Politics units

Year 1 units

World Politics (30 credits)
This course introduces you to the study of world politics, emphasizing that there are different and competing perspectives on how to approach the subject. It introduces students to the three dominant paradigms (Realism, Pluralism and Structuralism) that have traditionally defined the discipline of International Relations (IR) in the 20th Century. It will situate those paradigms in the historical context in which they were developed and critically examine both their contribution to our understanding of world politics and their shortcomings. Highlighting the challenges posed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War order to these traditional ways of studying international relations.

The course also critically examines how the three main IR paradigms sought to respond to the new post-Cold War world, in particular the phenomena of globalisation, American power, new wars, global poverty, the financial crisis, climate change, terrorism and the media. Focusing on practical case-studies such as the Bush versus Obama administrations, the rise of the BRIC countries and the increased consolidation of regional blocs such as the EU, the anti-globalization and climate change campaigns, the Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya wars and the new Washington Consensus, the second term will seek to critically examine how these events challenged our understandings of both the notion of ‘politics’ as well as the ‘international.’ Assessed by one essay and one examination.

Ideas, Ideologies and Conflicts (30 credits)
This course will explore key ideas such as political authority, democracy and freedom; major political ideologies such as socialism, liberalism and conservatism; as well major theoretical and political conflicts around issues such as the role of the state, the rights of the individual and the operation of power. The course works on the assumption that politics is not something that is confined to formal political parties and institutions, but something that is practiced at all levels of society and which can be seen in conflicts over identity, gender, rights, the environment and the organization of social and economic life. Assessed by one essay and one examination.

UK and European Comparative Governance and Politics (30 credits)
This unit introduces students to the comparative approach to politics and government, in addition to building a foundation understanding of the politics and governance of four key members of the European Union: the UK, Germany, Italy and France. The first half of the unit is focused on the UK and also considers the EU as an institution, while the second half concentrates on the other three countries at the unit’s core. Students will not only build an essential foundation for studying the politics of the UK/EU polity in which we live, but will also develop their skills in comparative methods. Assessed by one essay and one examination.

Political Economy and Public Policy (30 credits)
This course provides an introduction to the main theories and concepts in economics as well as important problems and questions in the field and to debates about major issues in public policy that are informed by economic analysis. As an introductory course it aims to acquaint students with key issues in economics and familiarise them with central tenets and theorems. Previous knowledge of economics (at the standard of the ‘A’ level in economics) is recommended, but not required. However, it is expected that students will acquire a good working knowledge of the most pivotal concepts in macroeconomics over the course of the year and gain a through understanding of the forces at play in the interaction between markets and the state. Assessed by one essay and one examination.

Politics of Other Cultures (30 credits)
This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the importance of colonialism and imperialism, and resistance to these, in the shaping of our world. It treats ‘culture’, including forms of ‘art’, as central to politics. The course considers non-Western forms of politics, civilization and culture prior to colonial domination; and it explores the forms of political, cultural, aesthetic and ideological interaction, and change, engendered in the course of the colonial encounter. A related aim of the course is to introduce students to a range of types of reading material and sources, beyond the conventional first year text book. Assessed by one essay and one examination.

Year 2 units

Africa in the Global Political Economy (30 credits)
The course examines Africa’s role in the making of the modern global political economy, and the significance of colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism to Africa’s postcolonial condition. The first part of the course examines Africa’s role in the historical development of the modern world, from the transatlantic slave trade to struggles for independence. The second part explores various dimensions of Africa’s postcolonial condition, such as authoritarian rule; debt, structural adjustment and neoliberal order; the role of the IMF and World Bank, western donor agencies and Non-Governmental Agencies; the rise of the ‘informal sector; conditions of everyday life in the neoliberal economy; the expansion of slums; and the discourse about ‘failed states’ in Africa. The course is centrally informed by a critical reflection on the politics of knowledge about Africa, the problem of eurocentrism, and the writings of African scholars. Assessed by two essays.

An(Other) IR (15 credits) (subject to approval)
This course aims at interrogating the blind spots and avoidances of disciplinary International Relations in an effort to ask the question: what would an IR of the South look like? It will look at traditional IR in terms of what subjects are deemed acceptable, what counts as evidence, who has the right to speak (and for whom)? At the same time it will look at new materials and new methodologies coming out of the global South for explaining and understanding the International. Assessed by one essay.

