Candidates take the mandatory core course, plus three additional options.
Some optional courses permit candidates to select speclialized sub-options within a given course. The course surveys a range of methodologically distinct approaches to the study of international relations including systemic, formal, normative, and postmodern analyses. The remainder of the course uses work on the balance of power and the nature of war to explore methodological variety in International Relations. The determinants of international stability, the criteria for a systemic theory, the distinctiveness of international politics, the behaviour of complex systems, and the implications of rational action by states are examined through work by or deriving from Kenneth Waltz, Robert Jervis, and Robert Axelrod. Frictions between the a priori systemic approaches of neorealism and rational action models and between both and more empirically based statistical analysis of the frequency and correlates of war are studied next, as are the strengths and weaknesses of positivism.