After completing the course, students will understand the unique characteristics of American legislative politics and the role of Congress in it, as well as understand how Congress can affect American foreign policy. Student will have a sound understanding of the evolution of modern Congress, electoral politics, congressional rules and procedures and Congress' role in forming American foreign policy, including the use of American military power. Transatlantic implications of congressional foreign policy power will also be introduced. Instead of a final exam, students will introduce a bill currently under congressional consideration and present it at the end seminar.
Structure:
Email registration by 1 September essential
This course is an introduction to the Finnish Political System and Finnish Political History. The main focus of the course is on the development of the Finnish Political System from 1809 until the 21st century. This course provides an overview of the Constitution, political decision making and elections, political participation, tripartite agreements and welfare. After the course, students are expected to understand the key features of Finnish political history, the political system and society, as well as able to perceive the political position and national identity of Finland in a wider context: Scandinavia, Russia and the EU.
Enrolment is conducted at the first lecture.
Course contents:
Global Health and Development (GHD)-ohjelman järjestämä kurssi, jonka toteuttavat julkisoikeus ja politiikan tutkimus.
This course focuses on the interaction of small and great powers in Northern Europe, bilateral and multilateral political dynamics as well as on dynamics of change and continuity in Finnish-Russian relations and EU-Russian relations.
It is commonly argued that the European Union suffers from a democratic deficit. Yet both academics and politicians are divided about both the existence of such deficit and about ways of addressing it. Drawing on a wide range of recent publications, the course examines various dimensions of the alleged democratic deficit from lack of citizen engagement to scenarios of genuine supranational democracy.
Email registration by 12 October essential
Contents
It all used to be so neat and tidy – either a single-party, majority Conservative government or a single-party, majority Labour government. That was the classical two-party Westminster model. Then in 2011 the election produced a ‘hung parliament’ and a continental-style coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Two referenda – on a new electoral system and Scottish Independence – and then, in May 2015, against all the opinion polls predictions, a return to a very narrow single-party Conservative government. Moreover, Cameron has promised an ‘in-out’ referendum on British membership of the European Union in 2017. What’s going on in British politics? In Scotland in May 2015 the Scottish National Party won 56 out of the 59 Westminster seats ‘north of the border’ with 50% of the vote; in England the populist, anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party attracted 14.2% of the electorate and the Greens got 4.2%. Despite the return to single-party government, British politics displays more ‘continental features’ than ever before. The course will begin with the May 2015 British general election and consider the extraordinarily changing nature of contemporary British politics.
The main themes will include:
Lecture Programme
October 20 The 2015 British General Election: ‘The End of British Politics’?
October 22 The ‘Continentalisation’ of British Politics: An Analytical Framework
October 27 The British Parliament: A Toothless Tiger?
October 29 Towards a Federal Britain or the Break-Up of Britain?
November 3 Where will the ‘Neverendum’ End? Scotland Towards Independence?
November 5 In/Out, Shake It All About: Party Politics and the 2017 EU Referendum
November 10 Must Labour Lose?
November 12 Plus ça change…..
Email registration by 12 October essential
This course provides an introduction and overview over the disciplines of political and critical discourse analysis. The course will focus on various approaches to political discourse analysis as a tool for analyzing power relations. There is no set single approach, as the field is quite porous. The related works of scholars will be made available for the students for reading, analysis, and reflection during the course. After the course, the students are expected to better understand the various approaches to political discourse analysis and are better equipped to utilize these theories in their forthcoming work. The students will be more adept at spotting discursive practices in political speech and the media and evaluate possible underlying modes of argumentation. The language of the course is English, so students are expected to be reasonably proficient in reading and writing academic texts in this language.
Enrolment via email to teacher responsible. Optimal group size is 20 students, so places on the course are limited. Enrolment prioritized for political science students, otherwise in order of registration.
Course contents:
Global Health and Development (GHD)-ohjelman järjestämä kurssi, jonka toteuttavat julkisoikeus ja politiikan tutkimus.
Upon completing the course, the students can analyse the political economy of energy transitions across several established and emerging powers in wider Europe and Asia. The students also develop advanced knowledge of one such emerging actor. The students discern the resource based, financial, institutional and other dimensions underpinning the political economy of energy transitions in Europe and Asia, including several EU countries, Russia, China, Japan and others.
Registration by email to Anna Oksa (anna.matilda.oksa (at) uta.fi) by 31 January 2016.
Registering by email to eero.palmujoki(at)uta.fi.
A web-based course
The course is web-based.
Registration in December 2015, starting 1st of December. See
The course critically examines the underlying structural and institutional causes of the Euro crisis. After completion, students will have a better understanding of the basic features of economic governance under the Economic and Monetary Union and the governance reforms implemented during the euro crisis. Students will be able to orient current developments within an appropriate historical context and understand the limitations this history imposes on the contemporary policy landscape.
Email registration by January 11 essential
Context
At the April 2015 general election the Finnish Centre Party became the largest party for the third time in the last four general elections, a remarkable achievement for a former farmers’ party in a post-modern, post-Nokia society. Indeed, the Finnish Centre has boasted no less than four prime ministers over the course of the first decade and a half of the new millennium. Elsewhere in Northern Europe there are Centre Parties with a capital ‘C’ in Estonia, Norway and Sweden. All the Nordic Centre parties originated as class-based agrarian parties that changed their name in response to social structural change (industrialization and urbanization) in the period 1957-1965. The Estonian Centre Party is a more recent post-communist-era phenomenon (growing out of the revolutionary Popular Front) which took its name from the Swedish Centre. All the North European Centre Parties (except the non-EU Norwegian) work together in the ALDE (The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) group in the European Parliament whilst the Nordic Centre Parties form part of the Centre Group in the inter-parliamentary consultative body, the Nordic Council.
