World Politics
World Politics@LUC recognizes that we live in an interdependent world. We are increasingly interconnected by means of mobility and communication; technology changes the rules of world politics and provokes the need for globally conscious responses to issues such as sovereignty and intervention, imperialism and colonialism, poverty and development, trade and inequality, national security and human security, nationalism and identity, culture and terrorism, health and environmental deterioration, migration and immigration. World Politics@LUC equips students to understand these global challenges from the multifarious standpoints of nation states and their citizens as well as non-governmental and international organisations.
World Politics@LUC provides an innovative and in-depth view of domestic, comparative, and international politics, addressing and how these multiple political realms (which are conventionally studied in relative isolation from each other) have become intertwined in the present era of global interdependence.
Students interested in World Politics@LUC can expect to be trained to find a distinctive understanding of the world in which we live as well as the problems confronted by it. Students might commence with an overview of the history of international politics, blending this with interrogations of the major approaches and theories of international politics. Hence, interested students can pursue cutting-edge developments in the theories and methodologies of International Politics and International Relations, and/or they could develop their interests in transnational history. In addition, specialist courses focused on issues in world politics can be explored; for instance, World Politics@LUC includes critical security studies, as well as a focus on terrorism & counter-terrorism, which offers a deep engagement with the different theoretical and practical approaches to understanding ‘security’. Bringing together history and theory, students are also able to focus on the (international) politics a specific region of the world or of the notion of regionality itself.
A regional focus could be further developed into a comparative interest in politics within nation states. Students primarily interested in the politics of a specific nation will be encouraged to analyse such systems comparatively, placing all political institutions and ideas into a global context. Hence, the study of anything from authoritarianism to democracy, from federal to unitary states, or from feudal polities to the contours of modernity in politics is possible. World Politics@LUC enables students to focus as tightly or as broadly as their interests dictate: they might consider the behaviour of voters, parliaments, political parties, courts, governments, and interest groups. They might investigate political cleavages like class, ideology, ethnicity and religion, and how these divisions have played out in different countries. At the most intimate level, students might explore questions of political psychology; at the other extreme, they might be fascinated by grand theories of the international system as a whole or in the formal modeling of game theory.
Graduates from World Politics@LUC can expect to move on to careers in international institutions, government, non-governmental organisations, or within an academic setting; they may wish to develop an unusually sensitive and creative approach to the global challenge of world order and politics, stepping beyond the confines of more conventional programmes in international politics, comparative politics or international relations. Such graduates are also technically trained, analytically savvy, and critical of received knowledge; they are well situated for careers in the media, knowledge industries or consultancies.