Do international organizations and supranational institutions influence governments’ policy? This is a widely researched question in political science. This course introduces students with the state of the art and encourages them to develop their own research questions and strategies on this theme.
The course combines thematic lectures with in-class interaction in order to stimulate students to develop their own research interest in one or more aspects of the theme of the course. The main examination consists in a final essay (4000 words) in which students are asked to formulate a research question of their interest and present a convincing research strategy. The reading load consists in two readings per session (i.e. journal articles or book chapters). Classes are prepared with the idea that students have engaged with the readings beforehand.
The course starts with three introductory sessions exploring current debates in International Relations and Comparative Politics about the power IOs vis a vis national states. In sessions 3-6 the different channels through which IO’s exercise influence are discussed. By the end of session 6, students will have a theoretical grounding on how to investigate the influence of IOs on public policy. Hence, from this session onwards students are expected to start thinking about the theme of the final essay for this course.
In sessions 7-10 we dive more deeply into the praxis of measuring IO’s influence. We do this by taking the case of social policy, which is a highly salient theme that each year in most countries channels around 20% of a GDP. As we shall see, international organizations like the OECD or the EU have been very active since at least the 1990s in promoting certain social policy strategies. On the basis of existing studies, in these sessions we will evaluate the extent they have succeeded in doing so. In sessions 11 and 12 we will have in-class presentations by the students in which they present their work in progress for the final essay.