An(other) Japan: Politics and Popular Culture (30 credits)
This course begins by looking at contemporary popular culture in Japan as a particularly significant site for understanding contemporary political concerns. It traces the trajectory of Japan from its emergence as a modern nation-state in the 1860s, through its fraught wartime history, up to its emergence as a major global economic power in the late twentieth century. The course seeks to approach questions of politics through a very expansive definition of the term, and to demonstrate that cultural forms and practices can often provide a unique perspective through which to understand politics, a perspective not available through a study of political institutions alone. Assessed by two essays and one examination.

Chinese Politics (30 credits)
On the first line of the first page of the first volume of Mao Zedong’s Selected Works he states that the key question of the revolution is who are our friends and who are our enemies. This would be the question that would drive the revolution. Yet this division of the world into friends and enemies is not unique to China. Indeed, in Western political theory this friend/enemy distinction has becomes one of the most powerful definitions of ‘the political’. Understood in this way, the empirical history of the Chinese revolution, as it unfolds into a series of problems around defining friend and enemy is of enormous import for politics and political theory generally. This basic thesis underpins this subject. Assessed by two essays and one examination.

Comparative European Politics (30 credits)
This unit investigates the evolution of European society since 1945. Starting with an historical overview, the unit is divided into five sections. The historical overview and topics will include: national policy-making and economic performance; the political cultures of Europe; West European party and electoral systems; parliaments and governmental bureaucracies; West European welfare states; centre and periphery – local and central government in Western Europe. Assessed by two essays and a two-hour unseen examination.

Contemporary International Relations Theories (15 credits) (subject to approval)
This course introduces students to some of the latest theoretical interventions in International Relations and looks at how they challenge classical theories and approaches and reshape our thinking about the ‘international’ today. Amongst these interventions are the rise of the Copenhagen school and the new realism, neo-conservativism, constructivism, post-modernism, gender studies or new feminism, theories of justice and exceptionality, and aesthetic interventions in IR. The course discusses how these interventions are significantly reshaping the discipline of International Relations and the impact that they have on policy making practices domestically and abroad. Assessed by one essay.

Life: A User’s Manual (30 credits)
The unit breaks down into two parts: in the Autumn term, we are broadly concerned with how to situate the everyday, both historically and theoretically; in the Spring term, emphasis falls more upon the material world, as we explore the specific objects, practices and structures around which ‘everyday life’ is organised. The course draws on art, film and other cultural and political practices, to show how ‘ordinary’ ‘everyday life’ has (or can) become the vehicle for a new kind of ‘post-political’ politics. It extends the (primarily theoretical) emphases of seminal thinkers such as Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, Michel de Certeau and Jean Baudrillard into detailed readings of the spaces, practices and mythologies of everyday life. Assessed by one ‘presentation essay’ and one essay.

Modern Political Theory (30 credits)
In this course we examine the modern tradition of political thought. Students will be introduced to the major figures in this tradition – English thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke and Mill – and continental thinkers such as Rousseau and Marx. Through these thinkers, we will explore key themes and concepts such as sovereignty, justice, human nature, rights, liberty, democracy and equality. Assessed by two essays and a two-hour unseen examination.

Political Economy (30 credits)
The aim of this course is to familiarise students with central theoretical propositions, key concepts and core issues of political economy and demonstrate their application to practical issues in everyday policy-making processes. The course thus enables students to gain familiarity with the chief theoretical approaches to the field of political economy and encourage them to explore the insights incurred from the adoption of their analytical lenses to the ongoing reconfiguration process affecting the volatile and shifting boundaries between public and private sphere, government and market, state and individual. The module also focuses on questions and issues in global political economy. Assessed by two essays and one examination.

Themes and Issues in British Politics since 1945 (30 credits)
The course will bring a historical perspective to key issues in British politics from the end of the Second World War to the present day. It will do that by examining themes such as the post-1945 political ‘consensus’, the move from Empire to Europe, and the subsequent rise of Thatcherism. It will also focus on specific policy issues such as education, health and the environment, examining the development of political debates from 1945 to the present. Assessed by two essays and a two-hour unseen examination.

Year 3 units

Anarchism (15 credits)
This unit focuses on the history, politics and ideology of anarchism chiefly from its origins in the nineteenth century to 1939. There will be a discussion of anarchism in the post-1945 period but the main aim of the unit is to trace the origins and development of anarchist ideology (Godwin, Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Goldman etc) and the associated social and labour movements in Europe and the Americas (from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the Spanish Civil, 1936-1939, and from the Haymarket Riot of Chicago in 1886 and the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 to the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917-1921). But there will also be a substantial time devoted to anarchist-type movements and ideas which developed throughout the world before 1800 and as well as a discussion of the ‘ism’, anarchism, its reception and interchange with thinkers, ideas, and movements in Asia and Africa. Assessed by one essay.

