International Relations

The POIR Program has faculty in International Relations distributed across the subfields of International Security and Foreign Policy (ISFP) and International Political Economy (IPE). Students will be examined in both ISFP and IPE.
 
Faculty in ISFP collectively research a wide variety of issues pertaining to security broadly defined and focus on various security actors including both state and non-state actors. Our faculty’s interests reflect the growing interaction between security studies and foreign policy analysis as well as the broader intersection between international relations and comparative politics more generally.
 
We define security broadly, as economic and environmental as well as political/military, and as threats to individuals as well as to states. Our faculty employ a range of theoretical approaches for explaining these various security issues, including realism, liberalism and critical security studies. In addition to materialist, power-based explanations, some faculty explore the role of psychology, culture, gender, ethnicity and religion as forces contributing to security and insecurity. To this end our faculty use a variety of methodologies including archival and field research, quantitative analysis, case studies, foreign policy analysis, and diplomacy studies. Faculty publications appear in leading peer-reviewed journals.
 
Given the multi-disciplinary nature of their research, the ISFP faculty stands ready to work with a wide range of students. Our faculty are aware of the changing nature of the International Relations discipline in light of globalization, the role of non-state actors, the importance of international law and norms, regional integration and transnational interactions. These factors impact foreign policy choices and national and international security policies in new and challenging ways.
 
Faculty in IPE analyze the interaction between politics and economics within a global context. Together, the POIR course offerings for this field provide an overview of those conceptual approaches, critical turning points, and key issues that have characterized the international political economy since the first wave of globalization in the 19th century. Candidates master the most influential bodies of theory in international relations and in IPE. Other key points of analysis include, but are not limited to, major IPE issue areas such as finance or trade, international institutions such as the World Bank or World Trade Organization (WTO), and the manner in which a given issue or institution has affected specific countries or sub-regions of the global economy.
 
The IPE field requires students to take two core courses. One course is POIR 660, which is the common core course for two IR fields. The other core course is the IPE gateway course (POIR 670) that includes: a comparison of the two waves of globalization in the 19th and 20th centuries; study of the inter-war years and the effect of this period in shaping the design and content of the Bretton Woods order; a detailed analysis of the post-World War II Bretton Woods era and beyond, including the design of formal rules and institutions to oversee heightened flows of international trade and finance; and, a review of those main themes and burning issues that have dominated late 20th and early 21st century academic and policy debates. The latter covers, for example, the proliferation of regional integration agreements, the eruption of numerous financial crises, the changing profile of multinational corporations and foreign direct investment, those political economic challenges related to the rise of China, India and other emerging market countries within the IPE, and the most pressing collective action dilemmas that have slowed recent efforts to deepen the globalization process.
 
IPE faculty are engaged in research on a number of these topics. Apart from the gateway course, POIR faculty offer seminars in special topics like Economic Bargaining in Theory and Practice, IPE of the Pacific Rim, IPE and Development, and Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States. Students who wish to combine IPE with a regional or specific country focus have access to a rich array of courses offered in the field of Comparative Politics. Candidates can deepen their expertise in Economics and their competitiveness in the job market by presenting a special third field in Economics.