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This course will explore the political development and the international relations of selected regions in Latin America. The major objective of the course is to allow students to gain a deeper understanding of Latin America. It also seeks to analyse the forces of change which are shaping new directions in Caribbean-Latin American relationships. Particular case studies for analysis will be drawn from Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The course will take a seminar format and there will be a series of introductory lectures.

This course is a follow on from Caribbean Political Systems I and is structured around the central theme of the politics of development in the Caribbean periphery. This theme is proposed against the backdrop of wider debates on debt, aid and development practices in the region and the extent to which competing institutional and interpretive traditions can help theorize around the key patterns affecting the Caribbean. Having deepened research around the key institutions underpinning Caribbean political systems in the previous semester, students are now being given the platform to engage with this thesis; locate Caribbean political science scholarship within these wider debates; and to master key analytical and ameliorative techniques. This course is designed to help identify and develop the next generation of scholars who can demonstrate advanced academic competencies around the Caribbean experience, however understood

This course is designed to give students an understanding of the origin and evolution of security as well as to provide the theories and debates within security studies which can be used as a framework for analysing issues in international politics. In tracing the development of security studies, the course will seek to demonstrate the widening and deepening of the concept of security, which at the core will determine how it is being interpreted and studied. The scope of the course’s content captures traditional notions of state security as well as the unorthodox theories of security which have emerged in the post-Cold War era. It will focus on the offensive and defensive realist perspective on anarchy, the security dilemma, arms race, and offensive-defensive theory. The unorthodox theories of security focuses on the Copenhagen School (Securitization Theory), Social Constructivism, Critical Security Studies, Feminist Security Studies, Post-structural Security Studies and Human Security. It concludes with an important security threat affecting the Caribbean – drug trafficking – and explores the impact of globalisation on this problem. Theories and Concepts in Global Security integrates well into the Programme on International Relations as the nature and scope of security issues remain core features fornation-states and for their global relationships. Further, it advances the University of the West Indies mission by utilising pedagogy to meet the critical regional need of understanding Caribbean security within the wider global context. This process is an important component in fostering Caribbean development.