103 undergraduate courses in the 2025–26 Undergraduate Calendar, and 49 graduate courses in the Spring 2026 Graduate Calendar.
What are the key political issues in Canada and abroad? Students will undertake comparative study of ideas, institutions, and interests central to issues of policy and politics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What are the politics underlying the contemporary distribution and governance of global wealth and power? This course provides students with an introduction to core issues in the study of global politics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How does one go about the study of politics? The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with how researchers attempt to explain political phenomena and the various methodological approaches used for designing and evaluating research. Through a variety of different assignments (both written and oral) students will develop research skills and basic methodological literacy in political science as a discipline.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Where do the core tenets of Western political philosophy come from? In this course students will trace the development of political philosophy by examining Ancient Greek plays (e.g., Antigone, Medea) and foundational political texts (e.g., Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics) which set the stage for modern Western political thought (Machiavelli and after).
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Where do contemporary ideas about political obligation, equality, freedom, and justice originate? By studying some of the most influential texts in Western political theory that emerged from the 1500s to the 1800s, students will consider such concepts as social contract theory (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), personal liberty (Mill), and structural-institutional critiques (Marx).
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
In this course students will learn theories, concepts, and topics in contemporary Indigenous political thought in Canada and North America including settler colonialism, assimilation policies, gender and sexuality, ecology, law, treaties, reconciliation, and decolonization. By exploring a variety of sources, students will understand and engage critically with structures, interests, and processes of settler-colonial institutions in North America. Students will learn to articulate diverse perspectives from Indigenous peoples critical of such institutions.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding of the relationship between government and business within the capitalist system. Through a variety of critical thinking, writing, and reading exercises, students will be introduced to a political economy approach in assessing the politics of business and work, governance of the national and global economy, and the key eras, issues, and policies that have come to shape government and business.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding of the causes of some important puzzles in contemporary politics. For example, why do powerful dictators often allow opposition parties to exist? Why are the frontlines of some civil wars spared from violence? Why do people's ethnic identities shift between religion and race? Through a variety of research-based reading and data analysis, students will gain the skills to explain real-world political outcomes through a theoretical lens. Students will critically reflect on issues such as corruption, racial identity, conflict and autocracy, to understand the structures, interests, and processes that shape contemporary politics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course introduces students to the concepts of comparative politics. including state, nation, regime type, democracy, and authoritarianism. The course will expose students to different democratic and authoritarian regimes around the world and will examine how the design of political institutions ensures the survival and longevity of these regimes. The course also grapples with the question of how political regimes transition from authoritarianism to democracy and why they might backslide. Students will learn how to use the comparative method to analyze contemporary political systems in a research-based assignment.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
In this course students will articulate an understanding of the major theoretical and policy-oriented debates about the Global South. Students will critically examine various narratives of development and modernization and their implications on the political and economic dynamics in the Global South. The carefully selected course materials and assignments offer students the opportunity to analyze, reflect, and present on the main global processes and structures that have shaped the identity of Global South and its development trajectories including the processes of colonialism, imperialism, neoliberalism, and globalization.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Religion continues to influence politics around the world as seen in the return of religious nationalism, religious opposition to globalization, populism and religion, and grassroots political movements for social change. Considering both historical and contemporary cases, students critically analyze how religion shapes - and is shaped by - politics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What role do political documentaries play in political thought, political practice, and the public sphere? Students will critically assess a range of documentary films made by government agencies, professional filmmakers, and activists.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding about the main similarities and differences between the major economies in the rich world. Through a variety of research-based reading and data analysis, students will gain the skills to compare political and economy systems across countries and time. Students will critically reflect on issues such as poverty, inequality, gendered labour market activity, and technological disruption, to understand the structures, interests, and processes that shape the well-being of rich countries.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course introduces students to the Middle East, a region with distinctive history, vivid cultures, and complex politics. Yet, it presents a unique case of misrepresentation and misapprehension. Students will gain an understanding of the Middle East's enduring foreign interventions, unsettled conflicts, and crises of social injustice. Students will critically examine several key questions related to power dynamics and politics and the impact of these politics on people of the region. Through a variety of reflective assignments and engaging class discussions, students will utilize course materials to articulate critical perspectives on the historical and contemporary political developments in the Middle East including military and political conflicts, crises of displacements and statelessness, and forms of resilience.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course is a survey of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia and is designed to provide students with an introduction to the political complexities and the prospects for economic growth in these regions by accounting for not only their breath-taking diversity but also their shared political inheritances, historical trajectories, cultural values, and geographical contiguity. Students will define and utilize concepts and terms that are central to comparative politics in their oral and written assignments to explain with reference to examples, why some Asian countries have experienced profound political change while others have remained relatively stable.