Update:While the Introductory talk on the course from Tuesday 24th Sept 2007, is online in 3gp format which plays on mobile phones and in Quicktime. It is 8mb, but it useful. However, I have reworked the simulation for the coming year, and therefore the handouts for 2009 will be different. However, the 2007 materials will give a general feel for how the course works.
The UN and its precursor, the League of Nations, sits at the centre of a diverse web of international organisations which fulfill key roles in the world. This course looks at the ideological and historical background of these organisations, their emergence and evolution, the range of their functions and the manner in which they operate in war and peace. The course will cover the full range of international organisations, from the UN and the WTO through emerging regional bodies, humanitarian NGOs like the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres and sporting and cultural organisations like FIFA.
The course seeks to:
-
Explore how the historian works towards professional, objective judgments about contemporary historical issues
-
Survey the narrative of the development of International Organisations
-
Study critical turning points and in the development of International Organisations
-
Understand how the process of diplomacy in International Organisations has developed and operates now.
-
Enhance your understanding of how decisions are made in the arena of international organisations
International Organisations operate by diplomacy and negotiation. In order to align the learning process with the subject matter, classes will involve reading and discussion, collaborative writing of issue papers papers which are factual and neutral, in an ‘international civil service’ writing style, and negotiated discussion of current issues in class simulation exercises. The first simulation exercise will be a single 2 hour session on a League of Nations era crisis, and is not graded. The second, in weeks 10 and 11 of term, will be deal with a number of issues currently on the global agenda. It is not directly graded, but the content of the simulation will be related to the final essay.
International Organisation in World Politics by David Armstrong, Lorna Lloyd & John Redmond (Third Edition) Palgrave 2004
A course handout, and other handouts which detail the midterm collaborative group essay, and the Model UN simulation which serves as the basis for the final paper are all online. There may be minor changes to those during the term