Economic Aspects of Contemporary Security Challenges
Political Science / Science Politique - Academic Year 2009 - 2010
Economic Aspects of Contemporary Security Challenges
E785 - Spring 2010 - Course - 6 ECTS
Mondays 12:15-14:00 (Preiswerk Room, Rothschild)
Course Description
This advanced research seminar examines economic aspects of contemporary security challenges. Individual student participants conduct original empirical research on an economic aspect of a contemporary security challenge, ranging from conflict financing and the mobilisation of support from diaspora communities to illicit trafficking (in commodities, persons, or body parts), terrorist financing, transnational criminal organisations, and/or on the effectiveness of different measures undertaken at the national, regional and global level to counteract these challenges. Students select an issue area, design an original project, receive critical feedback from their professor and 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.
Syllabus
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 session. 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, 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 (http://www.imprimerie-minute.ch/minute/). Note that these contain only those readings that are not available online; the remainder of the readings can be accessed online through the Institute network (which can e.g. be reached at http://graduateinstitute.ch/corporate/resources/library_en.html and then through “A-Z E-journals list”). Stable URLs to readings are provided below if available.
Seminar sessions:
22 February: Introduction to the course
No reading assignment
1 March: The Changing Nature of War and Threats to Security
Stephen Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly, Volume 35, Number 2 (June 1991), pp. 211-239. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600471
Mary Kaldor, New Wars & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, (StanfordUniversity Press, 2001), Introduction and Chapter 5, pp. 1-12 and 90-111.
John Mueller, The Remnants of War, (CornellUniversity 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.
8 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. http://www.jstor.org/stable/222776
Moisés Naim, “The Five Wars of Globalization” in Foreign Policy, Issue 134 (January/February 2003), pp. 28-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3183519
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.
15 March: Transnational Criminal Organizations
Phil Williams, “Transnational Organized Crime and the State,” Chapter 8 in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, (CambridgeUniversity 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, “Liberalization and Transnational Financial Crime,” Chapter 4 in Transnational Organized Crime & International Security: Business as Usual? (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), pp. 53-66.
22 March: Diaspora Funding, Peace-building and the Remnants of War
Achim Wennmann, “The Political Economy of Conflict Financing: A Comprehensive Approach Beyond Natural Resources”, Global Governance, Volume 13, Number 3 (July-September 2007), 427-444.
John Mueller, The Remnants of War (CornellUniversity 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 and Adam Lupel, “Introduction: Rethinking the Relationship between Peace Operations and Organized Crime,” International Peacekeeping, Volume 16, Number 1, February 2009, pp. 4-19.
29 March: Trafficking
Rey Koslowski, “Economic Globalization, Human Smuggling, and Global Governance, Chapter 13 in Global Human Smuggling, (JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press, 2001) pp. 337-358.
Joyce Outshoorn, “The Political Debates on Prostitution and Trafficking of Women,” 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), pp. 2-46.
Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, “The Merchant of Death”, Foreign Policy, Number 157 (November/December 2006), pp. 53-61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25462106
Audrey Kurth-Cronin, “Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism,” International Security, Volume 27, Number 3 (Winter 2002-03) pp.30-58.
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, (McGillUniversity Press, 2006), Chapters 9 and 10, pp. 137-166.
Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelmann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations, (OxfordUniversity Press, 2006), Chapter 1, pp. 17-58.
Thomas Biersteker, “Building and Maintaining an International Regime to Counter the Financing of Terrorism” in Steve Tsang (ed.) Combating Transnational Terrorism (New York and London: Praeger Publishers, 2009), Chapter 4, pp. 54-71.
Cornelius Friesendorf, “Drug Industry Displacement and Side Effects of Foreign Policy” in his US Foreign Policy and the War on Drugs (Routledge 2007), chapter 5, pp. 166-178.
Peter Andreas and Richard Price, “From War Fighting to Crime Fighting: Transforming the AmericanNationalSecurityState,” International Studies Review, Volume 3, Number 3 (Fall 2001) pp. 31-52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3186241
26 April: Student Presentations I
3 May: Student Presentations II
10 May: Student Presentations III
17 May: Student Presentations IV
24 May: Student Presentations V
31 May: Student Presentations VI and Concluding Discussion