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course introduces students to Canadian political structures, interests, and processes, and provides an opportunity to critically examine how power and authority are distributed in Canadian society. Through a range of collaborative and individual research-based assignments, students will consider the historical evolution of Canadian democracy, and how its political and legal institutions impact contemporary life.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will examine the major institutional pillars of American government (separation of powers, division of powers, Bill of Rights) to critically assess the extent to which these pillars both reinforce and allow for challenges to existing patterns of political privilege and marginalization. Course assignments will require students to critically assess the quality of information about American politics from various major news sources.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course explores key topics in the international relations of East Asia after World War 2. Classes examine literature on major developments of East Asian relations, including the Cold War, East Asian regionalism, and the foreign policies of China, Japan, and Korea.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will learn theories, concepts, and paradigms used to study international relations and global politics, and reflect on their merits and limits. Through individual and group assignments, students will analyze current and historical events, as well as key issues, actors, and processes in global politics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What trends prevail in foreign policy across states? Using a comparative approach by focusing on particular country-specific issues and approaches, students will explore important influences on the development of foreign policies and on the differentiation of big, middle, and small powers.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How is the world economy governed? What are the politics of global economic relationships? Through written assignments and analyzing texts, students will learn theories, concepts and topics in international political economy and discuss multiple ways of seeing topics such as the politics of global money and finance, international trade, global development, transnational corporations, the illicit world economy and the interface between the global economy and environmental issues.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding of how political actors at the international level coerce one another and try to gain security for themselves. Through a variety of research-based readings and assignments, students will examine coercive diplomacy and the organization and pursuit of military power in this course. Students will enhance their ability to understand the concepts and practices that states and non-state groups around the world adopt to achieve their political objectives with violence or thereof.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This topics course will be offered from time to time to cover areas of emerging research and teaching interest.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Course topics vary. Students will focus on learning about politics through experiences both within and beyond the classroom.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding of the foundational theories and perspectives that form and inform the political economy tradition. Through course-assigned and research-based writing and discussion, students will critically analyze the principal ideas upon which capitalism (and/or other political-economic systems) has been explained, defended, and criticized.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will learn approaches, concepts, and topics in the field of Canadian political economy. Through research, reading, and discussion, students will consider issues pertaining to the relationship between Canadian politics and economics, or how states and markets interact. Students will apply their knowledge to a range of current issues that may include the evolution of the Canadian welfare state, labour relations, capitalist (re)production, and gendered and environmental concerns.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How do Canadian local governments function? Students will study the relationship between municipalities and other levels of government, current governance challenges facing local officials, and the design and implementation of public policy within a complex local political environment.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How do major political actors, with diverging interests, resources, and strategies, influence environmental policy and outcomes? Students will study major historical and contemporary environmental debates in Canada, drawing on insights from comparative cases.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines Africa's role in international order and offers an in-depth study of the evolution of Africa's global political relations. Engaging with concepts related to political and economic underdevelopment, post coloniality, and early Pan-African political thought and practice, students will be challenged to develop and apply an historical understanding of Africa's past political relations to analyses of contemporary African multilateralism, global Pan-Africanism, and increased political and economic engagement with world nations. Students will engage with current concepts of Pan-African politics and envision prospects of future Black global leadership.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course surveys several key topics in the politics and diplomacy of contemporary Japan, particularly in its relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbours. Topics may include the Pacific War and its legacies, the Japan-US security alliance, the Okinawa problem, and Japan-Canada relations.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How do quantitative methods contribute to political science? Students will study a range of quantitative methods, with an emphasis on practical applications. The course requires only a rudimentary understanding of mathematics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What makes political science political science? Drawing on techniques from across various fields of political research, students will study the fundamentals of research design in political science, contrasting these approaches with dominant approaches in other closely related disciplines.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What is freedom? What does justice require? How does equality matter? Students will study 20th- and 21st-century thinkers' interpretations of these, and other, key political values. Theoretical analysis will be grounded in current problems, such as poverty, racism, sexism, global inequalities, colonialism, and environmental degradation.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
