Contemporary Challenges in International Relations

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We live in an increasingly complex, interconnected, and rapidly changing world, one which generates many challenges. We want to help students to be better prepared to understand our world, analyse it, explain it and, intervene on those matters which they care about the most. The agenda of contemporary challenges in International Relations is vast, but we have selected some issues to offer a comprehensive overview of key topics, such as polarization in contemporary democracies, peace and security, human rights, and the multidimensional global geopolitical competition. And we will study this with cases from Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. The sessions will include lectures, in-class debates, small-group projects, and presentations by the students.

China’s international relations in the Xi Jinping Era: Grand strategy, Foreign Policy and Great Power Competition (lecturer: A. Peña González). Since President Xi Jinping came to power China’s global engagement through its grand strategy and foreign policy have peaked strategic adjustments to meet China’s growing power aspirations, and project a more proactive and leading international profile. These adjustments have resulted in a more self-directed and forward-looking foreign policy, the launching of unprecedented global policy initiatives, and the growing strategic competition with the U.S. Throughout the sessions, students are expected to engage with the fundamentals of these topics and understand the implications they have on the dynamics of contemporary international relations.

Latin America: regional and international challenges in an emerging international order (lecturer: J.P. Soriano). Students will identify and analyse contemporary regional and international challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean. This will be done from a multidimensional perspective, but special attention will be given to political and economic regional integration; regional security and transnational crime; Latin America’s relations with the United States, the European Union, and China; and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the region.

Middle East and North Africa: Energy, Governance and Globalisation (lecturer: R. Aarab). Analyses of the role of energy in the evolution and transformation of international relations, and the processes of cooperation and conflict in the Mediterranean and MENA region. Students are introduced to the concept of energy and its transdisciplinary nature, governance, and globalisation. The sessions will address the key events of the 20th century related to energy in the MENA region. Also, there will be identified the factors that influenced the conflict processes and cooperation as: “the Seven Sisters” oligopoly, the 1973 oil embargo, OPEC’s Control Policy, and the Cooperation between the energy companies and states.

Polarization: endemic problem of contemporary democracies (lecturer: P. Aguiar). Conflicts are part of human nature. To transform them and move forward, they must be managed in a peaceful and constructive manner. This requires dialogue, debate, and the confrontation of ideas.

This exchange of ideas can take place based on extreme positions: this is polarization and is part of democratic culture. However, for some time now, we have been encountering a perverse dynamic by which dialogue and debate have lost part of their meaning. It is a growing phenomenon in many consolidated democracies, affecting coexistence and social cohesion. It is what we call “toxic polarization”. In addition, we are going to learn why this is happening, how we can identify it and different ways to tackle it.

