The Politics of Time
Course content
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Politics does not simply unfold in time, it actively produces temporal orders. Electoral cycles, legislative mandates, crisis declarations, development plans, generational categories, and narratives of progress or decline do not merely organise events chronologically; they constitute political subjects, priorities, and possibilities. Time shapes what counts as normal, urgent, premature, belated, sustainable, or inevitable.
This course examines time and temporality as constitutive dimensions of political life. It explores how temporal frameworks – linear progress, crisis time, anticipation, life-course norms, productivity timelines – organise institutions, structure public debate, and distribute political worth. Concepts such as chrononormativity, acceleration, waiting, long-termism, and anticipatory governance allow us to analyse how power operates through tempo, sequencing, and the organisation of futures.
Across diverse domains including public health, migration, welfare, and climate governance, students will examine how crisis framings suspend or compress democratic procedures; how appeals to ‘future generations’ reshape present obligations; and how age, productivity, and migration regimes sort populations according to temporal value. We analyse how urgency, delay, prevention, and sustainability operate as political rationalities that structure action and justify intervention. Attention to temporality reveals how inequality is reproduced not only through resources or representation, but through the differential allocation of time itself — who must wait, who can delay, who is considered ‘on time’ or ‘out of sync’.
The course draws on political and social theory and critical policy studies. It also introduces methodological strategies for analysing temporal dynamics empirically, including time frame analysis, narrative analysis and the study of anticipatory practices. By treating time as a central object of analysis, the course invites students to reconsider how time, politics, and social life are co-constituted in ways that shape authority, responsibility, and democratic possibility.
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Full-degree students enrolled at the Department of Political Science, UCPH
- MSc in Political Science
- MSc in Social Science
- MSc in Security Risk Management
- Bachelor in Political Science
Full-degree students enrolled at the Faculty of Social Science, UCPH
- Master Programme in Social Data Science
- Bachelor and Master Programmes in Sociology
- Bachelor and Master Programmes in Psychology
- Bachelor and Master Programmes in Anthropology
- Master programme in Global Development
The course is open to:
- Exchange and Guest students from abroad
- Credit students from Danish Universities
- Open University students
Knowledge:
- Demonstrate advanced knowledge of key theoretical approaches to time and temporality in political and social research.
- Explain how temporal frameworks such as crisis, urgency, anticipation, long-termism, and life-course norms operate in political and policy contexts.
- Account for how institutions produce temporal orders through devices such as deadlines, indicators, forecasts, prevention regimes, and generational categories.
- Describe how temporal structures shape political authority, responsibility, and inequality.
Skills:
- Analyse political and policy cases using concepts of temporality (e.g. crisis time, chrononormativity, anticipatory governance).
- Identify and critically assess temporal assumptions embedded in political discourse, institutional design, and policy documents.
- Apply temporal analytical tools (e.g. narrative analysis, discourse analysis, frame analysis) to empirical material.
- Formulate research questions or analytical arguments that explicitly incorporate temporal dynamics.
Competences:
- Integrate a temporal perspective into independent political analysis.
- Critically evaluate how competing temporalities structure political conflict and governance.
- Reflect on the normative and political implications of temporal framings in democratic contexts.
- Work independently to develop temporally informed analyses of political phenomena.
The course is organised as seminar-based teaching combining
short lectures, structured discussion, and group-based analytical
exercises.
Each session begins with a focused conceptual introduction that
situates key debates on temporality in relation to political
phenomena. These inputs are followed by guided discussion of the
required readings, with emphasis on critical engagement and
application to empirical cases.
Students work individually and in small groups to analyse political
and policy examples through a temporal lens. Selected sessions
include workshop-style exercises where students apply course
concepts to policy documents, institutional designs, or cases of
their own choosing. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on
developing the ability to identify and analyse temporal assumptions
embedded in political discourse and governance
practices.
The following is a non-exhaustive, preliminary, and illustrative list of readings associated with the course.
