Global Politics

Rules, laws and institutions do not simply drop from the sky. Social orders at different scales are produced and reproduced in political dynamics where efforts to consolidate and strengthen rights and authorities are being challenged by bearers of conflicting interests and unequal powers. Rules, laws and institutions connect local and global sites of politics in asymmetrical power relations, and make up political landscapes of regulation and resistance, of recognition and accountability, and of negotiation and conflict.

Global Politics focuses on the production as well as the reception and political and institutional effect of global political connections and disconnections. The agendas of powerful political players – nation states, business consortia, and organisations often from the global North – are mediated through international organisations, conventions and codified practices. This shapes institutional architecture and ideology. However, the reception and effects are virtually always localised and mediated through already existing institutions and actively pursued local agendas. Globalisation does therefore not produce uniform political and institutional outcomes but rather a tremendous variation of ideology, political movement, institutions and law. Especially in weak and fragile states, this tends to happen in unexpected ways.

The thrust of the course is on how global phenomena and dynamics impact local arenas rather than on International Relations, mainstream political science analysis of regime forms, administration, or policy analysis. For these aspects, students are advised to look for elective courses in the second year.
 

The course provides students with the conceptual tools to analyse and understand institutional dynamics and their consequences for developing countries and emerging economies. Especially, the students will be able to analyse dilemmas, tensions, and conflicts in legal and organisational infrastructures. The course will focus on what constitutes ‘data’ when analysing politics, law, and institutional change. The ability to combine data on policy, law, rules, practice, discourse, protest and conflict that cuts through levels from global to local is essential. This prepares students for engaging with amorphous forms of data in their careers.