POG225 Essay Topics

Please read the following paragraphs very carefully:

First, choose one of the following essay questions and write your paper on it:

Global Security Governance:

• Has the world become less militarized (measured in terms of global defence spending, arms control, disarmament, and international arms trade)? Explain your position.
• Has the world become more peaceful because of UN peace operations? You may choose specific UN peace operations to explain whether they have been effective or ineffective.

Global Human Rights Governance:

• Has the UN Human Rights Council been effective in getting states to cooperate on human rights and to protect human rights?
• Has the orchestration model in global human rights governance been effective or ineffective? (You need to focus on the role of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and its relations with national human rights institutes).

Global Judicial Governance:

• Has the International Criminal Court been able to deter mass atrocities around the world?
• Has the International Criminal Court been successful in promoting peace through justice? (You may want to choose what the Court has done in a particular country as your case study).

Global Health Governance:

• Has the World Health Organization been effective in strengthening global health governance by getting other actors to combat pandemics or infectious diseases?
• How powerful has the World Bank become in global health governance and why?

Global Educational Governance:

• Has global educational governance been effective in standardizing national educational systems and helping countries ensure that more of their citizens gain access to education?
• Have countries that participate in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) improved their educational standards or quality? Choose one or two countries for analysis.

Global Monetary and Financial Governance:

• Have actors in this global system become effective in addressing financial crises? You may choose one of these crises to explain your position: the foreign debt crisis in the 1980s; the 1997 financial contagion; the 2008 global financial crisis; the European sovereign debt crisis.
• What has the World Bank done to help address global financial crises and has it been effective?

Global Trade Governance:

• Has the World Trade Organization been effective settling trade disputes among its members and why? You may choose one or two trade disputes that were brought to the WTO.
• Has the World Trade Organization been effective in promoting international free trade? If not, why not? If the answer is yes, explain why from a theoretical perspective.

Global Environmental Governance:

• Have different actors in global environmental governance been effective in taking collective action to implement climate change or environmental agreements? Explain why.
• How and why did global environmental governance emerge and has it become stronger in dealing with environmental threats?

Second, your answer to the question of your choice must be conceptually clear, theoretically informed, methodologically sound, and empirically strong. For instance, if you decide to work on global collective security, you must define what global security is, state clearly what your theoretical positon is, make clear what aspects of global security you focus on (a case study on denuclearization efforts in Iran or North Korea?), and provide evidence to support your theoretical argument.

Third, the introduction, the main body and the conclusion of your paper must be 6 pages long (double-spaced). See the syllabus for further clarification. The introduction and the conclusion must not exceed half a page. The main body of your paper should be no more than 5 pages long.

The introduction should make clear the purpose of your paper, the importance of your topic, and your argument. For instance, your introduction may look like this: The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of global security governance in addressing the threat of militarization in space. The militarization of space has become a growing source of international stability as major powers continue to compete for power and domination. This paper focuses on the rivalry between China and the United States and contends from a realist perspective that their space militarization is likely to escalate.

To develop your argument, you may want to structure the body of your paper as follows:

Part I: Global Security Governance:

In this part, you describe what global security governance is and what global security threats are. One of the threats to global security would have to be the militarization of space.

Part II: Militarization of Space: China and the United States:

Describe what China and the United States have done to militarize space and how their militarization of space has become a threat to global security.

Part III: Why China and the United States Engage in Militarized Space Competition:

                Here you explain why China and the United States compete in space form a realist perspective.

Your essay title would be something like this:

The Challenges of Global Security Governance: A Realist Perspective on Dangerous Chinese and American Space Militarization

Fourth, Citations and List of References:

                Citations: in-text citations or footnotes or endnotes (page numbers must be provided)

                References must be complete: author’s name, year of publication, title, publisher, and page          numbers. Each reference must begin with the last name of each author.

Your references should be relevant to your topic and should not be those published a long time ago. Global governance is a new concept. So your references must be recently published.

The number of references must be around 4 or 5 academic journal articles or book chapters. Thus, it is important that you get the most relevant references.

Fifth, these instructions only give you a rough idea of what you should do to meet my expectations.

                Use the relevant lecture notes to help guide your research, but do not cite them!

Sixth, see me if you have questions about your topic, but I will not discuss your work with you if you don’t have a clue of what you want to work on.

Good Luck!