This course explains ethnic conflict, focusing on its most violent form, civil war. We will consider the political forms that emerged out of those struggles, as well as the changed and distinctly "modern" conceptualizations of political theory such as freedom, responsibilty, justice, rights and obligations, as central categories for organizing moral and political life. The centrality of "the individual" has created difficulties, even paradoxes, for community and social relations, and political theorists have struggled to reconicle those throughout the modern era. Although the emergence of the individual as a central moral, political, and conceptual category arguably began in earlier eras, it is in the seventeenth century that it takes firm hold in defining the state, political institutions, moral thinking, and social relations. We will focus on themes and questions pertinent to political theory in the modern era, particularly focusing on the relationship of the individual to community, society, and state. This course will provide an overview of major figures and themes of modern political thought. What are the trade-offs implicit in the foreign policies of Russia, EU member states, and Eastern Europe? What are the best policy approaches? What are the main opportunities and obstacles? In this context, EU countries must balance their energy dependence on Russia and need for new markets and geopolitical stability with concern for human rights, democratic governance, and self-determination. These in-between countries find themselves subject to intense competition for influence between Eastern and Western powers. Yet, given Russia's opposition to the further enlargement, membership is off the table for the large semi-Western powers such as Russia itself and Turkey and the smaller countries inhabiting an emerging buffer zone between Russia and the EU, such as Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Belarus. With the application of this powerful incentive, Central and Southeastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Croatia have progressed rapidly towards integration with the EU (and NATO). EU foreign policy towards its Eastern neighbors is based on economic integration and the carrot of membership. Russia and the European Union (EU) are engaged in a battle for influence in Eastern Europe.
PSCI 0401 Russia and Eastern Europe in International Affairs The third part focuses on trends and challenges that have emerged over the last two decades - including market reforms, democratization, and problems related to gender and the environment. The second part focuses on elaborating on the themes developed in the first by looking more closely at the developmental experiences of Brazil, India, Algeria, Iran, Nigeria, and South Korea (with passing references to other countries as comparative referents). The first examines the common and distinctive features of colonial rule in different regions as well as the varying challenges of political and economic development in diverse post-colonial settings. Although chiefly concerned with "political change" within countries, it will also devote substantial attention to economic, socio-cultural and international factors. The course is not as concerned with keeping up with current events as with analyzing the relationships between colonial legacies, the initial challenges of post-colonial political and socioeconomic development, and how these interact with contemporary problems and global trends. This is a comparative politics course that examines political and socio-economic change in the so-called "Third World," defined here as post-colonial developing areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America. PSCI 0101 Comparative Politics of Developing Areas
0 kommentar(er)