Contemporary Challenges in International Relations
Week	Contents	Teaching / learning activities
1	PRESENTATION AND INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE (first day) FIRST TOPIC (3 days): China’s International Relations in the Xi Jinping Era: Grand strategy, foreign policy, and Great Power Competition. SECOND TOPIC (1 day): Latin America: regional and international challenges in an emerging international order	PRESENTATION OF THE COURSE: key objectives and assessment activities. Introduction to basic concepts on International Relations FIRST TOPIC: Teaching and learning activities: The topic will be addressed in three sessions namely (1) China’s Grand Strategy and Foreign Policy under Xi Jinping: The assertive turn; (2) US-China relations: The Growing strategic competition; and (3) China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Rationale and motivations in Central Asia. Each session comprises two parts: (1) a lecture by the professor on the main elements of each subject; (2) Exercises, presentations, debates, class participation, and Q&A supervised by the professor. SECOND TOPIC: Teaching and learning activities: Students will identify and analyse contemporary regional and international challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean. This will be done from a multidimensional perspective, but special attention will be given to political and economic regional integration; regional security and transnational crime; Latin America’s relations with the United States, the European Union, and China; and the impact of the war in Ukraine in the region. Students will be asked to prepare a short project on the foreign policy objectives of a specific Latin American country.
2	SECOND TOPIC (3 days): Latin America: regional and international challenges in an emerging international order THIRD TOPIC (2 days): Middle East and North Africa: Energy, Governance and Globalisation	SECOND TOPIC: Continuation of teaching and in-class activities. THIRD TOPIC: Teaching: Introduction to the African State (neocolonial origins, neopatrimonial state, democratic transition in 1990s) and analysis of the current social protests. Regional Economic Communities in Africa: overlapping problems and opportunities towards an African Continental Free Trade Area. Military conflicts in Africa: causes, characteristics and their management (African Union Peace and Security Architecture)
3	THIRD TOPIC (1 day): Middle East and North Africa: Energy, Governance and Globalisation FOURTH TOPIC (3 days): Polarization: endemic problem of contemporary democracies. CLOSING SESSIONS (1 day)	THIRD TOPIC: Continuation of teaching and in-class activities. FOURTH TOPIC:Teaching and learning activities. First part of the course will be focused on what is polarization and how can we identify and measure it. Then we will be dedicating the next sessions to apply the knowledge acquired and to examine the different ways to tackle it. Each class will be divided into three parts. The first part will consist of lectures or teaching activities by the professor on the main elements of the subject, organized in consecutive sections. The second part is for exercises, presentations, debates, class participation and Q&A supervised by the professor. The third part is reserved for individual questions. Guided by the lecturers, the students will do a wrapping up of what they have reviewed and analysed with the four different subjects of the course. Students will debate on how the topics are interlinked.

Each subject has different evaluation activities within the development of the corresponding section. At the end of the course, the final evaluation of this course will be the average of the four subjects or topics of this course.

IMPORTANT: all students need to do the mandatory readings for each session. This is very important for completing the different scheduled activities during each session.

China’s International Relations in the Xi Jinping Era: Grand strategy, foreign policy, and Great Power Competition (25% of the final grade).

25% of the grade will be based on attendance and participation in the debates.
75% of the grade will be based on the 3 short exercises/presentations/group work that students will do in classes (each one counts 25% of the grade).

Latin America: regional and international challenges in an emerging international order (25% of the final grade).

25% of the grade will be based on attendance and participation in the debates.
25% of the grade will be based on one individual short commentary.
50% group project (includes a written summary of the project and an oral presentation of the key findings).

Middle East and North Africa: Energy, Governance and Globalisation (25% of the final grade).

25% of the grade will be based on attendance and participation in the debates.
75% of the grade will be based on the 3 short exercises/presentations that students will do in classes (each one counts 25% of the grade).

Polarization: endemic problem of contemporary democracies (25% of the final grade).

25% of the grade will be based on attendance and participation in the debates.
75% of the grade will be based on the 3 short exercises/presentations that students will do in classes (each one counts 25% of the grade).

China’s International Relations in the Xi Jinping Era: Grand strategy, Foreign policy, and Great Power Competition

Goldstein, A. (2005). Rising to the Challenge. China’s Grand Strategy and International Security. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Indeo, F. (2017). A Comprehensive Strategy to Strengthen China’s Relation with Central Asia. In Amighini, A. (Ed.). China’s Belt and Road: A Game Changer? (pp. 35-51) Milano: ISPI.
Jisi, W., & Ran, H. (2019). From cooperative partnership to strategic competition: a review of China–US relations 2009–2019. China International Strategy Review, 1(1), 1-10.
Scobell, A. & Harold, S. (2013). An “Assertive” China? Insights from Interviews. Asian Security, 9(2), 111-131.
Stenslie, S. & Chang, C. (2016). Xi Jinping’s Grand Strategy. From Vision to Implementation. In Ross, R. & Bekkevold, J. I. (Eds.), China in the Era of Xi Jinping. Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges (pp. 65-73). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Latin America: regional and international challenges in an emerging international order

Moreno, Luis Alberto (2021), “Latin America's Lost Decades”, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2021.
Shifter, Michael and Binetti, Bruno (eds.) (2019). Unfulfilled Promises. Latin America Today. The Inter-American Dialogue. The book is open access and can be downloaded.
Stuenkel, Oliver (2021), “Latin American Governments Are Caught in the Middle of the U.S.-China Tech War”, Foreign Policy, February.
Stuenkel, O. (2022). “The Ukraine War May Hasten the Return of Great Power Politics in Latin America”
Van Raemdonck, Nathalie (2020), “Balancing between giants, Latin-America’s international cybersecurity position”. ARI 104/2020. Real Instituto Elcano, September.