In this course students will gain an understanding and learn to articulate diverse perspectives on democracy, multiculturalism, and the politics of recognition as they are understood within modern political thought. Through reading and analyzing a variety of sources, and engaging in original research, students will consider and discuss multiple ways of seeing these topics. Student will learn both history of Hegelian, liberal, and multicultural concepts which have shaped normative Canadian politics as well as to apply feminist, decolonial, Indigenous, and other critiques to critically reflect on and understand the limits of such paradigms.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What is the role of the public service in Canada? Students will study the structures and functions of Canada's political system by examining the ways in which the public service relates to other institutions, such as the political executive and the legislature.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding of the dynamics of public policy development in Canada. They will learn to identify key actors, interests, and institutions involved in policy development and articulate diverse perspectives on policy problems. Using sources such as peer-reviewed publications, government reports, and think tank analyses, students will complete research-based writing assignments to analyze the social context of public problems and identify, compare, and recommend potential solutions.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course will seek to explain why democracy has weakened and why global political development is increasingly tilting towards populist and authoritarian regimes. We study how democracy functions throughout the world and what made democracy so successful in the 20th century. We will interrogate why democracy is now floundering with political rights and civil liberties in decline and voters losing trust in democratic institutions. The course will also explore what can be done to restore the promise of democracy globally. Through research-based reading and writing assignments and in-class discussion, students will critically reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of democracy in comparison to other systems and explain the major regional differences in democratization and development.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course is about different forms of political contention including protests, social movements, and revolutions. It explores what motivates people to dissent, what strategies and tactics are employed to achieve objectives, what factors influence the outcomes of social movements, and what is the government response to these demands for change.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How does the sharing of power ease or worsen conflict within society? Students will study different forms of power sharing, including pluralism, corporatism, consociationalism, and federalism.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course confronts the central challenge of how to transition from violence to just peace; from deep-rooted conflict, war, and structural violence to positive peace and transformed relationships. Students will learn key terms and concepts, explore frameworks for peacebuilding, understand central critiques of peacebuilding, and apply concepts of broad-based social change to conflict scenarios. Coursework includes readings, case studies, simulation exercises, and application projects.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What explains the successes and failures of democratization in Russia? Students will undertake the comparative study of political processes, institutions, and reforms in Russia, focusing on the dilemmas posed by democratization and authoritarianism.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How has Russia interacted with its many neighbours and how does it manage those relationships today? Students will study a range of topics including, but not limited to, nationalism and ethnicity, nuclear weapons, NATO expansion, the colour revolutions, energy politics, Baltic regional security, German-Russian relations, and the rise of China. Where appropriate, the course will include a crisis simulation, pushing students to think strategically.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course provides an overview of political development in China with a focus on the post-1949 period. Through readings and discussions, students will gain an understanding of China's political history, contemporary political institutions, and political economy. They will also develop research and communication skills by conducting and presenting independent research projects. The course encourages students to debate over policy and ethical issues.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course provides students with the analytical tools to understand the international politics of South Asia and how it has been shaped by domestic political considerations. Students will study bilateral relations between South Asian countries within South Asia and the involvement of external powers, such as the U.S., Russia, and China, and delve into the challenges of political development in the region as they are shaped by class, ethnicity, religion, and gender. Through academic scholarship, newspaper analysis, film review, and research-based written assignments students will learn the nuances of political decision-making in the South Asian context in comparison to the rest of the world.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Focusing on the most pressing current political issues in Canadian politics, students will examine how the major institutional components of the Canadian political system (fusion of powers, federal-provincial division of powers, Charter of Rights) shape political responses to those issues. Through a variety of scholarly, peer-reviewed and policy-based readings and assignments, students will critically reflect on how existing patterns of privilege and marginalization play out in regard to those issues.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding and learn to articulate diverse perspectives on contemporary Indigenous issues, politics, and critical theory by examining these issues from the perspective of Indigenous North American peoples. Through a variety of research-based reading and writing assignments, students will critically reflect on colonialism, power, and state policy to understand the structures, interests, and processes that shape Indigenous struggles in Canada and North America.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An introduction to the nature and basic principles of constitutional law. Explores constitutional conventions, the distribution of powers in the Canadian federalism, Aboriginal and treaty rights, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will learn about and analyze the political and legal implications of contemporary free speech controversies and explore proposed solutions to related policy challenges. Through a variety of research-based reading and writing assignments, students will critically reflect on the social and moral challenges, state responses to, and rights implications of a host of free speech challenges, including hate speech, misinformation, protest, and campus speech issues.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Focusing on the most pressing current political issues in American politics, students will critically examine how the major institutional components of the American political system (separation of powers, division of powers, Bill of Rights) shape political responses to those issues. Students will consider how existing patterns of privilege and marginalization play out in regard to those issues and the degree to which those issues allow for challenges to existing patterns of political privilege and marginalization.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
