Course overview:  This course is an intermediate/advanced graduate-level instruction on the American Congress as the major law-making and representative arm of the American state. It offers a broad discussion on the structure and organization of Congress, its constitutional powers, the electoral system, its role in agenda-setting and policy making, and its representative function on behalf of respective constituents and interest groups. Furthermore, the course weighs rather heavily on the style, nuances and pragmatism of Congressional politics and its historical and future implications for American representative democracy.

Instructional outcomes / learning objectives: A student who successfully completes this class, should be able to: acquire an integrated understanding of the nature and responsibilities of the American Congress as an institution; understand its functional and political relationships with the executive, the courts, interest groups, and the public; understand the role of Congress as a central actor in the checks and balances that characterize American government; understand the role of institutions, interest groups, and other publics as participants in the democratic process; evelop an analytical frame of mind and a critical assessment of congressional politics and its implications for representative democracy; and acquire adequate foundation to take other higher-level courses in American government and politics.

Basic course outline:

(1) The U. S. Constitution and the Foundation of Congressional Power

(2) Preparing for Elections: What Motivates Legislators?

(3) The Electoral Basis of Congressional Structure: Incumbency and Nationalizing the Vote

(4) The Committee System: Workhorse of Congress

(5) Congressional Lawmaking: How a Bill Becomes Law

(6) Congressional-Executive Relations and the Courts

(7) Congressional Decisionmaking and Policy Preferences

(8) Interest Articulation and Lobbying Fundamentals

(9) Congressional Role in Domestic and Foreign Policy: Credit Claiming and Pork barrels

(10) Parties and Partisanship in Congress

(11) Congress and Political Change: Modernizing Trends

Email registration to kalu.kalu@uta.fi by October 15 essential

Recent evidence points in the direction of EU becoming increasingly politicized and salient in domestic politics, with Europe as an issue also affecting the performance of parties in national and European parliamentary elections. Europe may thus not be in the minds of the citizens most of the time, but public opinion constrains elites and parties more than before. The objective of the course is to analyse why and how citizens and political parties oppose European integration. The course consists of lectures, seminars and an essay. In the seminars the students are expected to produce an essay and an oral presentation on a topic related to Euroscepticism.

http://www.uta.fi/jkk/pol/index/The Politics of Euroscepticism.pdf

Email registration to tapio.raunio@uta.fi by October 15 essential

Aims: 1) To describe, analyse, compare and contrast the nature of politics and policy-making in the five Nordic states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden 2) To adopt a thematic approach to understanding politics in the region Objectives/outcomes: 1) At the end of the course students should be able critically to review the main features of the political systems of the Nordic countries and to place Finnish practice in a wider comparative perspective. The course will start with an introduction to contemporary Scandinavian politics. It will proceed from the 'gold standard' of a set of strong, consensus-based democracies with comprehensive welfare systems. 'Paradise', so to speak, involved dominant social democrat-driven states, providing 'womb-to-tomb' protection underpinned by organised political societies displaying high levels of associationalism (social capital). Following the 'set-up' the question of 'paradise lost' will be considered by reference three macro-change processes and their ramifications. 1) Social structural change and changing patterns of political participation: from class-based to issue-based mobilisation; issue-based voting and inter-party competition; distinguishing interest in, and involvement in politics. 'Spectator Democracy' (Goul Andersen). 2) Party system change: from social democracy to 'disintegrating democracy' in Norway (Østerud), 'party-based democracy on trial' in Finland (Karvonen and Paloheimo). 3) Macro-economic change: the impact of globalisation and Europeanisation; the crisis in the euro-zone (albeit Finland is the only member); the rise of nationalist/chauvinist sentiment, reflected and reinforced in extreme/populist radical right parties, inter alia, the parliamentary breakthrough in 2010 of the [formerly neo-Nazi] Sweden Democrats. Evidence of anti-immigrant, anti-Islam sentiment. Anders Breivik; the Nokia 'bubble' bursts. Are the Nordic states making international news for all the wrong reasons? Following a critical examination of Scandinavian politics today, the course will revert in time to the completion of mass democracy and the introduction of proportional electoral systems. It will essay a longitudinal, socio-historical perspective with the focus on party-building and parties as a link between state and society. Lipset and Rokkans's four formative revolutions and an application of the Lipset and Rokkan model to the Nordic context. Sweden as the prototype of the five-party 'Scandinavian party system model' (Berglund and Lindström) and deviations from the Swedish protype. What about the parenthetical 's'? The first part of the course will conclude by examining the relative strengths of the historic party types. It will describe and analyse the electoral supremacy of social democracy in Denmark, Norway and most notably Sweden; the strength and resilience of agrarianism in Finland; the strength of the radical left in Norden; the merger of liberalism and conservatism in Iceland; the historic party system(s) from a voter perspective.

