Formation/Cours

Few areas in world politics today are not regulated, formally or informally, by one or more international organizations (IOs). During the course of this seminar, we ask whether and how these organizations influence the policies and behaviors of sovereign states—through mechanisms such as hand-tying, coercion, learning, assessment, standard setting, and the spreading of norms, to name a few. We also think about the effect of powerful member states on IO policies; and contend with the recent wave of politicization and populist challenges against cooperation through IOs.
A broader goal of the course is to practice a scientific approach to studying political phenomena. We
think critically about how scholars in empirical social sciences theorize answers to research questions, derive testable hypotheses from those theories, and how they use evidence to test such propositions. We cover a host of theories and perspectives that allow us to think generally about these relationships.

There is a webpage for this course on the iCampus.univ-catholille.fr platform. Find it on your dashboard after logging in at https://icampus.univ-catholille.fr/course/view.php?id=66094. Students are expected to check the course website on a regular basis and to subscribe to email notifications from the Announcements forum. If you cannot access the course website, promptly notify the instructor. All required readings for the class meetings are available online free of charge when accessed via the University’s library services. Please be sure to obtain all necessary material well in advance of deadlines and reach out to the instructor if you have trouble doing so.