Course Description

This course explores how states and internal organizations confront and solve a variety of transnational problems ranging from climate change to transnational terrorism. In particular, the course examines why international cooperation is often weak or non-existent despite the dizzying number of international challenges that require cross-border cooperation.

The course begins by borrowing insights from different paradigms to investigate the challenges to global governance. Then, the course applies these insights to a variety of global issues such as global public health, terrorism, refugee crises, etc. By drawing from a diverse set of perspectives from disciplines that range from psychology to economics and political science, students will obtain the analytical skills to evaluate current transnational problems facing policymakers and all of us as participants in a globalized world.

Students, by the end of the course, will be better able to position themselves in relationship to the decomplexities of global governance.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Explain the main competing theoretical paradigms on global governance.
2. Apply the frameworks discussed during the course to global governance issues.
3. Understand the emergence of the current world order through different perspectives.
4. Evaluate contemporary transnational problems by situating the issue both in its historical and current geopolitical context.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

First semester (Wed)