Agenda

• Today: Course Overview and Introductions

    - Introductions
    - Major course policies
    - Course objectives and outline

• Next Class: Introduction to International Organizations

    - Reading: Readings: Hurd, Preface and Introduction, pages vii through 16

• January 21 - Theory, Methods, and International Organizations

    – Readings: Hurd, Chapter 2, pages 17-43

• January 23: Brief History of International Organizations

    - To be posted in Canvas/Course Reserves look for Canvas Announcement

Agenda (2)

• January 30: The United Nations: Law and Administration

    - Readings: Hurd, Chapter 3, pages 44-75

• February 4 - The United Nations: International Peace and Security

    – Readings: Hurd, Chapter 4, pages 76-99

February 6 - The United Nations

    - Reading: Vreeland, James. 2008. "Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter into the United Nations Convention Against Torture." International Organization. 62(2): 65-101,  (Course Reserves)
    - Mattes, Michaela, Brett Ashley Leeds, and Royce Carroll. 2015. “Leadership turnover and foreign policy change: Societal interests, domestic institutions, and voting in the united nations.” International studies quarterly: a publication of the International Studies Association 59(2): 280–290. (Course Reserves)

Announcements

Instructor

• Tom Hanna, MA

• UH alumnus

    - Bachelor of Science 2018, Political Science/minor in Economics
    - Master of Arts 2022, Political Science (International Relations/Comparative Politics)

• Ph.D. Candidate expected 2025.

    - My dissertation involves the international behavior of dictators as threats to democracy.

• Fellowships

    - Oskar Morgenstern Fellow in Quantitative Political Economy at the Mercatus Center at Mercatus Center, George Mason University (2022-2023)
    - Adam Smith Fellow in Political Economy at Mercatus Center (2023-2024)

• Big ole honkin’ nerd

Instructor

• I have been teaching since 2022

• I have taught upper level and introductory courses at University of Houston, Houston Community College, and Our Lady of the Lake University

• Note about this course:

    - My dissertation advisor was hired in 2016 with the expectation he might teach this course, but it has not been taught since at least then

• I share custody of a Pug dog and got 99% full custody of a Khorat cat. I’m a dog person. She’s a cat person.

Class introductions

• Please give your name
• Your major and minor (planned is fine, doesn’t have to be official yet)
• Why you decided to take this course
• Something you’d like to share to help us get to know you better

Course Policies

• Major syllabus points (but please take time to read it)

• Respect for other people, especially those in this room, is non-negotiable. The number one rule for the course.

    - Corollary: If someone says something that could be construed as disrespectful based on some notion of political correctness, we will give them the benefit of the doubt unless there is evidence otherwise. 

Course Policies

• In class work and being prepared for in class work will be 45% of the grade

    - This will be a heavily discussion oriented course, more seminar than lecture most days.
    - If discussion is robust and well informed, everyone will get full credit for the day's discussion.
    - If discussion lags badly, we may have a quiz. Depending how badly discussion lags, the quiz may be up to 100% of the day's grade
    - Most days there will be some small written work, which will also help me track who was here. Some days it may be very small. Other days, it may be a couple of paragraphs. 
    - Bring writing utensils and paper in anticipation of possible quizzes or slightly longer writing assignments.

Course Policies

The balance of the grade will be:

• A Syllabus Quiz posted in Canvas and due January 24 - 5%
• Professionalism - 5%
• Exams - 45%
• In class work - 45%
• Extra credit - not more than 10%

Course Policies

• Everyone gets four days in class work dropped plus extra points equal to half a day’s work
• No other excuses are needed, as 4.5 days is the maximum absences under the University Excused Absence Policy before dropping or an incomplete is normal
• The makeup for any missed exams is the final exam
• The final cannot be made up except in extreme emergency resulting in an incomplete

Course Policies: Exams

• Exams 1 to 3

    - mostly multiple choice, fill in the blank, true/false. etc. 
    - may have one or two answers requiring about one paragraph of writing
    - should not be that hard if you stay engaged in the course

• Anyone getting at least a 70% on the Final Exam will get a Guaranteed C¹

    - If you stop showing up to class without saying anything, you may be dropped before the final exam gets here. 5 days according to the UH Excused Absence Policy.