Theoretical Focus
However, as Reuven Hazan has observed, “a Centre-label party need not be a centre or a middle party”. Accordingly, the course considers what sort of parties the North European Centre Parties are. How ‘central’ have these Centre Parties been – central in the sense of playing a central role in government-building, occupying a central position on the political spectrum and able to combine in coalition with parties both to the political left or right? The analytical starting point is the rather neglected notion of a ‘pivotal centre party’ (Keman 1994; 2010) and its close relative the ‘hinge centre party’. The literature (Abedi and Siaroff 2010) has tended the use these terms interchangeably but in this course it is argued that it is useful to retain a distinction between them. Other core course concepts include ‘party change’, the ‘catchall party’ and ‘legislative party system dynamics’.
The Empirical Body of the Course
Three measures of centrality are proposed: i) electoral dominance ii) ideological centrality iii) strategic coalitional centrality. These are then applied in turn to the four North European Centre Parties.
Lecture Schedule
19/1 Introduction. The Scandinavian Party System(s)
21/1 Analysing ‘party change’. From Farmyard to City Square
26/1 The Swedish Centre. From a policy-seeking to an office-seeking paty?
28/1 The Norwegian Centre. Forever a sing-interest party?
2/2 The Finnish Centre. A ‘genuine pivot party’?
4/2 Analysing ‘party system change’. Legislative party system realignment?
9/2 Are the Nordic Centre-label parties centrist parties?
11/2 Centre-label parties. A future?
Email registration by 11 January essential
Upon completing the course, the students can analyse the political economy of energy transitions across several established and emerging powers in wider Europe and Asia. The students also develop advanced knowledge of one such emerging actor. The students discern the resource based, financial, institutional and other dimensions underpinning the political economy of energy transitions in Europe and Asia, including several EU countries, Russia, China, Japan and others.
Registration by email to Anna Oksa (anna.matilda.oksa (at) uta.fi) by 31 January 2016.
Registering by email to eero.palmujoki(at)uta.fi.
A web-based course
Upon the completion of this course, the student understands how gender and sexuality shape different levels of global politics, from the mundane individual lives to the high politics within and between states. The student recognizes the multiple meanings of gender and sexuality, and understands how they are reproduced in different contexts from the local to the global and from the micro to the macro. The student will be familiar with literatures of feminist International Relations (IR), as well as the nexus and potential dialogue between IR and Gender Studies more generally.
The themes to be discussed during the lectures include:
Following the lectures, each of the themes will be discussed in a respective seminar with analytical excercises where students learn to examine and unpack the ways the theoretical conceptions unfold in the micro level. Here, different cultural and popular cultural artefacts, from films to literature to art are utilized as the basis of the discussion.
The course consists of lectures, 4 x 2 hours (8hrs) and seminars, 4 x 4 hrs (16hrs).
The completion of the course requires active participation in the lectures/seminars, and completing the required exercises on the Moodle platform.
The course is web-based.
Registration in December 2015, starting 1st of December. See
This course explores parliaments and new forms of citizen participation. After the course, the students have developed a critical viewpoint about the debate between traditional forms of representative democracy and newer alternative participatory mechanisms. Moreover, they acquire comprehensive knowledge of recent parliamentary reforms and democratic innovations to promote more direct or qualitative channels of civic involvement. From enhancing digital engagement and public consultation of legislative bills to experimenting with deliberative forums or embracing citizens initiatives, students can identify how contemporary parliaments try to reach out the people and assess the impact and limitations of such initiatives.
Email registration by 19 February essential
The global geo-political context of terrorism and war is analysed with the central focus directed to the evolution of global terrorism and the forms it has taken in the post-WWII and post-Cold War era. Terrorism is one of many challenges to the sovereign power of nation-states and the most pressing of the political problems associated with this ‘global crisis’ of terrorism will be evaluated. Students explore this challenge essentially through themes inclusive of terror organizations/movements and their development, the complex relationship between terrorism groups and insurgency movements, and the response of modern nation-states and the international community to various types of terrorist organizations. Students apply critical reasoning to complex issues through independent and collaborative research.
The course content will be drawn from but not restricted to:
Email registration by 1 March essential
I Orientation:
-Watching at least 2 video lectures of 2015 course recordings
- Watching a distinctive collection of videos on poverty
-Reading a book or 2-3 articles from the list given
-Participation in a web-debate at the Moodle site
II Process writing (see learning methods below: essay)
III Blog writing (see learning methods below: blog)
LEARNING METHODS
MOODLE:
Orientation part ends with Moodle discussion.
1) Student should form one sound question/argument and support it with 100 words argumentation
2) Student should give two different 50 word comments on the questions/arguments of the fellow students. One of those should be addressed on such question/argument that has not been commented or is an object of little discussion so far
Moodle will also be used for distributing papers and comments.
Moodle provides links to the video materials used at the course.
There will be a brief ‘multiple choice’ tests in each section making sure you have gained the key message from the video based material.
SEMINARS:
Each student must participate in two seminar sessions.
ESSAY:
Each student prepares a 2000-word paper including 5-15 references on freely chosen topic on global poverty. The seminar session are held to produce ideas and comments that help everyone's writing process. Instructions will be given later.
BLOG:
In addition to commenting papers, within the mid-paper seminars about 5-6 best blog ideas (indicating instantly higher section-grades for these students) are chosen and 4-5 commentators for each of these are selected (good comments are valued). Blog posts go to the blog site of the program for Global Health and Development Writing at https://www.uta.fi/globalhealth.