Topics in International Politics

Topics in International Politics
Bachelor in International Studies
ECTS Credits: 6.0
Course: 3
Semester: 1

COMPETENCES AND SKILLS THAT WILL BE ACQUIRED AND LEARNING RESULTS

BASIC AND GENERAL COMPETENCES

CG1 - Understand social, political, legal and economic realities from a comparative perspective.
CG3 - Know quantitative and qualitative research techniques and possess the ability to choose which is most adequate to apply in the field of Social Sciences.
CG5 - Be able to debate and formulate critical reasoning, using precise terminology and specialized resources, when analyzing international and global phenomena, employing both the concepts and knowledge from different disciplines as well as the methods of analysis, paradigms and concepts pertaining to the Social Sciences.
CG6 - Be able to apply scientific method to the economic, social and political questions of a global society; be able to formulate problems in this context, identify a possible explication or solution, and a method to contrast them by sensibly interpreting the data.

CB1 - Be able to show that they possess and comprehend facts and contents in an area of study which, based on a previous general secondary school level, have been extended to those included in advanced textbooks and in some aspects proceed from the most advanced studies in this area.
CB2 - Be able to show that they have learned how to apply their knowledge professionally to their future jobs or tasks and that they possess the competences needed to develop and defend arguments and solve problems in that area of study.
CB3 - Be able to show that they are capable of collecting and interpreting the relevant data (normally within their area of study) needed for formulating judgments which require critical thought on social, scientific and ethical topics of relevance.
CB4 - Be able to show that they are able to transmit information, ideas, problems and solutions both to specialized and non-specialized publics.
CB5 - Be able to show that they have developed the learning skills required to perform further studies with a high degree of self-dependence.

OVERLAPPING COMPETENCES
CT1 - Acquire the capacity to communicate knowledge in oral and written form, both to specialized and to non-specialized publics.
CT2 - Acquire the capacity to establish good interpersonal communication and to work both in interdisciplinary and international teams.
CT3 - Acquire the capacity to organize and plan workloads, taking correct decisions based on the available information, collecting and interpreting relevant data in order to provide assessments in that area of study.
CT4 - Develop the motivation and capacity to perform independent continuous learning for life, with an endowment to adapt to change and new situations.

SPECIFIC COMPETENCES
CE10 - Be able to discern the differentiating elements in international problems in accordance to the development stages of a country.
CE11 - Be able to critically relate present and past events and processes.
CE12 - Be able to formulate and solve basic economic, social, political problems in an international context.
CE15 - Be able to design and evaluate programs to improve the management and quality of public and private services.
CE16 - Be able to carry out case studies and apply comparative method to analyze institutions, processes and policies in different countries.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
· Ability to analyze, from a pluridisciplinary perspective, the principal aspects of international relations on different levels: aggregate (states, societies and economies), individual, and collectives (organizations, firms, interest groups).
· Capacity to recognize and contrast key facts, processes and historical factors and to determine the relationships between the political, social and economic aspects in the societies under study.
· Capacity to elaborate with clear and well-reasoned arguments the connections between the different disciplines within established theoretical frameworks.
· Capacity to determined, contrast and analyze the social, economic and political determinants of structures and developments in an international environment, and to reflect about

DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS: PROGRAMME

This is an advanced class on international politics in which several topics with practical examples will be presented, discussed and analyzed from a political science point of view, but integrating of with views of adjacent fields in social sciences and humanities.

The objective of the course is to provide students with adequate instruments for the theoretical and empirical analysis of structures, processes and outcomes in international politics, integrating the national and the international level, and therefore such cases will be studied in great depth, and the standard analytical instruments of political science to study them will be trained and contrasted with the methodologies of adjacent fields.

This includes practical research by the students themselves: engagement with existing literature and results, formulating research questions, hypotheses, gathering empirical information, sorting it, analyzing and interpreting it. Presentation and discussion of results in oral and written form.

ASSESSMENT SYSTEM

Continuous assessment (40%) and one end-of-term exam (40%)