Final Exam

    - The Final Exam will be comprehensive and will have a short essay
    - The final will be comprehensive, so may be a bit harder. 

Course Policies

• There will be no outside work other than doing the readings¹, but you should read them and take notes on them. Take them seriously.

• Do not ask for personal extra credit or an upward round up of grades, please.

Course Policies: Communication

• Face-to-face is the preferred mode of communication. It worked fine in the olden days until the early 2000s.

• There is no need to email really, since we will see each other twice a week and there is no outside homework.

• I will have office hours, listed in the syllabus. You are welcome to come by to discuss the course, a reading, plans for graduate school, other political science topics, current events, or whatever. You don’t need an appointment. PGH 391.

The Course!

• The course hasn’t been taught in at least 8 years at UH.
• I took undergraduate international organizations when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was still just the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)
• I am familiar with the general literature on the topic, but we are going to read some things that are my first time to read them, too.

This course should be fun!

This course should be fun

I guarantee that at some point in the semester, I am going to make (and correct) a mistake.

You should feel free to make mistakes in discussion.

I would rather work together with you to reason through things you aren’t sure of than have no participation.

And, since the number one rule is respect for others and no one else in here knows any more than you do, there is no reason not to take risks and express your thoughts!

The readings: Ian Hurd

• Each week we will read a chapter or two from Ian Hurd, International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice

• This book will form a basis for discussion, but…

• while Professor Hurd is a pre-eminent expert in the field, when he presents a thesis (argument) it is subject to debate

• You are responsible for knowing what Hurd writes, but I encourage you to consider other ideas

The readings: Academic Journal and Foreign Affairs Press

• Each week we will read one or two articles either from academic journals or the foreign affairs press

• By foreign affairs press, I mean high level non-academic journals like

    - Foreign Affairs Magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations
    - Foreign Policy
    - The Economist
    - The National Interest
    - The Washington Quarterly

Short presentations

• These will be very informal
• Find something of interest from one of those sources and present it to the class (3 to 6 minutes total)
• Give a brief summary and discuss what you found interesting about it, then the class can discuss it (no limit on discussion time)

Scheduling:

    - If possible, look through the list of topics for the semester and choose an appropriate article in the next week or two
    - It would be better to have the article after the topic than before 
    - Discuss it with me at least two weeks ahead after class or in office hours, so I can get a copy and share it with the class through Canvas
    
    

Topics

• Overview of IOs

• United Nations

• Economic organizations

    - World Trade Organization (WTO)
    - International Monetary Fund (IMF)
    - World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD))

• Humanitarian Organizations

    - World Health Organization (WHO)
    - Refugee and international migration organizations

Topics

• International Courts

    - International Court of Justice (ICJ)
    - International Criminal Court (ICC)
    - WTO dispute settlement

• FIFA, the International Olympic Committee, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport

    - focus will be on the arbitration (judicial) aspect

• Regional Organizations including the European Union (UN)

    - We may read and discuss my work on ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - if there is interest

Extra Credit Available

• Since this will be heavily discussion based, I will not prepare extensive lecture materials

• There will be about 20 class days

• Taking good notes and giving them to me to edit/annotate and post to Canvas will be worth 1% of the course grade

• To make this fair:

    - No one can do this a second time until everyone who wants to has had an opportunity
    - If you want to do this, let me know next class
    - If there are too many people, it may be only half a class worth
    - If there are too few, it may be possible to do it more than once
    - If you miss a day you agreed to do, I will first see if someone wants to switch but if not you may lose the slot (this is extra credit)

Authorship and License

• Author: Tom Hanna

• Website: tomhanna.me

• License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.