Admission requirements
Only students of the MSc Crisis and Security Management, enrolled in the specialisation ‘Intelligence and National Security’, can take this course.
Description
This course explores some of the most sensitive aspects of nation states’ intelligence and security communities in the international system. It explores how and why state institutions are tasked to influence targets and issues – typically but not exclusively overseas – by covertly shaping the thinking, behaviour, and policies of state and non-state actors in an unacknowledged manner.
Such covert influence activities include unattributable propaganda and election interference, physical and digital sabotage, rendition, paramilitary operations, supporting coups, and targeted killing. The course also examines international intelligence cooperation – such as intelligence-sharing, security assistance for partners, and clandestine diplomacy – and the ways in which these different forms are used for influence and action.
Common themes run through these state practices that you will study. Clandestine and covert international liaison is used to not only leverage partner and proxy support but also influence their activities. Considerations of agency and relational control feature prominently when working with and through other actors. And such indirect action poses not only operational but also political, legal, and ethical risks, including complicity in human rights violations and challenges to democratic norms of oversight and accountability.
This course consequently examines:
- What drives some states to seek to influence other state, societies, and individuals more covertly than overtly, along a blurred spectrum of acknowledgement and deniability
- How state motivation has varied across different types of covert influence
- What gains and costs covert influence has produced for sponsors, proxies, and partners
- Why state intelligence services, inherently inclined towards secrecy, have been willing to share their secrets with international partners
- What gains and costs, enablers and obstacles, explain why some liaison relationships have remained merely transactional and ephemeral while others have deepened and endured
Course Objectives
After finalizing this course, students will have achieved:
- Advanced knowledge and understanding of the main theoretical and practitioner debates regarding covert influence and international intelligence cooperation.
- An ability to critically evaluate research, including methodologies used to generate research, on the gains and costs of covert influence and international cooperation over time conducted in varying political, legal, and normative contexts globally.
- Advanced critical textual evaluation of key scholarship, independent judgment, and oral and written presentation to a level commensurate with taught post-graduate study.
- The skills to apply key concepts and debates in practice through simulation exercises and a group operational briefing to enhance their professional skills and complement those developed in their other courses.
Timetable
On the right side of programme front page of the studyguide you will find links to the website and timetables, uSis and Brightspace.
Mode of Instruction
This course consists of a series of: interactive lectures by academics and current and former security practitioners from Europe and North America; work groups debating key readings, applied case analyses, and interactive simulations; and red team operational briefings.
Attendance is mandatory. Students are only allowed to miss more than one work group session if there are special, demonstrable personal circumstances that are covered by the Board of Examiners' regulations. The Board of Examiners will decide on whether to grant exceptional exemption of mandatory attendance. The Critical Article Review assignments are discussed as groups during the group work sessions. If more than one work group session is missed without the Board of Examiners granting an exemption, the student will receive a maximum 5.5 grade for their Critical Article Review.
Total study load 280 hours:
42 Contact hours.
238 Self-study hours: reading, preparing lectures, assignments, etc.
Through the Critical Article Review in particular, we will focus on the research skill that is going to be part of your portfolio at the end of your Masters: critical evaluation of research.
Assessment method
Assessment for this course is based on three assignments:
Critical Article Review
30% of final grade
Resit not possible
Grade can be compensated in case of a fail (< 5.50)
Group Assignment
30% of final grade
Resit not possible
Grade can be compensated in case of a fail (< 5.50)
Research Essay
40% of final grade
Grade must be 5.50 or higher to pass the course
Resit possible
Resit will take the same form
The calculated overall course grade must be at least 5.50 in order to pass the course. If the calculated overall course grade is lower than 5.50, students are also permitted to resit the 40% Research Essay.
Attendance is mandatory. Students are only allowed to miss more than one work group session if there are special, demonstrable personal circumstances that are covered by the Board of Examiners' regulations. The Board of Examiners will decide on whether to grant exceptional exemption of mandatory attendance. The Critical Article Review assignments are discussed as groups during the group work sessions. If more than one work group session is missed without the Board of Examiners granting an exemption, the student will receive a maximum 5.5 grade for their Critical Article Review.
In the case of written assessment methods where plagiarism or fraud is suspected, the examiner can always initiate a follow-up conversation with the student to establish whether the learning objectives have been met.
Reading list
A selection of books and articles, to be announced on Brightspace.
Registration
Register yourself via MyStudymap for each course, workgroup and exam (not all courses have workgroups and/or exams).
Do so on time, before the start of the course; some courses and workgroups have limited spaces. You can view your personal schedule in MyTimetable after logging in.
Registration for this course is possible from Wednesday 10 December 13.00h
Leiden University uses Brightspace as its online learning management system. After enrolment for the course in MyStudymap you will be automatically enrolled in the Brightspace environment of this course.
More information on registration via MyStudymap can be found on this page.
Contact
Dr. Thomas Maguire t.j.maguire@fgga.leidenuniv.nl