Adams, V., Murphy, M., Clarke, A.E., 2009. Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28, 246–265. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.18
Altstaedt, S., 2023. Future-cultures: How future imaginations disseminate throughout the social. European Journal of Social Theory 13684310231212732. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310231212732
Bazzani, G., 2023. Futures in Action: Expectations, Imaginaries and Narratives of the Future. Sociology 57, 382–397. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385221138010
Beckert, J., 2016. Imagined futures: fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Beckert, J., Suckert, L., 2021. The future as a social fact. The analysis of perceptions of the future in sociology. Poetics 84, 101499. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2020.101499
Brown, P., Heyman, B., Alaszewski, A., 2013. Time-framing and health risks. Health, Risk & Society 15, 479–488. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2013.846303
Campbell, T., 2013. The temporal horizon of ‘the choice’: Anxieties and banalities in ‘time’, modern and liquid modern. Thesis Eleven 118, 19–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513613500269
Esguerra, A., 2019. Future objects: tracing the socio-material politics of anticipation. Sustain Sci 14, 963–971. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00670-3
Flyverbom, M., Garsten, C., 2021. Anticipation and Organization: Seeing, knowing and governing futures. Organization Theory 2, 263178772110203. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211020325
Gokmenoglu, B., 2022. Temporality in the social sciences: New directions for a political sociology of time. British Journal of Sociology 73, 643–653. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12938
Guston, D.H., 2014. Understanding ‘anticipatory governance.’ Soc Stud Sci 44, 218–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312713508669
Howlett, M., Goetz, K.H., 2014. Introduction: time, temporality and timescapes in administration and policy. International Review of Administrative Sciences 80, 477–492. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852314543210
Huizenga, S., Van De Bovenkamp, H., Oldenhof, L., Bal, R., 2023. The clocks run at slightly different speeds. Clashing timeframes in COVID-19 health risk governance. Health, Risk & Society 25, 366–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2023.2255619
Jacobs, A.M., 2011. Governing for the Long Term: Democracy and the Politics of Investment, 1st ed. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511921766
Jacobs, A.M., 2016. Policy Making for the Long Term in Advanced Democracies. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 19, 433–454. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-110813-034103
MacKenzie, M.K., 2021. There is no such thing as a short-term issue. Futures 125, 102652. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2020.102652
Minkkinen, M., 2019. The anatomy of plausible futures in policy processes: Comparing the cases of data protection and comprehensive security. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 143, 172–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2019.03.007
Mische, A., 2014. Measuring futures in action: projective grammars in the Rio + 20 debates. Theor Soc 43, 437–464. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-014-9226-3
Nowotny, H., 1992. Time and Social Theory: Towards a Social Theory of Time. Time & Society 1, 421–454. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X92001003006
Pot, W., Scherpenisse, J., ’T Hart, P., 2023. Robust governance for the long term and the heat of the moment: Temporal strategies for coping with dual crises. Public Administration 101, 221–235. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12872
Selin, C., 2008. The Sociology of the Future: Tracing Stories of Technology and Time. Sociology Compass 2, 1878–1895. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00147.x
Suckert, L., 2022. Back to the Future. Sociological Perspectives on Expectations, Aspirations and Imagined Futures. Arch. eur. sociol. 63, 393–428. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975622000339
Tavory, I., Eliasoph, N., 2013. Coordinating Futures: Toward a Theory of Anticipation. American Journal of Sociology 118, 908–942. https://doi.org/10.1086/668646
When registered you will be signed up for exam.
- Full-degree students – sign up at Selfservice on KUnet
- Exchange and guest students from abroad – sign up through Mobility Online and Selfservice
- Credit students from Danish universities - sign up through this website.
- Open University students - sign up through this website.
The dates for the exams are found here Exams – Faculty of Social Sciences - University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)
Please note that it is your own responsibility to check for overlapping exam dates.
- ECTS
- 7,5 ECTS
- Type of assessment
-
Home assignment
- Type of assessment details
- Free written assignment.
See the section regarding exam forms in the programme curriculum for more information on guidelines and scope. - Aid
- All aids allowed except Generative AI
- Marking scale
- 7-point grading scale
- Censorship form
- No external censorship
- Exam period
-
Winter 2026/27
- Re-exam
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In the semester where the course takes place: Free written assignment
In subsequent semesters: Free written assignment
Criteria for exam assessment
Meet the subject's knowledge, skill and competence criteria, as described in the goal description, which demonstrates the minimally acceptable degree of fulfillment of the subject's learning outcome.
Grade 12 is given for an outstanding performance: the student lives up to the course's goal description in an independent and convincing manner with no or few and minor shortcomings
Grade 7 is given for a good performance: the student is confidently able to live up to the goal description, albeit with several shortcomings
Grade 02 is given for an adequate performance: the minimum acceptable performance in which the student is only able to live up to the goal description in an insecure and incomplete manner
Single subject courses (day)
- Category
- Hours
- Class Instruction
- 28
- Preparation
- 178
- English
- 206
Kursusinformation
- Language
- English
- Course number
- ASTK18488U
- ECTS
- 7,5 ECTS
- Programme level
- Full Degree Master
Bachelor
- Duration
-
1 semester
- Placement
- Autumn
- Price
-
http://polsci.ku.dk/uddannelser/eftervidereuddannelse/aabent_universitet/
- Studyboard
- Department of Political Science, Study Council
Contracting department
- Department of Political Science
Contracting faculty
- Faculty of Social Sciences
Course Coordinator
- Emily Flore St Denny (2-6968446d6a77326f7932686f)
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Kursusinformation for indskrevne studerende