In this course students will the learn the history of colonialism. Through the study of various academic and/or peer-reviewed materials, and by engaging in original research, students will be able to demonstrate familiarity with diverse approaches to defining colonialism and its role in global politics. Students will further consider the historical evolution of colonialism as it has changed over time, including notions of postcolonialism, neocolonialism, and coloniality, as well as distinct manifestations of colonialism such as settler colonialism. Students will also engage with considerations of the social, economic, and political interplay of colonialism and other phenomena such as political economy, race, gender and sexuality, orientalism, and culture.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines the break-up of empires in the mid/late 20th century, and assesses how the colonial experience has shaped relations between and among former imperial polities to the present. Focus is given to questions of political identity in colonial and post-colonial societies, and how these identities shape current political challenges.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How does gender inform - and challenge - political ideas? Students will study the interrelationship of important concepts such as power, equality, oppression, representation, intersectionality, and autonomy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What is the role of political parties and electoral competition in established democracies? Students will focus on the practice of political marketing and its implications for democracy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course introduces students to forced displacement as a form of transnational migration that examines people’s movement in a world of heavily secured borders and increased walls. Students will develop greater awareness of the notions of forced displacement, refugeeness, and statelessness as forms of political injustice. Interdisciplinary literature and media will introduce students to power structures and states’ involvement in creating crises of refugeeness and governing displaced. Through presentations, reflection and analytical assignments, students will critically engage with the key notions of power, borders, governance, and agency and demonstrate their impacts on forcibly displaced people during their search of protection and acceptance.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What determines international trade policies? Through an examination of alternative theories and through empirical study, students will gain an understanding of how institutions, interests, and ideas shape countries' trade policies.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will demonstrate familiarity with the structures, interests, and processes of the institutions that shape Canada’s policies at the intersection of the domestic and the foreign, and show how political and policy making processes are shaped by global dynamics. Students will consider the political and historical context of Canada’s relationship to the United States and other great powers as well as to Indigenous people in Canada. Students will use primary source analysis, case studies, and policy analysis to demonstrate their understanding of Canada’s place in the global economy and global security, Canadian diplomacy, and the effects of climate change on domestic and foreign policy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What is the relationship between technology and international security? How have technological innovations altered national security strategy and military competition in world politics? Students will be exposed to a number of case studies, including motorized armour, aircraft, nuclear weapons, submarines, autonomous weapons, digital communication, cyber security, biotechnology, and new media.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines the major elements and evolution of Chinese foreign policy since 1949 and China's external relations in the context of rising Chinese power.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
In this course students will examine the complex phenomenon of globalization from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students will critically analyze various perspectives of globalization and explore a number of global contemporary themes including global pandemics, forced displacement, global wars, climate change, indigenous identities, and social movements. The interdisciplinary scholarly literature and other assigned materials will offer students a better understanding of the conceptual framework, emergence and historical development of globalization, structures and politics of global governance, global institutions and actors, and, most importantly, the impacts of globalization on communities and individuals in different parts of the world. Through presentations, discussion, reflective and analytical essays, students will demonstrate communication and critical thinking skills.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course introduces students to the notion of global governance from an interdisciplinary perspective. They will gain a greater awareness of the conceptual framework of global governance, its historical development, institutional and legal dimensions, various actors, and contemporary crises. Through a selection of engaging literature, students will build their understanding of competing perspectives of global governance and its power dynamics. Course assignments of reflective presentations and analytical papers will allow students to develop solid research and communication skills while they critically evaluating the conceptual framework and developments of global governance.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Course topics vary. Past examples include climate change justice and transnational migration.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
The special studies course is an opportunity for students to study a specific topic not concurrently taught in a focused manner in the department's regular course offerings. Topics may vary based on student interest. Past examples include political economy of energy in Canada, and dynastic politics in Pakistan. Learning in this course is self-directed, which means that students are required to plan, propose, and carry out their program of study with supervision from a faculty advisor.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Honours Political Science students wishing to undertake a senior honours essay and to complete it in one term should consult the department's undergraduate officer.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Course topics vary. Topics may include accumulation, crisis, and the state and the ups and downs of capitalism.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How does international business influence development in the context of economic globalization? Students will study contending perspectives on how international business practices have affected economic, social, and political development in host countries, home countries, and the world in general.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