Middle East and North Africa: Energy, Governance and Globalisation

Claes, D. H. (2013). “Cooperation and Conflict in Oil and Gas Markets”. In The Handbook of Global Energy Policy, pp. 176–189.
Daniel Yergin, D. (2011). The Prize. The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
Goldthau, A., & Sitter, N. (2018). “Conceptualizing the energy nexus of global public policy and international political economy”. In Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy and Natural Resources, Edward Elgar Publishing.
Mommer, B. (2002). Global oil and the nation state, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
Parra, F. (2013). Oil politics: a modern history of petroleum, London: I.B. Tauris.
Stevens, P. (2013). “History of the International Oil Industry”. In R. Dannreuther & W. Ostrowski, eds., Global Resources: Conflict and Cooperation, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 13–32.

Polarization: endemic problem of contemporary democracies

Barbet, B. (2020). Enquesta sobre polarització i convivència a Catalunya 2020. Informes 17/2020. Barcelona: Institut Català Internacional per la Pau.
Brandsma, B. (2017) “Polarisation. Understanding the Dynamics of Us vs. Them” Uitgegeven door BB in Media.
Gidron, N., Adams, J., i Horne, W. (2018, August). “How ideology, economics and institutions shape affective polarization in democratic politics”. In Annual conference of the American political science association.
McCoy, J. and Somer, M. (2019) “Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization and How It Harms Democracies: Comparative Evidence and Possible Remedies”, ANNALS, AAPSS 681.
Reiljan, A. (2020). “‘Fear and loathing across party lines’(also) in Europe: Affective polarisation in European party Systems”. European journal of political research, 59(2), 376-396.
Torcal, M., i Comellas, J. M. (2022). “Affective polarisation in times of political instability and conflict. Spain from a comparative perspective”. South European Society and Politics, 1-26.

Rachid Aarab. Ph.D. in Politics, Policies and International Relations. His research is within the framework of International Relations and studies on Energy, with special focus on the global energy policy, the National Oil Companies and the International Oil Companies, the energy sources in the Middle East and North Africa, the Arab Gulf states policies, and Islam and International Relations. He has been a visiting researcher at Princeton University during the 2015-2016 academic year and at London School of Economics and Political Science and at Qatar University during 2012.

E-mail: rachid.arab@uab.cat

Pablo Aguiar. Holds a Master on Cooperation for Development at Cidob. Currently he works as a Researcher at ICIP (International Catalan Institute for Peace) and as Associate Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Political Sciences, UAB. His main research areas are: Peace Studies; Cooperation for Development; EU Foreign Policy.

E-mail: paguiar@icip.cat

Alejandra Peña González. Holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She is an Adjunct Professor in International Relations at the same university and a former Associate Professor at the University of the Andes (ULA). Professor Peña is also a researcher at the Ibero-American Network of Sinology and a former visiting scholar at the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) in Hong Kong. Her research agenda is focused on China’s international relations, foreign policy, and the Belt and Road Initiative. 

E-mail: alejandra.pena@uab.cat

Juan Pablo Soriano. PhD in Political Science, UAB. Master in Political Science, UAB. Master in International Security, University of Hull, UK. Associated Lecturer in International Relations, at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, UAB. Affiliated lecturer at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB). Research interests: international relations of Latin America, international security (traditional and non-traditional security matters), foreign policy analysis, trans-Atlantic relations, Euro-Latin American relations.

E-mail: juanpablo.soriano@uab.cat

Department of Public Law and Historico-Legal Sciences, Department of International Public Law and International Relations Area

Contemporary Challenges in International Relations

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