IS 452 - International Organization

Lecture Hours: 3
Lab Hours: 0
Credit Hours: 3

Like a country with no government, many argue that the world exists in a state of anarchy, lacking central authority to offer order and stability. In this course, we will address how international actors navigate this environment, how they create different types of order, and how they organize and cooperate to reach certain outcomes. Such cooperation is important in the pursuit of global peace and development, as well as emerging issues like climate change that necessitate cooperation. This will be a seminar-style course, mixing lecture with discussion of assigned reading. You will engage with complex academic ideas while also learning the fundamentals of international organization such as how specific entities like the UN and World Bank function, and how the international community addresses problems like war, poverty, and human rights violations. The course is broken into three sections. First, we will consider different forms of international order, focusing in particular on the effectiveness of the post-WWII liberal international order. Second, we will look at how actors cooperate amid anarchy and the role that international institutions play in this. Third, we will cover specific issue areas that require international cooperation and assess how well the international community has addressed them.