Is torture ever morally justified? Should pornography be banned? Should prostitution be legalised? Take part in the intellectual search for the moral principles that should govern how we answer these questions and others in governing public policy.

Understand how different statistical and experimental methods can be used to answer questions about political phenomena. You evaluate the assumptions of standard statistical tests and the linear regression model, consider alternatives to those, and learn about causal inference.

Examine how people reason about voting and politics, and why people vote the way that they do. You consider the effects of institutions such as the electoral system or the number of political parties on voting behaviour, using case studies from elections in Britain and other advanced democracies.

How do interest groups influence the trajectory of a country's foreign policy? Who benefits and gains from globalisation and how does this affect their political beliefs? In this module, we will explore how domestic politics and interests influence government's decisions in the international arena, and how international politics affect domestic politics.

In this module you will examine corruption, a global problem that is present in dictatorships as well as democracies, in developing and more developed societies alike. In particular, you'll focus on the impact of corruption on democratic regimes. At the extreme, corruption hampers economic development, reinforces social inequality, and undermines democratic development generally. You will start by defining corruption and discuss alternative tools to evaluate the extent of corruption within a given polity. You'll then examine the causes and consequence of corruption (both political and bureaucratic). Last, but not least, you'll evaluate existing strategies to contain and control this problem.

Explore German politics against the backdrop of the country’s troubled history, investigating its institutions forming a ‘militant democracy’, an adaptive party system and active social movements as the main channels for participation, and the challenging societal, cultural and economic transformation after World War II and reunification into the current ‘Berlin Republic’

This module aims to provide students with a detailed knowledge of how the UK Parliament works (in both theory and practice). Subject to validation, this module is co-taught by staff at the Houses of Parliament and has the support of The Speaker and the Clerk of the House in the House of Commons, and the Lord Speaker and the Clerk of the Parliaments in the House of Lords. The module content is delivered collaboratively by the Houses of Parliament and the University of Essex, with the University providing academic and theoretical content and Parliament providing practical and vocational teaching about the work, processes and business of Parliament.

Explore German politics against the backdrop of the country’s troubled history, investigating its institutions forming a ‘militant democracy’, an adaptive party system and active social movements as the main channels for participation, and the challenging societal, cultural and economic transformation after World War II and reunification into the current ‘Berlin Republic’.

Politics is about people. Everything – angry tweeting, constitutional design, environmental lobbying, states going to war – boils down to the opinions, decisions and behaviour of individuals, and understanding those is the territory of psychology. Political psychology is a growing and thriving subfield, to which this module provides a wide-ranging introduction.

The field of security studies has become increasingly important over the last decade. While old conflicts are reigniting and new ones are emerging, scholars and decision-makers debate about changes to the concepts of security, the redundancy of military force, and the centrality of the state in order to face these ever-important issues.

War narratives and studies of political violence have traditionally focused on the roles and actions of men. Women have typically been framed as innocent bystanders and victims. Yet, women often actively participate in civil wars and in terrorist campaigns, either as civilian supporters of these groups or as armed fighters. In addition to acknowledging the profound impact that civil conflicts have on women, this course explores the many important roles that women often play in terrorist and rebel organizations and examines women's potential contributions to post-war peace building and conflict resolution. The objective of the course is that you will gain a better understanding of the roles women play in the production and resolution of political violence and the manner in which gender and gender attitudes influence war and armed conflict.

In this module, you’ll gain an introduction to the domestic politics of Israel in a comparative perspective, including issues of internal cultural diversity, religion and politics, fragmentation of the political party system, and coalition governance. You’ll explore political institutions, parties, and voting behaviour in Israel, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the state of Israel as a democratic country, understand the Israeli political structure, and discuss the electoral arena.

This module explores the relation between gender and political theory by focusing on the work of feminist theorists, the critiques they have developed of mainstream understandings of key political concepts, and how they have sought to 'en-gender' those concepts. Themes may include the public/private divide, equality, intersectionality, democracy, power, rights, justice.

Theories of justice are still being worked on and developed today. You question contemporary theories of justice through applying them to some of the most controversial issues dominating contemporary politics.

This module explores the nature and foundations of international obligations. It asks what we owe to people in other countries, and what they can demand of us as a matter of right. Questions to be addressed include the following: Who owes what to the very poor? Are citizens of affluent countries complicit in the creation and maintenance of world poverty? Does justice demand the elimination of global inequality? Is the promotion of human rights a form of western cultural imperialism? When is international trade unfair? Do states have a right to close their borders to outsiders? Under what conditions (if any) is it permissible to wage war? We will address these questions by considering the answers that they have received in important recent works of normative political theory.

Study one of the most important contemporary aspects of political action: the natural environment. You consider the state of the environment and possible paths along which it might change, before exploring environmental policies from the level of individual values to the environmental movement to political parties, and finally to the level of international affairs.

This course is about how representative democracy works in Europe. We will examine several topics within the European context, including: public opinion, political participation, political parties, electoral systems, party competition, and how to evaluate democracies. We will also develop specific knowledge about several European countries, by learning how the political institutions (several are mentioned above) function within them. The course also provides an accessible introduction to research design and methods that political scientists have used to address these topics.

Prepare an 8,000 word dissertation which researches the political topic you are most passionate about.

This module is intended to provide you with a broad understanding the main theoretical frameworks of media and journalism to develop their critical appraisal of the interconnected communication world of today. This module is intended to provide you with a broad understanding the main theoretical frameworks of media and journalism to develop their critical appraisal of the interconnected communication world of today. It is aimed primarily at students looking to develop a research career in journalism or media studies as well as those students looking to acquire a critical approach to journalistic practice. It will also be interesting to students of Government and Sociology who are interested in understanding the big debates around the media and the relationships with politics and society. Each week a current event will be discussed in the seminar as well. The module will equip students with the knowledge, theoretical frameworks, and critical tools to unpack the complexities of contemporary networked newsrooms. It will provide the conceptual framework required to analyze and comprehend our interconnected communication sphere. The module will be open to students from LIFTS who want to critically reflect on the professional practice and to students from Government and Sociology who would be eager to acquire analytical tools that would support their interdisciplinary research.