An(other) China: Street scenes of Politics (15 credits)
This subject is built around glimpses of, and insights into, the lives of ordinary Chinese people and the rules and rituals that govern their existence. Students will discuss the ways everyday life was governed under socialism and the ways that control is now breaking down with the emergence of a consumer culture, enabling a close scrutiny of the politics of everyday life. Picking up on themes as diverse and quirky as Mao badge fetishists, hoodlum slang, and taboo’s and tattoos, the subject examines the way a range of people not only live but resist dominant social discourse. This subject also employs an array of new critical thinking from Western social theorists to highlight these themes. Students will therefore gain a grounding not only in the politics of everyday life in China but also in Western theoretical engagements with the everyday. Students who complete the subject should gain some insight into the difference culture makes in terms of practices of everyday life and, at the same time, gain a different view of China by examining things at street level. They will also get some grounding in certain schools of social, cultural and political theory. Assessed by two essays.

Art War Terror (15 credits)
Looking at key contemporary and ‘historical’ artworks and events, this module cuts across historical trajectories in order to reflect upon the nature, function and operation of art in times of war and conflict. Focusing largely on contemporary and 20th-century visual production, it examines both the representation of violence and the violence of representation - especially in relation to the Cold War, the cultural and ideological wars of the 1960s and 70s, postmodern and ‘armchair’ wars, and the so-called ‘war on terror’. Using Baudrillard, Virilio, Butler and others, it considers the impact of military surveillance techniques on culture, both in terms of art practices and more broadly, as experienced in everyday cultural life. It reflects on artists’ enduring fascination with war and terror and asks if art can be thought of as a form of politics, knowledge and experience ‘in itself’. Assessed by one ‘intervention essay’.

Beyond All Reason (15 credits)
Politics is often conceived as the attempt to rationally control our collective life. Yet so much of human existence seems utterly irrational: intercommunal violence and civil conflict, genocide, social inequality and environmental degradation. For all our hopes of a rational politics, modern life since the Enlightenment has often seemed beyond all reason. But can politics be rethought to embrace the limits of rationality, to face up to the horrors of human destructiveness? If so, can it avoid succumbing to irrationality? How then might we cope with the possibility of enmity and violence? This course surveys efforts to conceptualise politics and reason in modern philosophy. It examines classic ideas of freedom and community, power, critique and judgement, asking how we might conceive of political life without recourse to ‘rational foundations’. Assessed by one essay.

Britain in the EU (15 credits) (subject to approval)
This course surveys the relationship between the UK and European integration from the first half of the twentieth century until today. We will examine the UK’s position during the early days of European integration before Britain joined the then EEC in 1973 and then turn our attention to the role of Britain as a member-state since 1973. Was Britain a reluctant European before 1973 and has she been an awkward partner since 1973? To what extent has European question divided all the major political parties of Britain? Are their unique political economic, cultural and sociological reasons for Britain and the British public’s apparent semi-detachment? To what extent have imperial and great power legacies shaped British EU policy? Or is the uniqueness of the British position exaggerated? Assessed by one essay.

Discourse, Power, Politics (15 credits)
Much of Western political theory is based on Enlightenment ideas about reason, and in particular on a paradigm of the autonomous, rational individual derived from liberalism. However, a number of contemporary thinkers in the Continental tradition have challenged these preconceptions, showing that we also have to take account of certain external, and often ‘irrational’ forces – such as language, the unconscious, ideology and power relations – that often shape our perception of the world and our place in it, therefore influencing the way we do politics. This course examines some of these alternative approaches to the political, exploring themes such as discourse, power, subjectivity, passion, resistance – as well as contemporary approaches to radical politics today. While largely a theoretical course, it also deals with concrete questions and issues such as the role of language in the construction of political and gender identities, how power functions in society, and how people resist domination. Assessed by one essay.

Dissertation (30 credits)
A critical review of the literature and/or original analysis of documentary and/or other evidence on a specialist topic within the fields of politics, economics, public policy or social policy. Work for the dissertation will be supervised by a member of staff with particular expertise in the area chosen for study. Assessed by submission of one formal proposal and a dissertation with word limit of 8-9,000-words.

