The early twenty-first century has witnessed the amplification of international clashes believed to be on the wane, while enduring transnational problems relating inter alia to armed conflict, nuclear proliferation, climate change, economic inequality, poverty, hunger, migration, global health and increasingly technological change still await solutions. In the twentieth century, these were managed to varying extents by a network of state- and western-centric international institutions rooted in a post-WWII order. This mode of governance has densified and complexified, increasingly challenged to grant equal standing to the Global South or the majority world and to include a range of transnational non-state actors. It is also challenged by the rise of populist nationalism, illiberalism, and authoritarian regimes.
This course asks how to make sense of historical and current developments in transnational governance and what can be done to address the transnational issues the world faces today and is likely to face in the future. It is grounded in the discipline of International Relations (IR), with one leg in mainstream or traditional theoretical perspectives and another in critical approaches which include feminist IR and post-colonial studies and non-Western perspectives on IR’s foundational stories.
The course offers an overview of the ideas, theories and concepts in all fields touching on international studies and discusses a selection of issue-areas to explore the nature of transnational politics and institutions today. It also actively challenges students to leverage theoretical and conceptual rigour in developing novel ideas that let actors in different capacities and institutional settings address transnational problems effectively. Further, it invites students to connect governance at different levels, across continents in different subject areas.
This year 2026 in particular, the course pays special attention to the major challenges posed for citizens, governments, and international organizations by the Trump administration’s attack against established rules, norms, and expectations domestically and globally. We try to identify factors that are reshaping the global landscape, leading to increased uncertainty and volatility for global governance, connected to major geopolitical developments, such as rising tensions between major powers, regional conflicts, divisions between nations, and ongoing shifts in power and technological advancements.
The course is designed to meet the needs of Master of Transnational Governance students who are preparing for careers in state institutions, supra- national and regional organizations, non-governmental organizations, the media, the corporate world, think-tanks, and/or academia. Its goals are to: - Provide a space for open discussion of the questions raised in order to combine academic rigour with the concrete experiential knowledge of the students;
- Offer relevant background knowledge about conceptual frameworks in IR as well as about substantive issues in global and transnational governance;
- Enable students to articulate independent, critical and theoretically informed arguments about inter-state relations and transnational governance and to develop their research, writing and oral communication skills.
|