INTR5437 - International Intervention and Statebuilding 2025/26 Fall

SHORT COURSE DESCRIPTION

The course surveys scholarly, policy, and public debates on contemporary international intervention and statebuilding. It is organised along two dimensions. First, it examines the concept and practices of intervention and statebuilding from liberal, post-liberal, critical and decolonial perspectives, as well as providing insights into authoritarian discourse of intervention. This is to understand the assumptions and the politics of diverse conceptual and normative standpoints, the policies and advocacy that derive from them, and the contradictions and trade-offs that remain. Second, the course surveys relations among different actors involved in the intervention and statebuilding projects to zoom in on the intersection between local, transnational, and global politics. This features practices of states and non-state actors as international interveners, local communities, transnational experts and civil society. In effect, students learn about the field as a heterogenous space of contestation. Discerning, scrutinising, and applying these diverse registers and genres helps clarify and develop individual interests while appreciating different styles and positions. 

Specific themes covered in the course accordingly range from established scholarly concepts (e.g. just war, liberal peace, humanitarian intervention), through evolving policy discourses (e.g. Responsibility to Protect, capacity building, resilience, local ownership) to critical debates (e.g. contestation, militarisation, stratification, decolonisation). By the end of the course, students will have acquired familiarity with current conversations in the field in a granular, theory-informed yet practice-oriented way. Readings and assignments are geared towards enhancing critical analytical skills and honing academic and writing craft, as well as acquiring communication and evaluation competences that are valuable in various transnational settings. In some sessions, required and additional study material incorporates non-scholarly pieces, such as a podcast, a blog post, an interview, a policy report, or a similar form. 

MAIN OBJECTIVES

Review of the academic field of international intervention and statebuilding 

Analysis of questions of intervention and statebuilding from the position of different actors 

Analysis of questions of intervention and statebuilding with liberal, post-liberal, critical, and decolonial sensibility

Practice of critical analytical skills

Practice of focused writing in different genres

Exercise of different formats of argumentation

LEARNING OUTCOMES 

By the end of the course, the students will have: 

Acquired familiarity with the major current debates in the field of international intervention and statebuilding

Become able to recognise assumptions organising these debates and what kind of discourses they represent and (re-)produce

Approached the field from a variety of levels of analysis and diversity of actors involved in international intervention and statebuilding 

Enhanced their articulation skills in scholarly, policy, and advocacy genres.

HANDBOOK REFERENCES

For those entirely new to the field of intervention, the following handbook companions to the course will be useful for background reference: 

The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation, edited by Oliver Richmond and Gëzim Visoka, Oxford University Press

Handbook on Intervention and Statebuilding, edited by Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, Edward Elgar Publishing 

A Requiem for Peacebuilding?, edited by Jorg Kustermans, Tom Sauer and Barbara Segaert, Palgrave 

ASSESSMENT 

Individual participation 10%

While preparing for the class please make sure that you consider the following cluster of questions: 

•          What is the argument/claim of each piece? 

•          Why is it a solid/weak argument? 

•          How do the assigned pieces relate to one another/what do they have in common/how do they differ? 

•          How each of them helps you understand/occludes some aspect of current events in international politics? Does it provide an illuminating perspective?

Group work 10% + 10% 

There will be two group activities: (1) debate on intervention case (2) book discussion. Course conveners will look for substantial spoken contribution by all group members that has been coordinated and balanced in advance. Committed participation will translate into the maximum score. 

Presentation 20%

Papers selected for presentation are important additions to topics under discussion. Texts for presentations are marked PR 1 and PR2, etc. in the additional reading section for each session. Please choose papers for presentation sequentially, that is, choose PR2, if PR1 has already been reserved, etc.

In order to practice switching genres and to lighten the workload presentation is connected to policy blog, so ideally choose a topic that interests you for this cluster of assignments. 

Presentation should be 15 minutes maximum. Please remember that we need at least 5 minutes to consider the question you offer to the class, see guidelines below. 

When preparing the presentation, please consider the following: 

Do not introduce authors. Let’s focus on the substance within the time limits. Articulation and effective delivery are part of the assignment. 

Please bear in mind that class participants will most likely not have read the paper. This is a deliberate arrangement to practice synthesis, communication and assessment of complex arguments with audience which is not familiar with a particular text. 

While preparing the presentation consider the following questions: What are the guiding questions of the authors/how they situate their contribution (what is its purpose, either stated or implied)? What is the specific argument of this piece? What debates, conversations, arguments do the authors engage? How do they go about substantiating their argument: a. What concepts do the authors emphasise and why? How are these concepts defined and related to each other? (this speaks to contextualising their work in existing literature and to its theoretical grounding) b. How do they use both empirical material and existing research and logic (this speaks to the evidentiary basis of their argument, both in contents and style, please consider that different purposes will require corresponding modes of substantiation)? c. Is the purpose to critique existing arguments, extend them, refine them, reject them, or to build on them to put forward a new proposition? What aspects of the problem are neglected and why this might be so? (consider that all writing is purposeful which involves rhetorical moves)

Please formulate one question for discussion related to your presentation. Consider again that your classmates have not read the text. This means that your presentation needs to contextualise and lay out clearly enough material for the audience so that they are able to relate to the question and engage it critically. It is advisable to formulate more general questions to spark a broader debate on the subject of the course, that is, international intervention. 

Analysis of an AI-generated piece – Moodle workshop 25%

This task consists of two parts: 

Part 1: Generating ca. 800 words AI essay on any theoretical idea discussed in the course (debate, approach, concept, framework) or any case study connected to class discussions. Please upload the essay to Moodle and separately send the instructors prompt(s) you have used. Please do not include prompts in the essay you upload.

Part 2: A critical analysis of ca. 1,000 words of an essay assigned on Moodle. It should include both a narrative analysis and conclusions from line-by-line analysis. Please structure your analysis in a logical and coherent manner. 

Some guidelines for critical analysis (non-exhaustive): 

-        Evaluate the AI essay in terms of the width and depth of an exposition and analysis of a particular idea/presentation and analysis of the case study considering what you have learned about it yourself in the course. 

-        Pay attention to how analytical and normative evaluations are formulated via the use of AI tools – both in terms of its logic and rhetoric. How may it differ from how scholarly arguments are constructed? 

-        Analyse the AI essay line-by-line for matters of presentation, resonance, and how convincing it is in scholarly and analytical terms. 

-        Analyse which authors were chosen by AI to represent a certain idea. See if there is a tilt regarding, for example, epistemological traditions, the socio-economy and geography of knowledge production, status and/or assumed demographic attributes of the authors. If you gave specific prompts as to concrete profile of the authors, for example to use female authors only, what are the results and how you assess them (possibly in comparison with when no such specifications are given)?

-        Consider that AI may sometimes generate false references (it makes things up as AS is generative, not a search engine; these are called hallucinations). Check the veracity of all references, and if you spot any false ones, discuss if you see a logic to generating such falsehoods. 

-        Footnotes and references do not count toward the word limit of 1,000. 

5. Course conversation 25% (Oral exam)

This will be a 15-minute conversation on the theme from the course syllabus (as per the seminar breakdown) chosen and directed by the instructor. 

Rubric: 

Extensive familiarity of the required reading for the theme;

The ability to place the theme and the required reading in broader academic and policy debates on international intervention and statebuilding;

The ability to reconstruct and interpret the main and secondary arguments of the required readings;

The ability to spell out the value added of the required reading;

The ability to critique the required reading in a plausible manner.