Contemporary Global Systems Overview

Course Overview and Assessment

  • Course Details: SID 100: Contemporary Global System (33 credit hours, Prerequisite Course: None).

  • Course Purpose: Introduces a survey of contemporary global issues, including the environment, population growth, human rights, security, economic development, and trade.

  • Assessment:

    • Continuous Assessment tests: 30%30\%

    • End of semester examination: 70%70\%

  • Core Reading Materials:

    • Seitz, John L. &Kristen. A. Hite (2012). Global Issues: An Introduction (3rd Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

    • Chasek, Pamela S., David L. Downie and Janet Welsh Brown (2013). Global Environmental Politics. Boulder: Western view Press.

Fundamentals of Contemporary Global Systems

  • The Global Stage: A complex network of states, international organizations, and individuals interacting across borders to drive global politics through power dynamics, diplomacy, economics, and shared rules.

  • Polarity: Describes the presence of one or more great powers dominating the international system:

    • Unipolarity: One superpower dominates the system (e.g., the United States after the Cold War).

    • Bipolarity: Two superpowers dominate the system (e.g., during the Cold War).

    • Multipolarity: A system characterized by the rise of several powers.

  • Global Governance: A system of formal and informal rules, institutions, and mechanisms managing international affairs without a centralized world government (e.g., United Nations (U.N), World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank).

  • Globalization: The increasing interconnectedness and interdependence of states, societies, economies, and cultures via cross-border flows of goods, services, capital, information, people, and ideas.

  • Interdependence: A condition in which states or non-state actors are mutually reliant on each other for resources, security, economics, technology, communication, or political support.

  • Cooperation: Situations where actors work together through diplomacy, treaties, and joint initiatives to pursue common goals (e.g., African Union (A.U), European Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and East African Community (EAC)).

  • Security and Peace Concepts:

    • Security: The alleviation of serious and immediate threats preventing referent objects from pursuing cherished values or surviving.

    • Negative Peace: The absence of direct violence.

    • Positive Peace: The presence of justice and conditions for sustainable human well-being.

    • International Security: State and international organizational efforts (utilizing military action and diplomatic agreements) to ensure mutual survival and prevent conflict.

    • International Peace: A state of global harmony characterized by the absence of violent conflict and the presence of respect, justice, and understanding.