From foundational institutions to contested power structures, this course traces how global governance is built, challenged, and reimagined across an increasingly complex international landscape.
Undergraduate Course (Bachelor’s Level)
This course introduces students to the structures, actors, and processes that shape governance beyond the nation-state. Beginning with foundational concepts and theoretical frameworks, students examine how international and regional organizations, nongovernmental actors, and multilateral institutions collectively address the world’s most pressing challenges.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the principal theories, institutions, and actors that constitute the global governance landscape.
- Analyze how governance frameworks operate across thematic issue areas by applying relevant theoretical perspectives to real-world cases.
- Evaluate the effectiveness, legitimacy, and equity of existing global governance arrangements in light of contemporary challenges.
Assessment
- Class Participation (25%)
- Case Study Report (25%)
- Final Essay (50%)
Structure
- Governing Beyond the State: Concepts and Definitions
- Theoretical Frameworks
- International Organizations: Structures, Mandates, and Limits
- The United Nations: Architecture, Authority, and Reform
- Regional Governance
- Nonstate Actors
- Managing Conflict: Peace Operations and Security Governance
- Global Economic Governance: Trade, Finance, and Development
- Human Rights Regimes: Norms, Compliance, and Enforcement
- Climate, Biodiversity, and Environmental Regimes
- Critical Infrastructure
- Challenges in Global Governance
Graduate Course (Master’s Level)
This course offers an advanced, critically oriented examination of global governance in an era of structural transformation and geopolitical contestation. Moving beyond institutional description, students engage with the power dynamics, ideological tensions, and structural inequities that shape multilateral cooperation. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship and contemporary case studies, the course prepares students to think strategically and critically about the possibilities and limits of international order in a multipolar world.
Learning Outcomes
- Critically assess the structural power relations that shape the design, operation, and distributional outcomes of global governance.
- Synthesize theoretical perspectives from international relations, critical theory, and political economy.
- Formulate informed normative positions on the reform and future trajectory of global governance.
Assessment
- Case Study Report 1 (25%)
- Case Study Report 2 (25%)
- Final Essay (50%)
Structure
- Power, Order, and Contestation: The Geopolitics of Global Governance
- The Neoliberal Architecture: Markets, Conditionality, and Resistance
- Multipolarity and Rivalry: The West, BRICS, and the Battle for Global Norms
- The European Union as a Global Governance Actor: Ambitions and Contradictions
- Post-colonial Global Governance
- Reforming the United Nations: Legitimacy, Deadlock, and Institutional Change
- Corporate Power and Global Governance: Accountability Beyond the State
- International Justice: Courts, Impunity, and the Politics of Accountability
- Regionalism Reconsidered: Autonomy, Fragmentation, and Global Order
- Energy Geopolitics: Transition, Dependency, and Global Governance
- Governing Human Mobility: Refugees, Migration, and the Limits of Protection
- Digital Sovereignty and Cybersecurity: Governing the Internet in a Fragmented World