Pre-registration for seminars is not permitted. Instructor permission is required before registration. Please see here for detailed seminar registration guidelines.

Section 001: Foreign Policy & Decision Making
Professor Barbara Farnham
How can we account for the foreign policies of states in the international system?Why do they behave the way they do?This seminar focuses on a critical examination of the major explanations for foreign policy outcomes.Our main emphasis is on decision-making.However, we will begin with explanations operating at other levels of analysis, such as the international system and domestic politics.We then explore decision-making explanations, including those derived from cognitive and social psychology, theories of motivation and personality, the impact of the political context, and the role of group dynamics.Throughout, we will be looking at these different approaches in the light of actual episodes taken largely, but not exclusively, from American foreign policy.

Section 002: Comparative National Security Strategies of Countries of the Middle East
Professor Charles Freilich
At the crossroads of three continents, the Middle East is home to many diverse peoples, with ancient cultures, in varying stages of development, often in conflict. The primary source of the world's energy, it is also the locus of the terror-WMD-fundamentalist nexus, threatening regional and international security.  In a state of historic flux, the region's internal sources of unrest and possible upheaval are of great consequence to the international economy and security. The seminar surveys the national security challenges facing the region's primary players (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinians, Turkey, Jordan), focusing on their perceptions of the threats and opportunities they face and on the strategies they have adopted to deal with them. 

Section 003: Political Economy of Trade & Investment
Professor Pablo Pinto
Prerequisites: POLS V1601 or the equivalent, and instructor's permission.  This seminar examines the politics of several major issues in international trade and direct investment.  It analyzes the distributional impact of globalization, and explores why and how governments regulate the flow of goods and capital across national borders.  The course is divided into four blocs that look at the patterns and distributive consequences of trade, the political economy of trade politics, the political economy of trade reform, and the political economy of investment, respectively.  Students are required to actively participate in weekly discussions, to write two review papers during the course of the semester, and submit a final research paper on one of the topics of the seminar.

Section 004: Left-Right Divide in Globalizing Economy
Professor Yotam Margalit

Section 005: State Failure & International Politics
Professor Linda Kirschke

Spring - 2010