European Union and Immigration: The Contours, Politics and Economics of a New Policy Domain (30 credits)
Immigration is rapidly emerging as one of the key concerns for public policy makers in the 21st century in Europe and beyond. Net immigration levels to Europe have increased dramatically since the fall of the Iron Curtain. This has spawned pressing questions about national identity, multiculturalism, integration and assimilation, the role of religion, language and symbolic marks of common representation.

While pragmatic policy-makers are rediscovering the benefits of labour migration, nativist, nationalist and chauvinist parties from the Far Right are making electoral inroads based on radical measures stopping or even reversing immigration. Arguments about labour shortages and demographic considerations encounter nativist reservations towards the prospect of fresh immigration. Humanitarian channels of migration, especially asylum, are facing a somewhat uncertain future. The European Union has created the foundations of a Common Asylum and Migration Policy (CAMP) and rapidly developed a complex network of policies that overlap, modify and in some instances change substantially national policies in this domain. This course examines the politics and economic of immigration throughout Europe and beyond, exploring actors, symbols, politics and policies that coalesce to form a complex pattern of regulation of one of the most politicized policy domains. Assessed by one essay and one examination.

Internship (15 credits) (BA International Studies only)
This optional course will involve spending two days each week for the duration of a term as an intern in a placement provider working in the field of international studies. Placement providers will include a range of organisations in the NGO sector such as charities, think-tanks and pressure groups, bodies connected with international organisations such as the UN, appropriate businesses, and political parties. Students will be attached to a placement supervisor in the placement provider. This person will supervise their work while on placement, in liaison with institutional placement staff at Goldsmiths.

There will be a pool of guaranteed places which will be competitively allocated on the basis of prior performance on the programme and appropriateness of the placement to the student’s study interests. However, we will encourage other students to take the opportunity to find a placement and will support them in that process. Although the placement is optional, we would hope that all students will be able to take up the opportunity should an appropriate placement be found. In fairness to hosts, we will also have to be confident that students’ levels of attendance and achievement while at Goldsmiths suggest that they can benefit from the internship. Assessed by one essay and a report from the placement supervisor.

Nationalist Conflict and International Intervention (15 credits)
Since the end of the Cold War the overwhelming majority of conflicts in the world have been internal – often resulting from nationalist grievances and policies. This course will examine the causes of nationalist conflicts, as well as the various tools and policies adopted by international actors towards them. After providing an overview of the two main scholarly approaches to nationalist conflict (primordialism and modernism), we will focus on the structural, cultural, political and economic causes of such conflicts and on the forms of international intervention employed to resolve them – ranging from ‘cooperative’ approaches such as diplomacy and peacekeeping to ‘coercive’ measures like economic sanctions and military intervention. We will also assess the debates surrounding international ‘state-building’ projects and partition along ethnonational lines and methods applied to achieve post-conflict justice and reconciliation. Throughout the course students will be encouraged to focus on a case study of their own choosing and to apply the more general theoretical and policy debates to their specific case in the weekly discussions and in their assessed coursework. Assessed by two essays.

New Radical Political Economy (30 credits)
This course will provide you with an understanding of key issues in the field of contemporary radical political economy. The course will outline and critically evaluate orthodox economic approaches to globalisation as well as challenges from the anticapitalist movement. Marxist, autonomist and green economics will be examined and criticised. The course will look at the effects of global capitalism on poverty, equality and environmental sustainability. Alternatives to the market and state regulation of economic activity such as commons regimes, open source and social sharing will also be put under the microscope. Assessed by one essay and a two-hour
unseen examination.

Party Systems and Electoral Systems (15 credits)
Party systems vary across politics and have important political, social and economic consequences. It is therefore, important to study the characteristics and determinants of party systems, and the nature of electoral competition. This course includes a study of the prominent theories of the party systems and electoral competition. It examines the size and the competitiveness of party systems, focusing on institutional and sociological explanations. The institutional explanation will focus on Duverger’s Law which states that the ‘simple – majority, single- ballot system favours a two-party system’. We also investigate different electoral rules and formulas such as majoritarian and proportional representation, and their effects on party systems. The sociological explanation will focus on the role of social cleavages in determining the nature of party systems. The course will use empirical analysis from the UK, the USA, France, Germany, India and Canada to provide a comparative perspective on the subject. Assessed by one essay (2,500 words) and a two hour
unseen examination.