In this course students will learn about the profound economic, political, and social changes associated with China's transition from an insular command economy to an increasingly internationalized and market-oriented economy. Through readings, discussions, and independent research projects, students will develop the skills for critical thinking and evidence-based analysis of complex issues. The course encourages to debate about diverse models of economic development.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding of, and discuss multiple ways of seeing, the politics of global money and finance. Through both written and oral assignments, students will analyze the latest scholarship in the field of international political economy on this topic and demonstrate that they understand debates relating to issues such as the politics of global financial reform and the governance of monetary innovation and financial crises.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course explores a growing trend in foreign policy -- the use of economic instruments to achieve geopolitical goals. Through readings, discussions, group projects, and independent research, students will learn the main concepts and theoretical perspectives in the study of economic statecraft, understand the logic of economic sanctions and inducements, and critically evaluate their ethics and effectiveness. The course also aims to improve student ability to engage in academic and policy debate and develop stronger writing and presentation skills.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will use the lens of gender to critically engage with the structures, interests, institutions and practices of international relations, including sovereignty, the UN, political economy, climate and health, and security. They will learn methods and approaches to studying global politics from a gendered perspective. Students will analyze primary sources (such as treaties, speeches, policies, and popular culture) as well as secondary sources in global politics to understand gendered power and gendered silences, how discourses of gender shape global politics, and how actual human bodies challenge those discourses.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Theories of justice are concerned with the distribution of the basic goods of society - money, power, status, leisure, and so on. This course considers how the gender system fares from the standpoint of liberal justice, and to what extent the promises of liberal justice can be used to overturn the unequal treatment of women.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will learn the normative foundations of democracy and the ways these do (and should) impact institutional design and democratic practices. Through an examination of systemic racism, sexism, and settler colonialism, students will articulate their understanding of the limits of contemporary democratic theory. Students will consider perspectives arising from an examination of inclusion and exclusion, equality, rights, democratic organization, protest, and communication, and will apply their knowledge to analyze problems and suggest solutions.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will plan, propose, carry out, reflect on and evaluate their learning experience. Learning experiences can range from researching a current issue of political relevance, internships, volunteer positions, community engagement, research assistantships, etc. This course is an opportunity for students to have real-world experience and connect it to their learning in political science. Students will be required to work towards a final project that demonstrates how their self-selected learning experience relates to contemporary politics, policy and governance.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Course topics vary. Past examples include genetics and justice.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will learn theories, concepts, and topics on the relationship between governments and markets, or states and economic actors, in society. Through a variety of critical thinking, writing, reading, and discussion-based exercises, students will relate academic debate to real world developments in the political economy of state and economic life.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will examine the major issues and debates in public administration, with the course topic varying to reflect recent developments in Canada and in the world. Students will learn to identify key actors, interests, and institutions involved in policy development and articulate diverse perspectives on policy problems. Through a variety of research-based assignments students will analyze the social context of public problems and identify, compare, and recommend potential solutions.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Examination of the ways in which world society is striving to address environmental challenges by means of "global governance" - that is, international organizations and institutions intended to deal with these challenges. The history of international environmental politics will be reviewed, specific organizations and other actors involved in global environmental governance will be examined and the management of particular global environmental challenges investigated.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will examine the major issues and debates in public administration, with the course topic varying to reflect recent developments in Canada and in the world. A variety of research-based assignments are tailored to help students hone their skills in writing and presenting for a policy-making and public administration audience.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course will help students to develop the specialized skills required to analyze political data, and to use data in order to answer political questions. For example, where should one go to collect political data? How does one use data to understand political trends, to predict electoral victories, or identify polarizing tendencies in society? The course also trains students on the use of software to process data.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will gain an understanding of and learn to articulate diverse perspectives on governance responses to social policy issues at the supranational regional and global levels by examining these responses from gender-based, North-South, and Indigenous perspectives. Through a variety of reading and writing assignments, students will critically reflect on both the normative and power-based underpinnings of global social governance.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What is the difference between non-democracies like China, hybrid regimes like Russia, one-party states like Singapore, patrimonial and personalist states in Africa or military dictatorships in Latin America? This course examines the dictator's playbook and how political power is structured in authoritarian regimes in a quest to attain absolute power and keeping it for as long as possible. Students will learn how to draw the main argument from a text, formulate critical responses to existing claims, and analytically interpret political contexts of authoritarian regimes as written in current scholarship, and visually presented in film.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will learn about the dynamics of political parties and elections around the world. Through a variety of research-based reading and writing assignments, students will gain the skills to analyze party competition, voter behaviour, and election outcomes. Students will critically reflect on issues such as ideology, the role of government, economic disruption, and corruption, to better understand the structures, interests, and processes that drive party competition and election outcomes in both rich and poor countries.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What are the social and economic consequences of politics, including its influence on poverty, inequality, growth, and declinate? Focusing on advanced industrialized countries, students will survey the key topics in political economy including the influence of politics on social and economic policies in relation to welfare states, labour markets, training, corporate governance, and technological innovation.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What causes ethnic conflict? What strategies do states use to manage or resolve ethnic conflict? Students will undertake a comprehensive review of such strategies including both those that are morally unacceptable and those that are morally desirable.