English

Politics in the Developing World will introduce you to the political, economic, and social challenges of development in countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The vast majority of the people in the contemporary international system live in the developing world, encompassing 150 countries and close to 80% of the world population. Despite great diversity among the nations of the developing world, they also share common characteristics of poverty, inequality, legacies of colonialism, external vulnerabilities, internal political and social instability, challenges of state-building and human rights abuses. This course aims to critically analyze the major issues and challenges facing developing nations.

The course will familiarize you with the broad social, political, and economic characteristics of the developing world. It will focus on challenges of state-building, resource and capital accumulation, state-society relations, democratization, conflict and instability. Organized into four main parts (I: The Politics of Development; II: Democracy, Governance and Development III: Inequality and IV: Financing Development), the lectures will combine theoretical perspectives and empirical applications drawn from Asian, African, and Latin American experiences.

Upon completion of the course the student should be able to:

Knowledge:

• knowledge about strengths and weaknesses of established theories of politics of development in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
• ability to assess the arguments involved the main development debates
• ability to identify the characteristics of a developing nation and describe the social, economic, and political status of the developing world.

Skills:

You will:

• acquire a basis for critical and independent analysis of issues of politics, governance and development in the developing world
• Increase your analytical skills and be able to design an independent research project in political science
• Increase skills in oral presentation (in class presentation of country analysis)

General competence:

• enhanced analytical and critical skills in applied research;
• Familiarity with key contributions in the scholarly literature on politics in the developing world.
• Develop capacity to carry out independent analyses in working life and in more specialized studies at the masters level

mailto:Studierettleiar@isp.uib.noStudierettleiar@isp.uib.no

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