What are the most pressing issues facing global politics today?  This course looks at the ideas, issues, and actions that shape our contemporary world.  It asks how we understand the world, how we might understand it differently and why certain issues dominate global politics while others are ignored.  It also examines the capacity for people, organisations, and nations to co-operate in search of solutions to today’s pressing problems. 

In doing so, this course is broken up into two key sections: Global Visions; and Conflict and Co-operation. The first section looks at different approaches to thinking about international relations and world politics and introduces students to the key actors, agents, institutions and ideas that dominate the world today.  The second section, ‘Crisis and Co-operation’ looks at the sources of international tensions, and the possibilities for global co-operation around major issues such as transnational conflict, international political economy, global environmental management, and human and social rights. In each theme this course examines the history of these major areas of contemporary international relations and the competing debates and agendas within them.  It then focuses upon causes and consequences of a contemporary crisis and examines the possibilities of global co-operation in its resolution.

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

1.  Identify key issues in global politics and understand their historical contexts.
2. Develop the capacity to research key issues in ways that enable them to analyse different approaches to understanding and addressing these issues.
3. Debate and evaluate different approaches to major issues
4. Write and present a political argument in a clear, coherent, and engaging manner
5. Demonstrate reading comprehension of relevant IR literature.

1 x in-tutorial presentation (5%) [Learning Outcomes:  1, 3, 5]

1 x short paper, 800 words (15%) [Learning Outcomes: 1, 3, 4]

1x research paper, 2,000 words (40%) [Learning Outcomes: 2, 3, 4, 5]

1x sit-down examination, 1.5 hrs (35%) [Learning Outcomes: 1, 3, 4]

Class Participation (5%) [Learning Outcomes: 1, 3, 5]

2 hours of lectures; 1 hour of tutorial; 3 hours of independent reading per week plus preparation of assessment tasks.

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This is a first year course and there are no pre-requisites

Weekly readings to support the tutorials will be made available electronically via the Wattle Site

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