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This seminar examines global narratives of statelessness and exile through an interdisciplinary approach. It exposes students to an unconventional, yet legitimate source of knowledge about exile and statelessness by focusing on the emotional elements and transformative impacts of displacement experiences on refugees' identities. This approach allows students to gain better understanding of the impacts of policies, wars, and conflicts on people's lives and rights. Students will examine notions of power, borders, belonging, memory, and home while engaging with narratives of loss, exile, and yet resilience. Additionally, students will develop a greater awareness of the ethics of writing about and presenting on refugees and forcibly displaced individuals which they will be encouraged to apply in their research and reflective papers, presentations, and during discussion sessions.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What are the key features of the cultural politics that underlie the Israel/Palestine conflict? Students will study the everyday lives of those affected by the violence to understand the complex narratives of violence, peace, and human rights that circulate across the region, as well as among those in diaspora and exile.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will develop their understandings of various critical perspectives (gender perspectives, Indigenous perspectives, perspectives of racialized people) on Canadian politics, including ideas, interests and institutions. Through the application of these diverse perspectives, students will propose and evaluate major reforms to Canadian political institutions and practices.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
In this course students will develop familiarity with key concepts such as dispossession, elimination, and the politics of refusal, and situate them in a context of differing ideas regarding authority and contrasting legal orders. The role of these concepts in the political thought of Indigenous peoples and movements will be critically assessed. Students will demonstrate their learning through both oral and written assignments.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An examination of the role that rights and rights discourse plays in public policy development and policy change. Examines Canadian public policy in relation to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and human rights legislation, as well as cases in comparative context.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines the body as a site of governance in politics and public policy, exploring the relationships between how certain people(s) come to be governed as "groups of bodies" (e.g., racialized bodies, Indigenous bodies, reproductive bodies) and the regulation of body parts (e.g., blood, skin). Throughout the course, students engage in a variety of assignments aimed at different audiences (e.g., academic, public, policy makers) to gain an understanding of the specific relationship between macro and micro approaches to the governance of the body, and the influence of related law and policy on experiences of (in)equality.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
How, if at all, do gendered and intersecting forms of oppression (e.g., misogyny, racism, classism, ableism, colonialism, heterosexism) inform public policy? Reviewing developments in Canada and elsewhere, students will reflect on the significance of feminist approaches to public policy. Using peer-reviewed publications, government reports, and think tank analyses, students complete a variety of written assignments that require them to think critically and analytically about how public policy issues are framed in ways that privilege certain groups and marginalize others.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What are the political and economic implications of growing interdependence in the region? Students will study patterns of economic development in Asia at the national level.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Has China's rising power changed it from a rule-taker to a rule-maker in global governance? This course examines China's involvement in global governance on a range of issues (e.g., security, economy, human rights, the environment, and social policy) in light of China's evolving preferences, capabilities, and relations with the rest of the world.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What political forces shape war and conflict? Course topics will vary, depending on the instructor and current events.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course reviews critical analytical models for the study of security and covers a range of issues which might be considered non-traditional including environmental security, public safety, cyber security, and counter-terrorism. Students will learn theories and concepts for advanced analysis of contemporary issues in security studies. Through reading and understanding a variety of primary and secondary sources, and through original research, students will demonstrate their understanding of the politics of security, the analysis of threats, and the implications of security responses as they relate to state, human, and global security.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will learn theories, concepts, and topics relevant to the latest debates in the field of international political economy. Topics may include the politics of global money and finance. Students will discuss multiple ways of seeing the politics of the world economy by analyzing texts, making presentations, and conducting independent research.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
What are the key issues within, and perspectives on, diplomacy? Students will study public diplomacy, the use of technological innovation such as cyber-diplomacy, the widening definitions of diplomacy, multilateral diplomacy, and "niche" diplomacy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Students will examine the major schools of international relations theory with attention paid to positivist and critical approaches.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines the global food and agriculture system. Specific themes to be covered include political and governance issues related to the Green Revolution, global food corporations, agricultural trade liberalization, food aid, international agricultural assistance, the global agro-chemical industry, and agricultural bio-technology.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Course topics vary. Topics may include international trade and cultural literacy, and the practice of politics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Course topics vary. Topics may include the ethics of war, the 2018 U.S. election, and U.S. foreign policy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
A combination of academic study and field experience that expose students to "real-world" political scenarios, including important political gatherings, such as the meetings of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank in Washington, DC; or sites of political significance, such as Israel/Palestine.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Honours Political Science students wishing to undertake a senior honours essay in their fourth year should consult the department's undergraduate officer.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Honours Political Science students wishing to undertake a senior honours essay in their fourth year should consult the department's undergraduate officer.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
From the Spring 2026 Graduate Calendar. Also this year: Fall 2025, Winter 2026.
