Summer Timetable

POL300H1S L0101

Topics in Comparative Politics

Themes

The course concerns memory and peace. It examines mechanisms meant to ensure lasting peace after wars, conflicts, and regime transitions. It asks what lasting peace means and looks like, for who, and by who. To that end the course explores competing conceptions of peace, and competing conceptions of justice. It examines mechanisms of the Transitional Justice framework, more specifically trials (including international courts and ad-hoc tribunals), truth and reconciliation commissions, reparations, and commemorations. We explore their efficacy in diverse settings and subject them to empirical assessment. The course balances conceptual and empirical components, and it balances international and domestic perspectives. At every stage the course exposes tensions between the aim of justice and other crucial goals of post-conflict societies. To familiarize students with the complexities of managing post-conflict societies we explore trade-offs between requirements of justice on one hand and reconstruction, reconciliation, state-building, democracy, and economic development on the other.

Texts

Readings are available online through Blackboard in Course Materials and the Library Resource link.

Format and Requirements

Critical response paper: 20%, research paper: 30%, final test: 30%, class attendance & participation: 20%.

Prerequisites

1.0 POL credit