GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 642/POLITICAL SCIENCE 639
GLOBAL SOCIAL GOVERNANCE

Fall 2010



 

Dr. Gerry Boychuk

 
 

General Information


SEMINARS:
Thursday 12:30-3:20
EV1 225

Office: HH 356
Phone: 888-4567 x.32900

Office Hours:
Thursday 9:00-11:30

or by appointment

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Course Orientation:


Social governance is a natural complement to economic governance and environmental governance. There is overlap between all three; however, none of them can be adequately subsumed under the rubric of the other two. Thus, a central challenge of global governance is to adequately addresse critical issues such as global health governance, global poverty, and global migration governance without reducing these issues to extensions of economic governance, environmental governance, security, or human rights.

First, the course examines questions relating to the development of global social governance -- what are the obstacles to addressing transnational social problems on a supranational basis? What role is required of states in global social governance and what is thier motivation? What political dynamics might give rise to further movement in the direction of global social governance? Secondly, the course focuses on global social governance in the areas of health, migration, labour, and education in order to illustrate themese relating to global social governance themes developed earlier in the course including 'securitization' of social issues, issue relating to the role of private actors and private authority in social governance, and how social governance problems are ideationally constructed.

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DISTRIBUTION OF MARKS

Grading in the course is based on the principle of grading pluralism -- students are offered a wide variety of assignment options (with some minimum parameters) from which they are expected to choose how they intend to meet the course requirements. Students are strongly encouraged to carefully consider how they intend to meet course requirements and to discuss their proposed grading package with the instructor. All students must act as facilitator/rapporteurs on four class occassions (20% of final grade) and the minimum weight of class participation is 20%. Beyond this required 40%, students may determine from a mix of options below how they would like to comprise the final 60% of the grade. For students who complete course requirements totalling more than 100% according the schema below, the final grade will be automatically calculated using the weighting which produces the highest grade so long as the two mandatory components still comprise a minimum of 40% of the course grade.

Written Components

Facilitator/Rapporteur Reports (20% overall) [required]
Facilitator (5%) x 2 = 10%
Rapporteur (5%) x 2 = 10%

Major Research Paper -- 40%

Reaction Papers -- 10% each up to 5 reaction papers (50% of total grade)

Extended Book Review -- 30% each up to 2 (60% of total grade)

Thematic Literature Review -- 30% each up to 2 (60% of total grade)

Class Participation Component

20%-30% -- Weekly Seminar Participation

This is a graduate level seminar. As such, it will rely heavily on class discussion within a broad framework provided by the instructor. Class participation will be graded. These marks are not for attendance but for contributing to class discussion!! Students who attend but do not contribute will not be awarded these marks. Students are expected to demonstrate through their class contributions that they have completed the assigned readings for the week and have thought about them. The partipation grading scheme is based on two premises: Marks for participation must be earned -- starting from zero -- just as with any other assignment, and, secondly, when you are not in class you obviously cannot be participating.

There are two basic criteria on which class participation will be assessed (and which will be given relatively equal weight):
-quality of contribution -- whether students demonstrate that they have done the required readings and are familiar with them (e.g. more than just a passing acquaintance) and whether students demonstrate that they have thought about the readings (each week the session facilitator for that week will provide questions for the following week to facilitate with this), and,
-regularity of contributions to the and the degree to which students are willing and frequent contributors.

Grades will be posted each week on ACE.

IT AIN'T ROCKET SCIENCE... (Tips to Success in Pols 639)

1.) COME TO CLASS. 2.) DO THE READINGS FOR EACH CLASS BEFORE THAT CLASS (i.e. take participation seriously.) 3.) CHOOSE YOUR STRATEGY FOR COMPLETING THE COURSE REQUIREMENTS CAREFULLY. 4.) START DOING THE RESEARCH PAPER EARLY!