International Politics (Core Course)

This course is one of a two course sequence designed to introduce Ph.D. students to the literatures, questions and puzzles in the international field of political science. It provides a survey of the non-security related literatures of the international politics field. A course focusing on security is typically offered in the spring semester by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. For some time this ``non-security’’ remainder has been called international political economy (IPE), however that label is becoming increasingly inappropriate (if it ever was). It masks the importance of literatures on international cooperation that obviously transcend more purely economic issues such as trade, finance and development. Furthermore the IPE subfield is not typically though to include increasingly important international political topics such as human rights, international law and adjudication, and the political processes of the United Nations. These topics are covered in this course along with more clearly economic issues such as trade, finance and development. 

The course is divided into two sections. The first covers general theories of cooperation that are useful for understanding cooperation across issue area (including international security). This part of the course addresses questions like: Why do states need to cooperate with each other? Why do states comply with their agreements even under conditions of anarchy. How are international agreements created? What is the proper size of international agreements? There are two dominant paradigms active in political science today for addressing these questions: the rational choice approach and the constructivist approach.  Although I am not agnostic as to which of these approaches does a better job of explaining international cooperation both have their strengths and weaknesses and so we will discuss both in class. The second section will turn to particular policy issues in international politics each of which enjoys its own rather specialized literature.

International Organization

This course was prepared for the Alexander Hamilton Center at New York University. It focuses on looking for solutions to the problem of civil war grounded in logic and evidence. Civil war is obviously, one of the most pressing problems in current comparative and international politics. The enduring conflicts in Iraq, Sudan, Colombia and dozens of other places occupy the front pages of our newspapers. The destruction caused by civil wars dwarfs that caused by international war, in part because civil wars are far more common than international wars. The international community expendssubstantial resources on helping war-torn countries overcome their civil conflicts. Why do civil wars break out? How can the international community help end them? Why do people join rebel movements?

We will address these questions this semester. In doing so thecourse is organized around two main puzzles of civil war. The first puzzle which I'll call the ``inefficiency puzzle,’’ is that civil wars occur even though in most cases there is a peaceful solution to the conflict that makes all combatants better off. The second puzzle, which I'll call the ``collective action puzzle,’’ is that individuals join rebel movements even though thereare enormous incentives to ``free ride.'' We will begin the course by studying the theories that produced these two puzzles as well as empirical research both for and against those theories. These are not the only theoretical approaches we will encounter in this course but they will be the most recurrent ones. The final third of the course will turn to the role of the international community in addressing the problem of civil war.