Political Economy of the European Union (30 credits)
The aim of this course is to familiarise students with the central traits of the economic and political architecture of the European Union (EU), explore recent milestones in closer economic integration, analyse the ramifications that this economic and political integration process is having on the contours of politico-economic governance in the member states, and explore some of the policies generated by the EU in fields such as labour and social policy, migration, competition policy, environmental policy, and industrial policy. The course also aims to provide an analysis of the key events and institutions shaping the European integration process. There will also be a debate about future challenges facing the EU, including past and future rounds of enlargements and the formulation of a common security and defence policy. Assessed by two essays and a two-hour unseen examination.

Politics and Welfare (15 credits)
This course is focused upon current controversies, issues and developments in social welfare policy including controversy about the nature of social exclusion and the existence of an underclass, the need for rationing access to health services, the development of service frameworks for social care and the relationship between economy, taxation and social welfare. The course will be particularly concerned with inviting students to consider and critically examine different views about the scope, organisation and role of social welfare in contemporary society. Assessed by one essay and one review.

Politics of the African City (15 credits)
This course focuses on the African city as a specific site to explore politics in various dimensions and expressions. The course considers the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial African city as a concrete site which hosts and is shaped and reshaped by changing and contradictory power relations, ideologies, struggles, economies and cultures. The course considers a variety of case studies and contexts such as Maputo, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Accra, Lagos, Dakar. With the help of urban theory and postcolonial theory as well as the literature on African cities, we explore themes such as the politics of urban space and the spatial articulation of power; African and Western cultures of planning and organisation of urban life; the character of colonial urbanism, and its legacy in the postcolonial, neoliberal present; the city as site of resistance, everyday life and popular culture. The later part of the course explores the treatment of these themes and experiences in postcolonial African film, novels and art. The final seminar explores Africa’s presence in this postcolonial city of London. Assessed by one essay.

Public Policy Analysis (15 credits)
This course is a systematic analysis of the various stages of policy making, from initiation to implementation, examining the role of various actors, ideas and interests at each stage. The problems faced by policy makers, especially the issues of implementation and evaluation will be investigated in light of the limitations to perfect administration in the real world. The focus of the course will be on the nature and the role of policy analysis, the concept of the policy cycle, and the ways in which government and other actors shape public policy. We will examine in detail, the prominent models of policy making - pluralism, corporatism and other belief-system models analysing concepts such as rationality, bounded rationality, incrementalism and mixed scanning. The role of major institutional actors, interest groups and policy specialists will be evaluated using examples and case studies from selected policy areas with special reference to the UK and the European Union. Assessed by one essay and a two-hour unseen examination.

Rhetoric and Politics (15 credits)
Rhetoric is the art of speech and persuasion. In classical Greece and Rome, rhetoric held a central place in politics. To speak and argue well was an integral part of being a citizen. In modern, democratic societies, speeches and arguments remain a primary source in political life. But we have become more suspicious of what we hear, and perhaps less attentive to the ways we are being persuaded. This course examines the techniques of rhetorical analysis and applies these to the study of contemporary political speeches. Assessed by one essay.

Risk and Politics: Theory and Practice (15 credits)
The course is designed to stimulate and reward the curiosity of undergraduates who want to know more about the relationship between politics and the assessment, communication and management of risk. It invites students to explore the ways in which the discussion of risk has become one of the most pressing concerns in contemporary politics and to consider the leading role ideas about risk now play in shaping public debates and the formulation and evaluation of public policy. The study of risk is a multi-disciplinary enterprise and the specialist sub-field of risk politics affords students a highly attractive and rewarding opportunity to consider the ways in which politics, economics, legal studies, social psychology, media studies and sub-disciplines in the natural sciences, such as toxicology, inform each other. The course is designed to provide undergraduates with a good working knowledge of key concepts and findings, including many drawn from adjacent academic areas, and their political import. It will foster the student’s ability to consider and critically evaluate the development of risk politics in response to specific risks and to consider the ways in which particular risks have been politicised. Assessed by two essays.

Technology and Political Mobilisation (15 credits) (subject to approval)
This course provides a historical overview of the role that different technologies – from the invention of writing, to the printing press, radio, television, transport technology, cellphone technologies and more recently internet based technologies – have played in different forms of political organisation and mobilization. Focusing in particular on a series of key historical as well as contemporary moments surrounding popular uprisings, riots, revolutions, elections and wars, the course will reflect on the promises and limits of technology as well as its impact on the redistribution of power in society. Assessed by one essay.