This course examines different approaches to the study of political science, with units focusing on quantitative methods, qualitative methods, and an exploration of the epistemology of social science.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
A seminar focusing on the practicalities of research and writing in political science, topics include conducting literature reviews, research design, planning and best practices in field work, conferencing best practices, careers and skills translation, and communicating research to a broader audience.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the ways in which environmental challenges are being addressed by means of 'global governance' - that is, international organizations and institutions intended to deal with these environmental challenges. Concepts are investigated both to help analyze the relative strengths and weaknesses of existing structures and to suggest ways in which alternative forms of global governance might advance sustainability. Specific organizations and other actors presently active in global environmental governance are given particular attention, as is the management of selected global environmental challenges.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the international rules and organizations that have emerged to govern the increasingly global system of food and agriculture. Specific themes to be covered include governance issues related to the rise of global food corporations, agricultural trade liberalization and the WTO, food aid distribution, international agricultural assistance, the global agro-chemical industry, and agricultural biotechnology.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This survey course will provide students with a systematic introduction to the international legal system. Topics to be covered include: the origins and nature of the international legal system; the formation, sources and application of international law; the law of treaties; international legal personality; the institutional framework of international law; the relationship between international law and municipal law; the relationship between states and territory; law of the sea; state jurisdiction; jurisdictional immunities of states; state responsibility; and a selection of substantive international legal topics including, as time permits, international trade, international investment, the use of force by states, and/or international humanitarian law.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the major theories of International Relations (IR) and the current state of the field. It addresses the major IR theories, how they inform advanced research, and how they relate to the conduct of world politics.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines recent trends in world politics, their origins, and their policy implications.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the impact of international business on development in the context of economic globalization. It explores contending perspectives on how international business, particularly multinational corporations, has affected the economic, social and political development in the host countries, the home countries, as well as the world in general.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the evolution of Chinese involvement in global governance across different issue areas. We discuss Chinese perspectives on the existing governance mechanisms, and China's role in preserving or changing these mechanisms. We will also explore how China's involvement in global governance has shaped its domestic institutions.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Does looking at the world through the lens of gender change how we see the state, sovereignty, diplomacy, security, trade, migration, globalization, governance, and other foundational concepts in global politics? We review feminist theories of politics, with a particular focus on international relations and global governance; examine how gender shapes the roles and experiences of women and men in global politics; and discuss how to do feminist research.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An examination of normative understandings of freedom and equality and the ways different theorists measure them. An analysis of the impact that different framings of major concepts have on structures of justice and their implications for institutional design.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An examination of the justification and limitations of democratic government, as well as more practical applications of democratic theory to the workplace, judicial review, legal obligations, etc. The focus will be on problems of democratic theory and practice.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Theories of justice are concerned with the distribution of the basic goods of society - money, power, status, leisure, and so on. One would expect that they would be of particular interest to feminist theory, which is also concerned with the distribution of these goods. This course will consider how the gender system fares from the standpoint of liberal justice, and to what extent the promises of liberal justice can be used to overturn the unequal treatment of women. The issues of equality and difference will also be explored.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Consult the schedule of classes for specific topics being offered.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An in-depth analysis of selected theories of public administration and public policy (e.g.) organization, behaviour, motivation, responsibility, policy making and implementation.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An analytical and comparative study of the growth of government intervention in the economic process, and of the development of the welfare state in selected western liberal-democratic societies.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An examination of various public policies designed to promote the exploitation and export of Canada's natural resources with an emphasis on the economic, political, social and environmental implications of these developmental strategies.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
In this course, we examine some of the conceptual frameworks that have been used by policy analysts in the past, in order to assess the possibilities as well as the limitations of such frameworks. We then develop our own approaches to examining some recent policy developments in Canada, using the insights of the authors we have examined. We will examine federal economic policy, provincial health policy, and municipal zoning policies, in order to assess (among other factors) the relative significance of policy focus, the situation of the policy-makers in the political system and ideological preferences.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
A comparative survey of public administration in both developed and developing areas. The focus is on the rise of the administrative state in a variety of cultural and political contexts, and on the study of general concepts which can then be applied in a variety of settings. Among the topics to be discussed are: comparison in the study of public administration; bureaucracy as a focus for comparison; the concept of the administrative state; the evolution of national administrative systems; the politics-administration interface and the senior civil service; bureaucracy and democracy; representative bureaucracy; bureaucratic ethics and morality; and the ombudsman and government secrecy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Consult the schedule of classes for specific topics being offered.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course is an introduction to machine learning and other complex statistical methods that can be used to analyze a wide array of policy issues based on the use of open data. Learners must have knowledge of multivariate regression methods and be trained in the basic use of python or R to take this course.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the prospects for the supranational governance of social issues including the political and philosophical underpinnings of transnational social policy cooperation as well as examining specific issue areas such as global health policy and cross-national migration.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Consult the schedule of classes for specific topics being offered.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
