The Occidental Impact Fund (OxyIF) is a new student-led organization dedicated to the ideas of socially responsible investing and entrepreneurship. It aims to be engaged in micro-financing and a variety of other projects with the goal of “changing the world, one dollar, one person, one impact at a time.”
Follow all of their progress at their new blog!
This course is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and analytical developments in the field of international relations. Although current events in global politics are obviously at the heart of the course, the goal of the course is not just to make you aware of current events. It is to get you to think about them; to get you to think critically and creatively about the themes and processes of international politics that apply not only to current events but that are likely to apply to events that will occur during your next 60 plus years on this earth.
DWA261 @ Oxy: Small Guns, Big Guns: Controlling the Spread of Weapons of War (FA09)
Controlling the spread of weapons continues to be one of the most critical issues in international politics. This course explores the variety of challenges associated with the issues of arms control and nonproliferation. Our specific topics will include small arms trafficking, missile control and defense, nuclear weapons proliferation and policy, chemical and biological weapons, and “future weapons” based on emerging technologies. As we consider each, specific case studies will be used to illuminate the challenges facing various countries, particularly as they are forced to steer between domestic and international politics.
Why is international cooperation so difficult? There are an increasing number of issues that need to be solved globally. Countries seem to recognize this. They also seem to recognize that they will be better off if they can successfully deal with these issues. So, if countries have similar sets of interests around these issues, why is cooperation between nations such a tough slog?
This seminar is about wrestling with this question in a variety of analytical, theoretical, and systematic ways. We’ll take a theoretical look at the challenges associated with “collective action,” and we’ll use these theoretical insights to try to better understand the specific challenges of collective action associated with particular global issues: the environment, global public health, terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, and global disaster preparedness.
While the focus of the class will be on international collective action, you will likely discover that many of our collective action challenges are found in interaction at a variety of levels of interaction, right down to the interpersonal. Indeed, as often as possible, we will attempt to bring the lessons of collective action right into the classroom in order to hammer this home.
How does the study of international political economy help us explain and understand international relations? For example, what is the relationship between economics and conflict? This course offers a chance to explore the answers to these questions. The first section of the course is devoted to the introduction of some of the key concepts and approaches to the study of IPE. After establishing this theoretical foundation, we begin to explore the way a political economy-centered approach helps us explain and understand conflict around the world. A number of case studies provide common ground for exploration on topics such as the relationship between global conflict and the economic rise of China, trade disputes, the relationship between poverty and conflict, and the relationship between natural resources and conflict (particularly intrastate violence). In each of these cases, our political economy approach is used not only to explain but also to explore possible solutions.
How do we assess the health of international regimes? Many analysts have insisted recently that the nuclear nonproliferation regime is in urgent need of repair or that it should even be discarded because of its supposed ineffectiveness. However, it is essential that statements about the regime being in crisis be scrutinized for veracity and utility. While the spread of nuclear weapons poses an undeniable and serious threat to international security, a mistaken crisis mentality with respect to the regime could lead to rash attempts to alter it in unnecessary or ineffective ways or, at worst, to discard it completely. In this paper, Jeffrey Fields and I return to a theoretical framework that differentiates regimes, across both issue areas and time, to provide a more specified evaluation of regime health. By disaggregating the nuclear nonproliferation regime and assessing the individual and interactive health of multiple dimensions, a number of dimension-specific, regime-strengthening policy recommendations emerge.
Fields, J. & J. Enia (2009) “The Health of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime: Returning to a Multidimensional Evaluation,” The Nonproliferation Review 16(2): 173-196. [Download]
