Research Seminar on Economic Aspects of Contemporary Security Challenges (E603)

Course Organization

Mondays, 14.15 - 16.00

Professor:
Thomas J. Biersteker
Room 315, Voie Creuse 16
Office hours: Weds 14-16.00
Tel. +41 (0)22 908 5807
bierstek@hei.unige.ch

Teaching Assistant:
Colin Nippert
26, Rigot
Office hours: Mon 12.15 – 14.00
Tel. +41 (0) 22 908 5941
nippert4@hei.unige.ch

Course Description

This advanced research seminar will examine economic and political aspects of a variety of different contemporary security challenges. Individual student participants will have the opportunity to conduct original empirical research on the political economy of a contemporary security challenge, ranging from conflict financing and the mobilization of financial support from diaspora communities to illicit trafficking (in commodities, persons, or body parts), terrorist financing, and/or on the effectiveness of different measures undertaken at the national, regional and global level to counteract these challenges. Students will have the opportunity to select an issue area, design an original project, receive critical feedback from their peers, and revise their final term papers. The end goal is to produce either a publishable paper or a pilot version of a thesis project.

The first portion of the seminar will begin with an analysis of the changing nature of war and contemporary threats to security, focusing on the transformation from inter-state conflict to internal conflicts and a variety of emerging transnational threats. We will then consider the identification of new security challenges at the beginning of the twenty-first century, from a broadening conceptual agenda to challenges from globalization and other global phenomena.

Next we will explore the activities and operations of transnational criminal organizations, followed by a review of diaspora funding, peace-building, and the remnants of war and international sanctions. The seminar will discuss different forms of trafficking, including drugs, arms, organs, nuclear materials, and the growing trafficking in human beings. The financing of terrorism will also be explored. The group discussion portion of the seminar will conclude with issues associated with the regulatory responses to these contemporary challenges (at the global, regional, and national levels).

The second section of the course will consist of student presentations of draft research papers. Depending on the number of students enrolled in the seminar, one or more students will present drafts of their research papers for critical commentary and constructive suggestions from the other participants in the seminar during each week's seminar. Each paper presentation will be assigned a student discussant to lead off with the discussion of the different research projects. The seminar will conclude with a comparative analysis and discussion of cross-cutting themes and recommendations for future research in the issue domain.

Course requirements will consist of active participation in the seminar discussions, taking the lead (along with one or two other students) of a portion of the discussion of one week's readings (posing questions for class discussion), a formal presentation of an initial draft of a paper, a critical commentary on one other student paper presentation, and the completion of a term paper (of approximately 30-35 pages in length). Further details about the research presentation and term paper will be provided in class.

Course Packets: Available at Imprimerie Minute .

Seminar sessions

18 February: Introduction to the course

No reading assignment

25 February: The Changing Nature of War and Threats to Security

Mary Kaldor, New Wars & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era , ( Stanford University Press, 2001), Introduction and Chapter 5, pp. 1-12 and 90-111.

John Mueller, The Remnants of War , ( Cornell University Press, 2004), Introduction and Chapter 9, pp. 1-7 and 161-181.

Michael Mandelbaum, “Is Major War Obsolete?” Survival , Volume 40, Number 4 (December 1998), pp. 20-38.

Stephen Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly , Volume 35, Number 2 (June 1991), pp. 211-239.

3 March: New Security Challenges

Keith Krause and Michael Williams, “Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies: Politics and Methods,” Mershon International Studies Review , Volume 40, Number 2 (October 1996), pp. 229-254.

Moisés Naim, “The Five Wars of Globalization” in Foreign Policy , Issue 134 (January/February 2003), pp. 28-37.

Peter Andreas, “Illicit International Political Economy: The Clandestine Side of Globalization” Review of International Political Economy , Volume 11, Number 3 (August 2004) pp.641-652.

Daniel Deudney , “Environmental Security: A Critique” in Deudney and Matthews (eds.) Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics (SUNY University Press, 1999), pp. 187-222.

10 March: Transnational Criminal Organizations

Phil Williams, “Transnational Organized Crime and the State,” Chapter 8 in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance , ( Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 161-182.

R. T. Naylor, “Towards a General Theory of Profit-Driven Crimes,” British Journal of Criminology , Volume 43 (2003), pp. 81-101.

