Course summary

The International Relations and Democratic Politics MA provides an advanced critical and comprehensive understanding of the forces shaping inter-state relations and global politics. Drawing on key theoretical interpretations of democratic politics, the course examines various principles of democratic thinking (ranging from pluralism and civil society to egalitarianism and human rights), and explores the interplay between theory and practice in old and new democracies and in processes of global governance. You'll consider various aspects of international order and politics, including the dynamics of international social and political power relationships and conflicts, and state building. These topics are studied comparatively in relation to governmental, political and social processes, and in the contexts of various historical continuities, discontinuities and contrasts. Is democracy a concept limited to a world of territorially bounded national communities? Can democracy still limit power in a global world? How does democratic policy-making operate in the face of complexity? By raising and examining such questions, the course explores the changing and contested understandings of democracy in contemporary thought, as well as its application to the international sphere in our increasingly complex world.