Diplomacy and Foreign Policy are central to the understanding of international politics. The structure of the international system induces a constant need for political dialogue and negotiations. Besides war, diplomacy is the common language states are using to interact on the world stage.
Complementing the first core module (Theory and Concepts in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy), this module aims to apply your theoretical understanding of diplomacy and foreign policy to contemporary diplomatic and negotiation issues and great power politics. Our teaching and learning strategy seeks to give you both theoretical and practical understanding of contemporary issues in diplomacy and foreign policy. Where possible, academic teaching will be complemented by guest lectures (e.g. by a practitioner) and in-class activities such as mock negotiation exercises.
Topics covered vary each year but we often explore issues relating to the following areas: Nuclear weapons and foreign policy, Arms control and diplomacy, International climate negotiations, South-North relations and development, Diplomacy and terrorism, and Citizen protection.
This module aims to provide you with a broad understanding of the main areas of study within the field of international relations (IR). The introductory session seeks to address the general question as to what constitutes the study of IR. Subsequent sessions aim to examine the major approaches to the discipline (both mainstream and critical), focusing upon the distinctive insights and analyses that they have brought to bear.
You will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of the nature of the wide-ranging theoretical debates that have shaped the discipline and will also be encouraged to take a critical approach to these debates to consider the ways in which we study IR.
More particularly, you have the opportunity to:
- understand and critically assess the interpretation of the world and of IR put forward by each theory
- evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each theory
- apply the theoretical tools to the “facts out there” (linking theory with practice)
Whether global, national, ethnic or ethical, conflicts frequently involve religion. Between themselves, in their relations with secular states and ideologies, and even at the level of sects or denominations, religions engage in conflict arising from deeply held beliefs and values, as well as in struggles for power, status and legitimacy. Understanding how and why religious groups contribute to global and regional conflicts and civil wars – from terrorist attacks, through historically embedded disputes in Israel/Gaza and Northern Ireland, to Christian/Muslim violence in Nigeria, Uganda and India – is vital for development, humanitarian intervention, international relations, diplomacy and conflict resolution.
This module provides the knowledge and skills to help students understand and analyse why conflict happens within and between religious groups, and to assess the positive and negative contributions that religions make to wider struggles – from local disputes through to global terrorism.
Week 1: An Historical Introduction to 'Religion and Conflict' Week 2: Religion and Secularism in the West
Week 3: Religion and Secularism in India Week 4: Religion and Ethnic Conflict
Week 5: Conflict, Religion, and International Relations Week 6: Religion and Violence
Week 7: Religion and Protest: Mohandas Gandhi Week 8: Religion and Protest: Martin Luther King Week 9: Religion and Society: Islam in Britain Week 10: Consolidation Lecture
The module is designed to introduce students to key concepts and issues in scholarship on religion and conflict: e.g. on the relationship between conflict and violence, religion and ethnicity, the ‘clash of civilizations’, intra-religious as well as inter-religious conflict, jihad and martyrdom. Equal attention will be given to the importance of context – historical, social, geographical and political. Analysis and debate about religion and conflict will be situated in particular cases, from the UK and Europe, the US, the Indian sub-continent and sub-Saharan Africa. Lecture podcasts and online discussion activities will be complemented by online talks by experts and short films. There will be plenty of opportunities for online interaction with peers and tutors.
Assessment is by 5,000 word essay.
- Do we still know what security and war are?
- Why are some forms of violence classified as war while others are classified as criminality or terror?
- Now that security is everybody's business, how much safer are we?
- what kind of science is the science of security?
- And who in addition to states is in the business of making us secure?
Theorising helps us to pose and answer these questions. This module introduces students to ways of conceptualising power, security and war. Since forms of security and war are intimately correlated with forms of cultural political and economic life, theories in this module address: geopolitics, biopolitics, techno-science, digitalisation, molecularisation, network war, image war and virtual war. The teaching and learning strategy of Theorising Security and War is designed to make students theoretically and philosophically literate in conceptual and analytical schemes comprising the biopolitics as well as the geopolitics of security and war. Students should be able to:
- demonstrate a broad theoretical competence in relation to classical and contemporary texts dealing with the analysis of power relations, problematisations of security, sources of violence, and definitions and practices of war
- work critically with theoretical accounts of: contingency, uncertainty and risk radical relationality (complexity and networks); and changing problematisations of security
- Specifically they should be able to distinguish the salient features of geopolitical and biopolitical problematisations of security and war and the different calculative rationalities and governmental technologies employed by them
- locate a specific theoretical tradition within its wider theoretical and philosophical assumptions and be capable also of critical comparing different traditions in relation both to these assumptions and their different logical and practical entailments
In the process students should be able to demonstrate in written work, presentation and online discussion more refined analytical skills in the interrogation and critical engagement of empirical material and case studies drawn from a wide variety of multi-media sources.
Suggested Reading:
- Foucault, Michel, Society Must be Defended (Allen Lane, 2003)
- Castells, Manuel, The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell's, 2000)
- Messner, Dirk, The Network Society (Frank Cass, 1997)
- Creveld, Martin van, The Transformation of War (Free Press, 1991)
- Suganami, H, On the Causes of War (Clarendon Press, 1996)
- Giddens, Anthony, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Volume 2. Nation and Violence (Polity Press, 1987)
Diplomacy and Foreign Policy are central to the understanding of international politics. The structure of the international system induces a constant need for political dialogue and negotiations. Besides war, diplomacy is the common language states are using to interact on the world stage.
This module introduces students to ways of conceptualizing diplomacy and foreign policy in the 21st century:
- Why do states rely on diplomacy?
- What are the current forms and features of diplomacy and foreign policy?
- Is diplomacy the only form of international dialogue besides war?
- How do states (and statesmen) negotiate?
- How has diplomacy evolved throughout history?
- Does 'global governance' exist?
The teaching and learning strategy of this distance learning Diplomacy and Foreign Policy module is designed to give students both theoretical and practical understanding of contemporary issues in diplomacy and foreign policy. Lectures podcasting and online discussion activities will be complemented by live online talks offered by practitioners through video conferencing facility. Distance learning students will have a lot of opportunities of online interaction with peers and tutors.
Suggested Key Readings:
R. Barston, Modern Diplomacy, Longman, 2006.
G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, Palgrave, 2002.
S. Smith et al., Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases, OUP, 2012.
J. P. Muldoon et al., The New Dynamics of Multilateralism Diplomacy, International Organizations, and Global Governance, Westview Press, 2005.
A. Heywood, Global Politics, Palgrave, 2011.