Course Schedule

October 22 Introduction. Seeing yourself as others see you

October 24 Sartori: “It is impossible to compare stones and rabbits” [How] can we compare the Nordic states?

October 29 What are the main features of the Nordic model? The ‘Admiration Society’ perspective

October 31 ‘Trouble in Paradise: On the hijab and Danish meatballs

November 5 Is the Nordic model too old for the catwalk?

November 7 The ‘Hell on Earth’ Scenario: American, British and Swedish ‘Hawks’

November 12 ‘Is there anything distinctive about Scandinavian Politics Today? [seminar]

November 14 Less, less, less and less: Whatever happened to the Nordic model?

November 19 Gender equality and the representation of minorities in Scandinavia

November 21 The advent of mass democracy and female tram drivers

November 26 The making of the Scandinavian party system model: Testing your ‘mental arithmetic’

November 28 How far was class the basis of Nordic party politics until the late 1960s?

December 3  New parties break the mould: The Earthquake elections of 1970-73

December 5 That ‘Thin Red Line’: Explaining the Strength of Scandinavian Social Democracy

December 10 From Class to Catchall Parties?: the Agrarian-Centre Parties

December 12 Conclusions  

Email registration to david.arter@uta.fi by October 8 essential

Week 1  (30 Jan) COURSE INTRODUCTION

 INTRODUCTION TO SECURITY STUDIES

Week 2 (13 Feb) SECURITIZATION THEORY 101

Read: Wæver, Ole. (1995): Securitization and Desecuritization. In Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security. New York: Columbia University Press.

Paper question: What does securitization theory do as a theory?

 INITIAL CRITICISMS

Read: Eriksson, Johan (1999): Observers or advocates? On the Political Role of Security Analysts. Cooperation and Conflict 34(3): 311-30.

Paper question: What kind of research is the theory of securitization intended for?

Week 3 (27 Feb) SECURITIZATION THEORY AND THE POLITICAL

Read: Gad, Ulrik Pram and Petersen, Karen Lund (2011) Concepts of Politics in Securitization Studies. Security Dialogue 42(4-5): 315-328.

Paper question: What kind of an understanding of the political and of politics does the theory of securitization entail?

 WORDS, IMAGES, AND BODIES: SECURITIZATION BEYOND WORDS

Read: Vuori, Juha A. (2010) A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object. Security Dialogue 41(3): 255-277.

N.B. The Wilkinson chapter in the course book is also relevant here.

Paper question: Is the theory of securitization limited to the study of speech because it is based on speech act theory?

Week 4 (20 Mar) SECURITY, EVENT, CONTEXT: WHAT KIND OF A THEORY IS SECURITIZATION THEORY

Read: Vuori, Juha A. (2008): Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitisation – Applying the Theory of Securitisation to the Study of Non-Democratic Political Orders. European Journal of International Relations 14(1): 65-99.

N.B.: Balzacq, Thierry (2011): A theory of securitization: origins, core assumptions, and variants. In Thierry Balzacq (ed.) Securitization theory: How security problems emerge and dissolve. London: Routledge. should also be read by this point.

Paper question: What is the relation of the theory of securitization to the (assumed) phenomenon of securitization? What does this entail for the study of securitization?