Moisés Naim, Illicit, (Doubleday, 2005) Chapters 4 and 7, pp. 65-85 and 131-156.

Michael Levi, “Lessons for Countering Terrorist Financing from the War on Serious and Organized Crime,” Chapter 12 in Countering the Financing of Terrorism , (Routledge, 2007), pp. 260-288.

17 March: Diaspora Funding, Peace-building and the Remnants of War

Achim Wenmann, “The Political Economy of Conflict Financing: A Comprehensive Approach Beyond Natural Resources” in Global Governance , Volume 13, Number 3 (July-September 2007), 427-444.

John Mueller, The Remnants of War ( Cornell University press, 2004), Chapter 1, pp. 8-23.

Peter Andreas, “Criminalizing Consequences of Sanctions: Embargo Busting and its Legacy,” International Studies Quarterly , Volume 49, Number 2 (June 2005), pp.335-360.

Kelly Greenhill and Solomon Major, “The Perils of Profiling: Spoilers and the Collapse of Intrastate Peace Accords” International Security , Volume 31, Number 3, (2007), pp. 1-40.

James Cockayne, “State Fragility, Organized Crime, and Peace Operations: Towards an Agenda” Unpublished paper presented at GCSP Conference on Peace Operations and Organized crime, 29/30 November 2007.

31 March: No class

7 April: Trafficking

Rey Koslowski, “Economic Globalization, Human Smuggling, and Global Governance, Chapter 13 in Global Human Smuggling , ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) pp. 337-358.

Joyce Outshoorn, “The Political Debates on Prostitution and Trafficking of Women,” in Social Politics , Volume 12, Number 1 (Spring 2005) pp. 141-155.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Parts Unknown: Undercover Ethnography of the Organs-trafficking Underworld,” Ethnography , Volume 5, Number 1 (2004)

Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, “The Merchant of Death” Foreign Policy, Number 157 (November/December 2006), pp. 53-61.

Rensselaer Lee, “Nuclear Smuggling: Patterns and Responses” Parameters , Volume 33, Number 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 95-111.

R. T. Naylor, The Underworld of Ivory” Crime, Law and Social Change , Volume 42, Number 4-5 (2004) pp. 261-295.

14 April: Terrorist Financing

Audrey Kurth-Cronin, “Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism” International Security , Volume 27, Number 3 (Winter 2002-03) pp.30-58.

William Wechsler, “Follow the Money” Foreign Affairs , Volume 80, Number 4, (July/August 2001) pp.40-57.

Thomas Biersteker and Sue Eckert , Countering the Financing of Terrorism, (Routledge Publishers, 2007), Chapters 1 and 13, pp. 1-16 and 289-304.

R. T. Naylor, Satanic Purses: Money, Myth, and Misinformation in the War on Terror , ( McGill University Press, 2006), Chapters 9 and 10, pp. 137-166.

Loretta Napoleoni, Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars behind the Terror Networks, (Seven Stories press, 2005, Chapter 15, pp. 171-181.

21 April: Global Regulatory Responses

Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelmann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations , ( Oxford University Press, 2006), Chapter 1, pp. 17-58.

Thomas Biersteker, Sue Eckert, and Peter Romaniuk, “International Initiatives to Combat the Financing of Terrorism, Chapter 11 in Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Routledge 2007) pp. 234-259.

Eric Rosand, Alistair Millar, and Jason Ipe, The UN Security Council's Counterterrorism Program: What Lies Ahead? (IPA, October 2007).

Peter Andreas and Richard Price, “From War Fighting to Crime Fighting: Transforming the American national Security State” International Studies Review , Volume 3, Number 3 (Fall 2001) pp. 31-52.

Moisés Naim, Illicit , (Doubleday, 2005) Chapter 9, pp. 175-198.

Wyn Rees and Richard Aldrich, “Contending Cultures of Counterterrorism: Transatlantic Divergence or Convergence?” International Affairs , Volume 81, Number 5 (2005), pp. 905-923.

28 April: Student Presentations I

5 May: Student Presentations II

12 May: Student Presentations III

19 May: Student Presentations IV

26 May: Student Presentations V and Concluding Discussion