The objective of this course is to study how the design and nature of political institutions in a country affect various aspects of its society, such as the cost of living, gender and race relationships, economic growth, people's access to education, and the nature of rural life. The course will compare the social impact of various political institutional features, such as regime types, polarization, government partisanship, and the rules of electoral competition.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course focuses on some of the methodological and theoretical problems involved in the conduct of comparative political inquiry.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Consult the schedule of classes for specific topics being offered.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the causes of ethnic conflict but focuses in particular on the strategies which states use to manage or resolve such conflicts. The review of state strategies is comprehensive in nature, and includes approaches which are morally unacceptable as well as approaches which many consider morally desirable.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course studies the relationship between politics and socioeconomic inequality from a wide range of perspectives, such as inequality relating to income and debt, ethnicity, sex, consumers and producers, and regions.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course serves as a survey of the international relations (IR) subfield of international organizations (IO) but focuses principally on formal, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs). We examine the growing literature on international organizations and discuss their impact on global governance, considering their formation, design, relevance, impact and agency. We apply this knowledge to the study of several highly institutionalized issue areas.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
The course is a study of international and local responses to human rights abuses in the contexts of economic globalization and proliferation of armed violence. It examines major debates on international human rights. It also deals with specific human rights situations in the developing/transitional countries. Topics include: universalism and cultural relativism, global economic justice, rights to food and health, women's and children's rights, the rights of displaced civilians, human rights and R2P, prospects for transitional justice.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the structure and operation of central institutions in government, including dominant theories and approaches to their study. Topics may include the constitution, Parliament, the executive, courts, federalism and intergovernmental relations, political parties, provincial and municipal governance, and the bureaucracy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the political process and societal cleavages in Canada, with a focus on new directions and debates in research. Topics may include elections and voting behaviour, social policy, gender, regionalism and nationalism, Indigenous politics, political culture, interest groups and social movements, and rights.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Consult the schedule of classes for specific topics being offered.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An exploration of the role that rights and rights discourse plays in public policy development and policy change. Examines Canadian public policy in relation to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and human rights legislation, as well as cases in comparative context.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines the global effort to develop new economies built around the commercialization of science and technology. This class, while covering Canadian developments in some detail, examines the broad international, theoretical and conceptual questions surrounding national innovation strategies and implementations and considers the role of national cultures and political environments in promoting new economies.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Public policy in a variety of areas significant for women (including sport, employment equity, violence) sometimes fails to take into account women's experiences and needs. In this course, we will review policy developments, and reflect on the significance of feminist perspectives for policy analysis. The course will focus on Canadian examples, with comparative material included where useful.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
A course on a specialized topic offered at different times as announced by the Department.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This seminar explores current issues and trends in conflict and security (both traditional and non-traditional) and in the study of global and regional governance to prevent or manage conflict and enhance security. Students will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with a variety of metatheoretical approaches to the subject. For Global Governance programs, the seminar will serve as the core course for the Conflict & Security stream.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
In this course we examine a range of "security" issues on the global agenda - both traditional and non-traditional - and examine recent and possible future institutional and policy responses. Issues examined include nuclear proliferation, terrorism, intrastate conflict, resource and territorial disputes, climate change, drugs, disease, and migration. Students will have an opportunity to research in depth a specific security issue of their choice.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course reviews critical analytical models for the study of security and covers a range of non-traditional issues including environmental security, public safety, cyber security, and counter-terrorism.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Contemporary perspectives and issues in international political economy, with particular attention to advanced industrial countries. Topics include political/economic cooperation, the politics of trade, and the politics of adjustment.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Diplomacy and foreign policy are usually discussed as though they are synonymous. From a more nuanced perspective, diplomacy is about the set of instruments used in international affairs via techniques of representation, information, communication and negotiation. This course highlights the work of diplomats and the machinery of diplomacy.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Consult the schedule of classes for specific topics being offered.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An examination of explanation of interstate war found in classic texts and current empirical studies. (Heldwith PSCI 481).
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
A survey of the theoretical and public policy debates relating to regulation of the global economy, examined through case studies ranging from international banking an intellectual property rights, to labour and environmental standards and the control of illicit economic activity.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
Topics in international political economy-such as trade, finance, corporations, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, regionalism (EU, NAFTA/FTAA, and APEC)-with a focus on resistance and accommodation to the forces of "globalization".
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
An advanced examination of theoretical approaches to the study of political economy. The course explores both historical and contemporary approaches and how they inform political economy research.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
A survey of recent developments in the field of political economy that combines local, national, comparative, and international perspectives on states and markets, politics and business, wealth and power.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines
This course examines major current issues and debates in the field of political economy as it relates to the environment. The focus is on Canadian cases with comparative insights drawn from international cases.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Spring 2026Course outlines