McDonald
GOV 388K, Study of International Relations
Fall 2016
Description
This graduate course on the study of international relations provides a broad theoretical overview of the field of international relations, surveying some of its most prominent contributions during the past thirty years. It is designed to help you prepare to take the Ph.D. preliminary exams for the IR subfield in the Government Department and to help you prepare to execute your own original research projects. The substance of the course is conceptually organized around the question of how political order is constructed and sustained in the international system. Our discussions of theory will focus on the following sources of order: balance of power, hegemony, technology, ideas, norms, international organizations, globalization, territory, and domestic regime type.
Course requirements
There will be four key requirements for this course. First, you will be expected to attend class, keep up with the assigned readings, and participate in our discussions. Second, you will write a series (probably four or five) of short papers that comment on a group of readings. Third, designed to set up a future research paper, you will write a review of some body of IR literature of your choice. Fourth, during the final exam period, you will turn in an extended “brainstorming” paper that revises one of your shorter writing assignments. Your final grade will be tabulated as follows:
Class participation 20%
Short papers 30%
Literature review 25%
Brainstorming paper 25%
Texts
Kenneth N. Waltz. 1979. Theory of International Politics. McGraw-Hill.
Alexander Wendt. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press.
R. Harrison Wagner. 2007. War and the State: The Theory of International Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
G. John Ikenberry. 2011. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton University Press.
Francis J. Gavin. 2012. Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Christian Reus-Smit. 2013. Individual Rights and the Making of the International System. New York: Cambridge University Press.
James D. Morrow. 2014. Order Within Anarchy: The Laws of War as an International Institution. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Adam Tooze. 2014. The Deluge: The Great War, America, and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931. London: Viking. (must purchase electronic version)