1 RPOS102M Comparative and International Politics

Course Description: The course is an introduction to the actors, issues and processes of international relations and comparative politics and the theories that attempt to explain them. We will examine several of the central questions that interest political scientists when they explore international relations and comparative politics. Why are there wars? How is peace achieved? What are the implications of anarchy for world politics? How do states and decision-makers choose between conflict and cooperation? How does politics interact with economics on the global scene? Do morality and norms effect international relations and if so how? Why do some countries protect human rights and others not? How does democracy develop? The goal of the course is to create a familiarity of the elements that make up international relations and comparative politics and a critical understanding of the theories that explain them. The course will stress analytical thinking. Each student will be encouraged to identify the theories that he or she feels best explain comparative politics and international relations and to justify those choices. As a University General Education requirement for methods we will also discuss methods used in comparative and IR to analyze politics and students will do an exercise in hypothesis testing in the last paper. Course Objectives The course is structured with multiple assignments that will convey a great deal of information both in theory and empirical knowledge in a relatively short time frame of a semester. By the end of the course students should: 1