Course contents:
This course gives students an introduction to global politics, focusing on key concepts and issues of theories of international relations: states, sovereignty, conflict, cooperation, international institutions, non-governmental organizations, delegation and (indirect) global governance. The course starts with a focus on classical, Western literatures but concludes with sessions on gender, race, colonialism and the end of the Western-dominated liberal international order. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand and apply the key concepts in their own research.
Teaching style:
The course will be taught in seminar style. The course will combine literature-based discussions in class with group work. Students are encouraged to bring in their own academic and practical knowledge. They will work on developing their own research ideas throughout the semester. It is essential that every student reads the assigned papers thoroughly and carefully ahead of class.
All readings are available for download on the course website on Stud.IP

The purpose of the seminar is to learn from classic and contemporary texts of modern social theory. By studying those texts, we can elaborate concepts concerning fundamental characteristics of social developments and adapt them for the analysis of contemporary societal problems. By combining distinguished and contradictory perspectives, we will focus on those achievements which prepare a better understanding and explanation of long-term developments that are of extreme importance also for challenges of governance and social change in the 21st century. Topics for discussion include the methodological status of social theory, different characterizations of modern society (in particular capitalist society), the relation of agency and structure, power and hegemony, the critique of certain features of modern society, and the relevance of the categories of race and gender. The seminar will serve as a general introduction to modern social theory – it does not require any previous knowledge of this field, but the willingness to engage with theoretical texts and their sometimes complex arguments.

The course aims at providing an overview and understanding of a selection of commonly applied qualitative data collection and interpretation methods and is divided into three parts: Firstly, students will be introduced to overarching methodologies of qualitative research as well as research designs. Secondly, data collection methods will be discussed, such as interviewing, document analysis and ethnography. The third part of the seminar will deal with interpretation methods, including qualitative content analysis, process tracing and discourse analysis. Quality criteria of and ethics in qualitative research will also be discussed. The focus will be on real-world applications, students will develop and execute their own empirical research project.

Das Seminar bietet eine Einführung in die qualitativen Methoden in den Sozialwissenschaften. Es behandelt die Grundlagen der qualitativen Forschung sowie die verschiedenen Phasen eines qualitativen Forschungsprozesses (u.a. Entwicklung von Forschungsfragen, Fallstudiendesigns, Methoden der Datenerhebung und Datenanalyse). Darauf aufbauend führen die Studierenden in Kleingruppen ein eigenes qualitatives Forschungsprojekt durch.

Literatur zur Vorbereitung:
Gerring, J. 2007. Case Study Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Part I: thinking about case studies, S. 17-63

Art der Prüfungsleistung (CP):
Für Master Sozialpolitik und Master Komplexes Entscheiden (6 CP): Forschungsprojekt

Für Double Degree (9 CP): Forschungsprojekt und Textreviews

The aim of this course is to provide a sound, application-oriented introduction to quantitative methods in political science. After a brief review of statistical (descriptive) basics, the course will primarily teach techniques of multivariate regression analysis. Among other things, students should be enabled to understand, interpret and critically consider the current
quantitative research literature. Furthermore, students will be enabled to practically apply the learned concepts. Independent empirical work is accompanied in particular by an introduction to the statistical software "R".