The course is a team-taught, interdisciplinary survey class covering the most pressing international security problems facing the world today. The course has four main objectives: to teach students alternative social science theories for understanding contemporary international security problems; to provide the basic technical and scientific information needed to understand these problems; to explore the policy options that are available to decision-makers in the U.S. and other states; and to give students the intellectual tools and desire to continue to study international security issues after the course is over.

This course develops five basic perspectives from which to understand why environmental problems arise and how we can solve them. It then explores three processes of international policy development: identifying problems, designing and negotiating solutions, and implementing policies to change national behavior. We will use case studies to develop our understandings of these processes. We will seek answers to questions such as: What conditions produce agreements between countries to resolve problems? What types of rules prove most successful at inducing compliance? What sorts of trade-offs must be made between broad membership and stringent standards?

How should liberal, democratic governments respond to sub-state terrorism? Where should the line be drawn – if indeed this is the tradeoff – between security and freedom? What are the domestic and international consequences of adopting counter-terrorist measures? Do the answers change in the event of terrorist use of technology that has the potential to kill thousands of people?
This course examines terrorism, counterterrorism, and individual rights in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Israel, Turkey, and the United States. It draws on liberal political theory, regional history, constitutional texts, paramilitary documents, and media accounts to examine what measures have been instituted in these regions and to evaluate their impact on subsequent levels of violence. Emphasis will be placed on security measures instituted 1948-2002

Conflict prevention, mediation and implementation of peace agreements, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and humanitarian intervention. Topics: ethical dilemmas of conflict management, evaluation of international, regional, and non-governmental organizations in conflict management, the future of the UN, and the use of economic sanctions.

The course on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is devoted to exploring the links between various components of the establishment of democracy, economic growth and rule of law. The course will examine, in particular, how and why democratic, economically developed states arise as well as how rule of law can be established in places where historically it has been largely absent.
The research community at the Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law (CDDRL), which sponsors this course, generally agrees that the establishment of robust political, economic and legal institutions is an important piece in the puzzle of how democratic states are established and economies develop. But what do we mean by institutions exactly? What variation is there in how democracies are organized? We will take these questions as our starting points in exploring the complex and still poorly understood relationships between democracy, economic growth and law based polities.