 ISSUES OF METHOD

Read: Balzacq, Thierry (2011): Enquiries into methods: a new framework for securitization analysis. In Thierry Balzacq (ed.) Securitization theory: How security problems emerge and dissolve. London: Routledge. AND Salter, Mark (2013): Research Design. In Mark B. Salter and Can E. Mutlu (eds.) Research Methods in Critical Security Studies, an Introduction. London: Routledge. AND an article or book chapter that applies the method you have selected.

Paper question: What method are you going to use in your essay? What kinds of opportunities and limits does this method set for studying securitization?

Week 5 (3 Apr) SEMINAR DAY WITH ESSAY PRESENTATIONS

Read: ESSAYS

Week 6 (10 Apr) EXAM

Form:
Lectures, 16 hours (in four batches), analysis of videos, pictures and texts from conflicts with the help of closed discussion blogs related to these analyses. Each student will participate in a student working group of 4-6 people which each produce a presentation either on the central arguments of one of the books mentioned in the bibliography or an analysis of case of conflict resolution using the theoretical inputs from the course.

Objective:
The objective of the course is to introduce the student to a selection of theories of conflicts and their prevention by means of conflict management, dispute resolution and conflict transformation. Conflict theories will be presented as diagnoses that aim at revealing junctures on the path to conflict that can be influenced by blocking or redirecting the path to violence.  

Pre-requirements:
The series of lectures requires an interest in peace research. Some of the basic concepts of peace and conflict studies will be discussed in the class in a way that would be more meaningful if students were familiar with the basics of Peace Studies. Discussions will also rely on some of the basic concepts of political science and world politics/international relations theory. The course would optimally be placed at the end of B.A. studies in political science/international relations or peace research or sociology/social anthropology.  

Description of the lecture:

A. The lecture will start with a presentation of the concepts of conflict and peace in theories by classical security studies scholars, Johan Galtung, Louis Kriesberger, Chris Mitchell, quantitative peace research (COW, PRIO and Uppsala datasets) and discusses the conceptual “gerrymandering” in political thinking of peace and the political implications of different constructions of peace and war to the efforts to prevent political violence.

B. From there the course proceeds to the presentation of two kinds of ideas on the sources of conflict: ideas that produce generalizations on correlative regularities between conditions and violence, on the one hand, and ideas that look at more specific paths to conflict violence by studying the specific, socially created meanings of elements of conflict. The former ideas will be presented by introducing the ideas on

1. Conflict opportunities by Charles Tilly’s resource mobilization theory, James Fearon’s theory of rational explanations to conflicts and the traditional security studies theories of the resource/opportunity-based sources of conflict.
2. Non-violent opportunities for change and protest by the theorists of the relationship between democracy and peace (this discussion will be discussed in conjunction with the less correlative research on peaceful change by Patomäki and Miall). 
3. Conflict motives by
   a. Theorists of greed-motivated conflicts (theorists of relative deprivation, such as Gurr, Runciman, and Davies)
   b. Theorists of economic threshold of violence (Collier, Hoeffler)
   c. Theorists of conflict incentives (Collier, Hoeffler, Fearon) and resource curse (Sachs, Kaldor).
   
   The theories of sources of conflict that are more idiografic, and based on more interpretative methods of understanding the sources of conflict will be presented in a discussion that will be based on pictures of ethnic warfare in West Kalimantan, Indonesia and a video about a negotiation process on Mindanao between the leadership and regional leaders of the Moro National Liberation Front, as well as propaganda material of the MNLF and some other rebel groups. With this picture material it will be possible to analyze the ways in which ethnic clothing argues and articulates interpretations of the collective nature of the violent actions, the structures of actors in the conflict, how traditional amulets tackle with fear and how traditional headbands give responsibility for killing to an entire group (and relieve the individual from the blame). In short, the intention after the presentation of the generalizable, observable correlative regularities between material conditions and war is to show the sources of conflict that are specific to the context of the conflict and the local interpretations of the elements and dynamics of it. The intention is also to show how violence is not necessarily action in its traditionally understood form where its focus is in its consequences, but that instead, how sometimes violent action is an argument or a demonstration of a reality that the conflicting party favors of the social structure that frames interaction between the conflicting parties.

