Vincent Ferraro
103 Skinner Hall
vferraro@mtholyoke.edu
538-2669
This course will introduce some of the basic concepts in the study of world politics. It is a survey course and assumes no prior knowledge or experience in the study of International Relations. The first half of the course will focus on the traditional perspectives in world politics; the second half of the course will emphasize new challenges to the study of world politics. The course will be run as a lecture, although questions, comments, and discussion are always welcome.
There will be a weekly quiz on the readings, discussions, lectures, and current events. I will take the ten highest grades from these quizzes (which means you can miss some or I will drop some low grades). The quiz grades will constitute 50% of your final grade.
There will be an exercise in navigating the World Wide Web. The project will count for 50% of your final grade. If you wish to see examples of last term's projects, click here. The criteria I will use for evaluating the final projects are outlined in an evaluation sheet that can be accessed here. LITS has a special office to help students develop web projects for courses, and offers training sessions in web software. You can check the calendar for these workshops here. Submission procedures for the web page can be found here.
Your web site projects can be viewed here.
The readings in the syllabus are on the Internet and can be accessed at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/spring08.htm. There are no books to purchase for this course. However, you are required to keep abreast of current events in world politics, and I strongly urge reading a prominent daily newspaper. A subscription to a newspaper would be highly recommended. I will choose questions for the weekly quizzes and post them on a blogsite that can can be accessed at: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/vferraro
My office is 103 Skinner, and my office hours are Mondays from 3:00-4:30 and Thursdays from 10:30-12. I can also be reached on e-mail: vferraro@mtholyoke.edu.
Lecture Notes on Political Realism
Benedict Carey, "Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?" New York Times, 1 July 2008
11 February--Realism and the Techniques of Control (1): The Balance of Power
Morton Kaplan's Rules on the Balance of Power
13 February Building a Web Page
Some Statistics on the Extent of European Colonialism
The Largest Historical Empires
25-27 February Imperialism and the Westernization of International Politics
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Middle East Media Research Institute, "Tunisian Progressive Basit bin Hasan: Why There's Opposition to Human Rights in Arab Society," Special Dispatch Series, No. 1810, January 11, 2008
3 March Realism and the Techniques of Control (3): Hegemonic StabilityStatistics on Hegemonic Predominance
Parag
Khanna, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony," New York Times, January
27, 2008
5-12 March The Great European War, 1914-1945: The Struggle for Hegemony
F.S. Northedge and M.J. Grieve, A Hundred Years of International Relations, (New York: Praeger, 1971), Chapter 5, "The Approach to the First World War," pp. 71-90 and Chapter 6, "The Morrow of Armageddon," pp. 91-111.
The Growth of Non-Liberal Regimes in the Interwar Period
Lecture Notes on Just War Doctrine
31 March-2 April The Cold War
Lecture Notes on Non-Proliferation
Nuclear Arsenals, early-1990s and projected to 2012
Niall Ferguson, "A World Without Power," Foreign Policy, July/August 2004James F. Hoge, Jr., "A Global Power Shift in the Making," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004
Gary J. Bass, Independence Daze," New York Times, January 6, 2008
Levels of World Economic Performance, 1500-1992
The Ten Leading Economies in 1820 and 1992
PricewaterhouseCoopers, "Companies Should Seize Opportunities Posed By Major Shift In Power To Emerging Economies By 2050," 3 March 2006
Peter Marsh, "US to lose role as top manufacturer," Financial Times, May 23 2007Vincent Ferraro, "Dependency Theory: An Introduction," July 1996
BBC News Online, "Greenland melt 'speeding up'," 11 August 2006
John Browne, "Beyond Kyoto," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004
David Evans, "No smoking hot spot," The Australian, July 18, 2008
5 May Challenges to Realism (6): Can the Nation-State Provide Economic Justice?
Levels of Per Capita GDP and Interregional Spreads, 1000-1998
Shares of World GDP, 1000-1998