Current active course description (last updated 2025/26)
Great Powers and the New World Order
SAM5024
Current active course description (last updated 2025/26)

Great Powers and the New World Order

SAM5024
The purpose of the course is to advance knowledge about how great-power politics affects international stability, the international order and national security.
The purpose of the course is to advance knowledge about how great-power politics affect international stability, the liberal international order and national security. The course will provide knowledge about hos to conduct system-level analyses. Keywords in this regard are hegemony, balance of power, revisionism, status quo-seeking, polarity, alliance formation, and means of influence. Special attention will be paid to China, Russia, the West. We will discuss the contemporary global and regional roles and ambitions of traditional as well as emerging great powers. The course will enable students to reflect on how structural changes affect the international order and Norwegian interests.

Students must either be enrolled in Master in Social Analysis or Master in Preparedness and Emergency Management, or apply for the course as a single course student/exchange student.

Single course students must meet the following entry requirements:

  • Bachelor degree of 3 years' duration (180 ECTS).
  • The applicant must have passed exams of at least 80 ECTS credits in social sciences. The grade requirement is C on a weighted average.

By the end of this course, the student will be able to:

Knowledge

  • Present, recount and explain key theories and concepts applied in the analysis of Great Powers and a changing world order.
  • Describe and summarize the power and interests of the Great Powers.

Skills

  • Apply an academic language and concepts in an analysis of system, structure and international order.

General competence

  • Discuss and reflect on how changes in power relations in the contemporary world affect international stability.
  • Apply relevant theories in an analysis of realpolitik and great power interests.
  • Discuss how changes in the balance of powers affect the liberal international order and Norway's national security.
In addition to the semester fee and costs for purchasing course literature, the students are expected to have a laptop.
Theoretical subject. Elective subject for students enrolled in Master in Social Analysis (full-time and part-time) and Master in Preparedness and Emergency Management MASIK (full-time and part-time).

Lectures and student-active learning methods.

*The course is taught provided that a sufficient number of students register for it.

The study program is evaluated annually by the students through course evaluations and study program evaluation. These evaluations are included as part of the university's quality assurance system.

Required course work: 1 written course work (3 pages). Assessed as approved/not approved.

Take home examination: Individual home examination over 7 days (10 pages), English or Norwegian. Graded A-F.

Generating an answer using ChatGPT or similar artificial intelligence and submitting it wholly or partially as one's own answer is considered cheating.

Overlap refers to a similarity between courses with the same content. Therefore, you will receive the following reduction in credits if you have taken the courses listed below:

SAM5025 - Great Powers and the Changing World Order - 10 credits

STA5002 - Great Powers and the New World Order - 5 credits

Choose start semester
Curriculum literature
Leganto
Course language
English
Credits
10
Study location
Bodø
Responsible faculty
Faculty of Social Sciences
Course coordinator
Information about the course coordinator for the selected semester is no longer available. Please contact the current course coordinator.