Prospectus

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Instability and (In)securities: A case study of crisis

Course
2024-2025

Admission requirements

This course is part of the minor Public Risk and Disaster, taught at The Hague by a lecturer from Leiden University. The course can only be taken within the framework of participation in the minor PRD.

Description

Many areas of the world experiencing political instability might raise a complex set of issues and problems both in the region and more widely. The geo-political area of the Sahel region, including Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Chad, has been experiencing multiple and diverse insecurities, from socio-economic challenges and climate variability, to transnational terrorism and cross-border illicit trafficking. This course will provide a focus into the different regional challenges and how they interact, generating implications at national, regional and international level. Indeed, once a region that rarely featured in debates about global security, the Sahel has become increasingly topical in the current policy debate, especially in Europe, because of the connection between socio-economic issues, climate change and security challenges. By exploring the multiple levels of the Sahel ‘crisis’, students will learn how to understand different security dynamics in terms of contextual and explanatory factors, as well as evaluate implications for governments, citizens, and other actors. Students will specifically learn to analyze an event, or set of interrelated events, and gain the ability to apply this skill in other cases.

Course objectives

This course will:

  • offer an introduction to an often-misunderstood region, whose issues and prospects go beyond war, coups and poverty, and whose internal developments impact many other actors (neighboring areas, foreign powers, international organizations);

  • introduce students to regional approaches to security and analyse key challenges that are expected to grow in the next decades;

  • understand and analyze instability as a multifaceted phenomenon;

  • understand and integrate concepts and methods from relevant disciplines in order to gain a deeper understanding of a real-life security case.

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

7 lectures and self-study

Assessment method

Group Mid-Term:

  • 30% of final grade

  • Grade must be 5.50 or higher

  • Resit is not possible

  • Grade can be compensated

Individual Final:

  • 70% of final grade

  • Grade must be 5.50 or higher

  • Resit of a fail is possible.

  • Resit will take the same form

Reading list

The reading list and programme will be made available on Brightspace

Registration

To be announced by OSC staff.

Contact

Silvia D’Amato, s.damato@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

Remarks