Beskrivelse
This seminar introduces you to the discipline of International Relations (IR). The aim is not to merely learn “facts” about international politics, but to study the core concepts and theoretical approaches to analyse international relations,and to apply these to concrete cases. We will discuss three cases (the Iraq War, the creation of the International Criminal Court, and the climate regime) and review the utility of core IR approaches in their analysis.
Every participant will have to focus on one case and one approach. We will divide
participants into groups, one set of groups dealing with cases, and one set of groups dealing with approaches. All approaches should be represented in the case groups and vice versa. We will first spend some time recapitulating the central analytical issues in IR, then introduce the cases. This is followed by five weeks of theory presentations. The final weeks are devoted to the application of theories to cases, and to evaluating the usefulness of theories.