millennium Journal of International Studies, Vol. 10, No.2, pp. 126-55.
Session 6. Constructivism (s)
Required reading:
- Wendt, A. (1992) 'Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power , International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 391-426.
Session 7. Feminist, postmodern and decolonial approaches.
Required readings.
- Gulash Capan, Z. (2017). Decolonising International Relations, Third World Quarterly, 38(1), 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1245100.
- Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a Decolonial Feminism, Hypatia, 25(4), 742-759. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2010.01137.x Translated by Gabriela Castellanos.
Recommended reading:
-Cohn, C. (1987). Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 12(4), 687-718. https://doi.org/10.1086/494362
-Jacoby, T. (2006).From the trenches: Dilemmas of feminist IR fieldwork. In B. Ackerly, M. Stern, & J. True (Eds.), Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (pp. 153-173). Cambridge University Press.
BLOCK II.SECURITY
Session 8. Security: concepts, approaches, trends and challenges.
Compulsory readings
- Soriano, J.P. (2021), "Los estudios de seguridad: orígenes, evolución, herramientas y debates en curso", in Grasa, R. and Rodríguez, C. (eds.), Ciencia política y Relaciones Internaciones: un mundo y una disciplina en proceso de cambio, UNAD, Bogota, pp. 77-95. https://hemeroteca.unad.edu.co/index.php/book/article/view/5063/4870
- Caballero-Anthony, M. (Ed.) (2015). An introduction to non-traditional security studies: a transnational approach. Sage, pp. 3-35. Electronic version in UAB Libraries. https://bibcercador.uab.cat/permalink/34CSUC_UAB/1eqfv2p/alma991000710129706709
Session 9. Foreign policy analysis
Required reading
- Hudson, V. M., & Day, B. S. (2020), "Introduction: The Situation and Evolution of Foreign Policy Analysis: A roadmap", in Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory, 3rd edition, 2020. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 3-36.
Session 10. Human Security and Direct Non-political ViolenceRequired reading-Rafael Grasa (comp), "Definitions of human security".
-Tani Marilena Adams, ¨Chronic Violence": towards a new approach to 21st-centuy violence, Noref Policy Brief june 2012.
BLOCK III. DEVELOPMENT (S)
Session 11. From growth to development(s). Emergence and evolution of the concept and practice.
Required reading
- Amartya Sen, "A Decade of Human Development", Journal of Human Development, vol I, no 1, 2000, pp 17-23.
Session 12. Development and the Environment: The Case of Climate Change
Required reading
- Aklin, M., & Mildenberger, M. (2020). Prisoners of the wrong dilemma: why distributive conflict, not collective action, characterizes the politics of climate change.Global Environmental Politics, 20(4), 4-27.
Session 13. Development, environment and North-South relations: an intertwined and growing agenda.
Required readings.
-UNEP. 2020. GEO6. Summary for policy makers. Pp. 9-21. Available at: https://bit.ly/3LmeVRt
BLOCK IV
Sessions 14, 15 and 16. International Relations Research Methods
Session 17. Practical session on methods
Session 18: Essay (exam).
Methodology
--
Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.
Activities
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Directed | |||
| Clases magistrales y ejercicios en clase | 75 | 3 | 1, 7, 6, 4, 3, 5, 8, 2, 9, 11, 10 |
| Type: Autonomous | |||
| Lectura y estudio de los textos básicos | 300 | 12 | 7, 3, 2, 9 |
Assessment
Students will hand in, in each theory session, a reading card. The reading cards include the presentation of the main argument of the article (in a maximum of 10-15 lines) and the proposal of some questions by the student, either to raise doubts or to promote discussion in class (one page per card). The texts are collected in a dossier for the module (photocopying service). In addition, in each session, two students will effectively put their questions to debate. On the last day of the module, students will write, during the two hours of the session, an essay on a topic proposed by the teachers, for which they will be able to use any bibliographical material they wish. The evaluation is made up of these two types of exercise and the continuous evaluation of class participation, according to the following weighting: the handing in of reading note cards will account for 20% of the mark, the class essay for 70% and the continuous evaluation for the remaining 10%.
Assessment Activities
| Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ensayo final en clase | 70% | 0 | 0 | 1, 7, 6, 4, 3, 5, 8, 2, 9, 10 |
| Evaluación continua | 10% | 0 | 0 | 1, 6, 4, 5, 11 |
| Fichas de lectura | 20% | 0 | 0 | 7, 3, 8, 2, 10 |
Bibliography
The description of the course content already includes the reading list.
Software
--