C. After the presentation of the sources of conflict, the lecture moves to the theories of conflict prevention, including theories of containment of conflict behavior (conflict management, military defence or deterrence of violence, etc.), dispute resolution that goes beyond the level of conflict behavior to the disputes that motivate conflict, and conflict transformation that looks at the level of conflict structures that gives rise to conflicts. In this section theories of conflict conducive conditions (correlative regularity-focused theories) and more interpretative theories will be looked at. Building on the earlier analysis of the pictures and videos and explanations of the symbolic meanings of different visual demonstrative elements in the conflict in West Kalimantan there will be a presentation on the ways in which the conflict narratives and socially constructed realities on the causal path to the conflict of West Kalimantan could be changed by offering alternative ways to argue for constructions of the actors and their relationships in the conflict area, by making some interpretations less credible, by denaturalizing some conflict constructions and by tackling some of the material conditions that created the need to demonstrate specific conflict constructs violently.

D. After the presentation of these ways of analyzing conflict prevention and peace facilitation, the course will focus on a number of cases of conflict prevention and peace facilitation. In addition to the cases that the lecturer is familiar with, group work will be used for the presentation of cases that will be analyzed with the theoretical tools presented in the previous sections of the series of lectures.

The course will consist of a standard lectures with discussions in the entire class and combine them with group work assignments and discussions in groups of 4-6 students.  Groups will use self-evaluation where each student will inform the teacher her/his assessment of the percentage of innovative contributions to the work of the group of each of the student. This tends to help groups with the problem of free-riding.

Plenum and group discussions will utilize the lecturer’s and openly available archives of pictures and videos of meetings with conflicting parties and documentary texts from peace processes in order to make the teaching on the meanings of acts of violence, construction of conflicting parties and myths that are being used to get around fear and norms of normal societies in conflict situations.

Moodle will be used to facilitate the continuation of group discussions after the lecture in a chat forum. Participation to this chat could be made compulsory and it would be possible to set a minimum quantitative limit to the participation in the development of arguments in the chat forum.

Participants: Maximum 40 students (priority on students majoring international politics). Enroll by filling out the form below.

Aims: 1) To describe, analyse, compare and contrast the nature of politics and policy-making in the five Nordic states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden 2) To adopt a thematic approach to understanding politics in the region

Objectives/outcomes: 1) At the end of the course students should be able critically to review the main features of the political systems of the Nordic countries and to place Finnish practice in a wider comparative perspective. This teaching period the focus will be on the incidence of high-volatility elections since 1970; the advent and significance of new parliamentary parties (many short-lived); types of new parties on the basis of the process of their origination (Arter 2012); entrepreneurial parties; 'rooted new parties' backed by a 'promoter organisation' (Bolleyer and Bytzek 2013); 'persistent new parties'. The travails of the 'old' 'pole parties' (Rokkan/Sundberg): for example, the Swedish Centre (formerly Agrarian Party) is in danger of not making the 4 per cent national qualifying threshold in 2014 whilst three years earlier its Finnish counterpart plummeted to an historic nadir. In similar fashion, the Social Democrats reached new depths in Sweden (2010) and Finland (2011) and the Danish party has not been the largest party since the turn of the new millennium. The rise of protest parties on the radical right. Turning from parties to the electoral rules and the procedures, the lectures will cover candidate selection (recruitment) procedures (centralised/decentralised); preferential voting systems (Finland, Sweden, Denmark); closed-list PR (Norway); electoral systems as incentive structures; intra-party candidate competition and personal-vote-seeking; candidate types; parties' electoral strategies (pre-electoral alliances, joint lists etc); election campaigns, the main issues; changing campaign styles (canvassing etc); the digitalisation of election campaigns; voters and the Internet (Karlsen 2010); voting machines (Finland); candidate use of websites, blogs, Facebook etc. The 'electoral connection': who do MPS represent, how do they represent them and what do voters expect their representatives to do?

Course Schedule

January 14 Introduction: Why hold elections?

