16th September 2012

Core Module

Bath: Europe and the Wider World – Policy, Polity and Politics

The Core Module, taught at the University of Bath from September to January, provides all students in the programme with a common knowledge base about EU institutions, European integration, and Europe’s role in international relations before they undertake individualized programmes of study at the partner sites.

European Union Politics & Policy-Making

This unit looks at the European Union as a policy actor within the wider context of the external and internal challenges facing it today. It considers whether the EU has a unique mode of governance (or unique modes of governance) or whether it can be analysed in the same way as the political systems of its member states.

Comparative European Politics

This unit aims to provide a focussed discussion of political change in contemporary Europe, centered around two broad issues: party systems and the nature of democracy in comparative perspective.

Foreign Policy Analysis

This unit aims to provide an effective insight into the study of foreign policy through a detailed study of policy-making processes and comparative analysis. You will gain theoretical and empirical understanding and analysis of contemporary foreign policy-making and a consideration of the major issues in contemporary and comparative foreign policy. This would enable an advanced knowledge of a major sub-field of international relations.

Russian Politics in Comparative Perspective

This unit applies methods and varied approaches from comparative politics to analyse contemporary politics in Russia including territorial politics, political system and changes, political economy and gender politics.

Governance, Security and Development in East and South East Asia

Departing from the intellectual traditions of state-society relations and critical political economy, this unit introduces the major theoretical approaches and conceptual tools pertinent to the comparative, transnational and diachronic analyses of political-economic and socio-cultural development in the contemporary East and Southeast Asian states.

By situation the post-WWII development of selected countries against the larger backdrop of changing regional geopolitics, it analyses local changes in light of the concerned sovereign state’s foreign relations, governance style and security concerns. Based on comparative country-based analysis, it examines governance, security and development along the globalization-regionalization-localization nexus.

International Relations Theories

The goals of this unit explaining international politics and policymaking in context; familiarisation with methodological tools and their meaning; and application of theoretical and methodological skills to case studies.

International Security: Theories and Concepts

This unit aims to identify and analyse the main currents in the academic debate on international security; as well as study and assess the utility and explanatory power of different theories and approaches to international security.

Memory Culture – Memory Politics

The unit aims to familiarise students with key theoretical debates in interdisciplinary memory studies and to provide them with an opportunity to apply critically the insights which emerge from these debates to case studies. The unit will focus in particular on the role of politics, the state, museums, media and the arts in the fashioning of collective memory, and on the relationship between collective memory and identity construction.

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