210059 LK BAK8: International Politics (2022S)

The United Nations and international cooperation

*Taught in English*

This seminar provides an introduction to one of the most relevant and complex institutions in world politics: the United Nations (UN) system. It does so in two interrelated ways.

On the one hand, we learn about the historical and organizational foundations of the UN and discuss them in light of theoretical approaches presented in the International Politics lecture. We then engage with the notion of international cooperation as the underlying logic of what the UN is and how it functions. Building on a discussion of fundamental divisions at the global level – including the North-South divide – we take a closer look at sustainable development frameworks at the UN and finally focus on South-South and triangular cooperation as a specific set of modalities that currently contribute to re-shaping the ways in which the UN operates.

On the other hand, we collaborate on a joint semester-long project “The United Nations system: a student booklet”. As part of their performance record, students prepare a short case study on one UN entity each. At the end of the semester, all case studies combined are set to provide a detailed and analytical overview of different parts of the UN system. Students will engage in a collaborative peer review process during the semester and finalise their contributions in May. Officials from the UN – notably the UN Industrial Development Organisation and the UN Development Programme – will join us for hands-on discussions on how the UN builds on, and contributes to, international cooperation processes.

The instructor: Dr Sebastian Haug is researcher at the German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn and Ernst Mach Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. His research focuses on the United Nations, international cooperation and global power shifts. He is the lead editor of the forthcoming Routledge volume “The ‘Global South’ in the study of world politics” and has published on minilateralism, international development and meta categories in Global Governance, Third World Quarterly and Rising Powers Quarterly. After working with the United Nations in Beijing and Mexico City, Sebastian now regularly collaborates with government ministries and international organisations, and currently lectures or supervises students at the Universities of Groningen and Vienna. He holds a Master’s from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Cambridge.