January 16 The Scandinavian electoral systems

January 21 Proto-parties and the Road to Mass Democracy

January 23 PR, Red/Green Parties and the Completion of the Scandinavian Party System Model

January 28 Berglund and Lindström’s ‘Parenthetical ‘S’ question

January 30 The Thaw, the Earthquake and the Rise of Populist Protest

February 4 New ‘Party Families’ – Greens, Christian Democrats and Eco-Socialists

February 6 Individualised Voting and Individualised Campaigning

February 11 Is Party-Based Democracy in Scandinavia in Trouble?

February 13 SEMINAR: “What are the principal determinants of voting behaviour in Scandinavia today?”

February 18 SEMINAR: “How far would you agree that preferential voting systems are more democratic?”

February 20 Conclusions

Email registration to david.arter@uta.fi by December 13 essential

This lecture series provides a general overview on the role of nuclear weapons in international politics. Beginning from the development and use of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, the course covers strategic, normative and ethical debates on nuclear weapons and describes the main institutions of international nuclear arms control. Particular focus is on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the related 'grand bargain' between the five nuclear weapons possessors and the non-nuclear weapons states. Based on Hedley Bull's ideas, contemporary non-proliferation challenges are viewed as a reflection of the tension between order and justice in international politics. Prospects for global nuclear disarmament are assessed by contrasting the nuclear weapons states' recent reductions in their arsenals with their ongoing justifications for continued possession of nuclear weapons. The significance of nuclear weapons free zones is also discussed, with particular attention to the process of establishing such a zone in the Middle East.

Introduction to theoretical thinking and EU external relations (common foreign, security and defence policy of the EU: chronology and landscape, cases); federalism now and then; functionalism and neofunctionalism; realism and intergovernmentalism; theorising the theories: the impact of scientific disciplines and values on theories; institutionalism and supranationalism; enlargement and Europeanisation; normative power and international relations; inter-organisational relations.

Keywords

Theories of European integration, EU external relations, foreign, security and defence policy of the EU, EU enlargement, the EU’s relations with international organisations

Aims: 1) To describe, analyse, compare and contrast the nature of politics and policy-making in the five Nordic states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden 2) To adopt a thematic approach to understanding politics in the region

Objectives/outcomes: 1) At the end of the course students should be able critically to review the main features of the political systems of the Nordic countries and to place Finnish practice in a wider comparative perspective. The broad focus in this final teaching period will be on legislative-executive relations and i) whether there is a distinctive Nordic parliamentarism, and ii) whether there is a Nordic model of government and iii) whether there has been a 'presidentialisation' of the executive. Topics covered will include 'How democratic are the Nordic parliaments?' The corollary of this question will be determining the evaluative criteria and reflecting on the influence of the premises of participatory democracy and deliberative democracy in the region. Referenda and citizens' initiatives. A discussion of semi-presidential government will take due note of the new constitution in Iceland and changes to the presidential office in Finland.  the size, structure and partisan composition of governments; the frequency of minority governments (Denmark, Sweden and earlier Norway); 'surplus majority' governments (Finland); the shift towards 'bloc coalitions and potential alternation in government (Norway and Sweden); the persistence of across-the-blocs, 'anything goes' governments in Finland; The government at work (including informal sessions); the demise of semi-president government in Finland; what sort of president do Finns want? Towards a 'presidential' prime minister in the Scandinavian countries?

COURSE PROGRAMME

The course will be structured around four overarching themes:

1. Rules, behaviour and Nordic democracy in comparative perspective: Did Lijphart get it right?
2. The Scandinavian model of government: Is it just a distant memory?
3. Is there a distinctive Nordic model of parliamentarism?
4. Is there a ‘crisis of democracy’ in the Nordic states?

Seminar questions will include:

a)     What do Nordic MPs do?

b)    Can we speak of prime ministerial government in Scandinavia?

c)     ‘Minority governments work best where they are most common’ How far is this true in Scandinavia?

d)    ‘The institution of the presidency is simply outdated’

e)    How useful is the notion of ‘policy style’?

f)      Does Scandinavian government deserve its reputation for transparency?

Email registration to david.arter@uta.fi by March 1 essential