From week to week, The Changing Global Order will introduce you to some of the core trends and emerging patterns in the contemporary international system. This is a highly dynamic module, but some examples of weekly subjects include:

1.Emergent Multi-polarity

2.China in a Changing Order

3.Focus on the BRICS

4.Russia as a Systemic Challenger

Formative Assessment:

A dummy run of the methodology masterclass presentation will run early in the semester to introduce you to the principles of the assessment brief and to create an opportunity to develop group dynamics and collaborative skills.

Assessment 1: Methodology Masterclass Presentation

You will work together with peers in small groups to develop advisory 10-minute presentations on certain aspects of methodology in IR (e.g. literature searches, geopolitical modelling, dangers of generative AI). Digital literacy will be a theme across all presentation topics. Groups will present to the remaining class. Content and presentational skills are both graded. Following the 10-minute presentation, the group will take questions from the audience for an additional 5 minutes. The content and presentational skills of both the presentation and the question-and-answer session are both graded.

Assessment 2: Essay

You will write a traditional essay responding to one from a list of questions provided by the module tutor. An additional addendum on your use of AI to develop the essay can be added to the text.

Scheduled learning and teaching sessions will include a mixture of lecturing, all-group discussion, and smaller group work. In lecturing hours, special emphasis will be on introducing students to the broad empirical shape of a particular global trend. In group discussions and activities, students will be encouraged to think in more specific terms, investigating the origins of these trends and stress-testing predictions about their future.

1. Identify and explain key contemporary trends and challenges in the changing global order.

Knowledge & Understanding

2. Critically assess and apply key research methodologies in the analysis of the contemporary global order.

Research Skills

3. Communicate succinctly about the complex principles of effective methodology in international relations.

Communication

4. Appraise the benefits and dangers of digital methods for effective international relations research.

Digital Literacy

Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson (2023) International Organization and Global Governance (3rd ed.) (London: Routledge).

Hosli, Madelieine O. and Selleslaghs, Joren, eds. (2020) The Changing Global Order: Challenges and Prospects (Cham, Switzerland: Springer).*

Mearsheimer, John J. (2018) The great delusion: liberal dreams and international realities, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.*

Ikenberry, G. John (2023) A world safe for democracy: liberal internationalism and the crises of global order, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Chu, Yun-Han and Zheng, Yongnian (2021) The decline of the Western-centric world and the emerging global order: contending views, Oxon, UK and New York: Routledge.

Smith, Martin (2012) Power in the Changing Global Order (Cambridge: Polity Press).*

*The Changing Global Order is intended to be a highly contemporary module which engages with current affairs at the international level week-by-week or even day-by-day as they emerge. As such, no textbook could be fully pertinent to all the sessions. The older texts here are offered as examples of structuring devices, so students can see how international affairs can be analysed in a systematic way, and as points of reference to an older state of world affairs (e.d., in the Hosli et al text, pre-Covid. The Mearsheimer text is canonical and also important background reading for that scholar’s more recent interventions on the subject of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent war.

The Changing Global Order will introduce you to debates and controversies regarding the dynamic shifting of the international system. It will equip you with the empirical knowledge and research skills necessary to critically and convincingly engage in these debates. Following on from a summary of the key features of the post-War global order, the module addresses key challenges to this order from a number of ‘rising powers’ and associated global political conflicts.