Political Science 894
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Terror

Autumn 2004
Wednesday, 3:30-6:18

John Mueller
bbbb@osu.edu
614-247-6007

Office hours: By appointment at bbbb@osu.edu, others to be announced.

The course will focus on threat perception in international relations--how nations, particularly the United States, have gone about determining which foreign problems require forceful response, how they have responded to them, and whether there might exist preferable alternative response strategies to the ones chosen. There will be some consideration of threat perception before World War II and during the Cold War, but most of the discussion will deal with contemporary threats, particularly those posed, or apparently posed, by international terrorism and "rogue states." Included will be an examination of some of the literature on the sources of terrorism, the mentality of the terrorist, fear of crime, risk perception, risk analysis, and problems of risk communication.

The course will be conducted as a seminar with much student participation. There will be some general readings as well as weekly reports on books, articles, or topics. There will be no exams, and the grade will be based on participation in the class discussion, on the weekly reports, and on a longer (15-20 page) term paper turned in at the end of the quarter. There will be a bit of overlap with the course as conducted under the same number last year, but the bulk of the content will be new.

Weekly summaries: single-spaced, two pages (not more), sent in by email attachment by 4:00 PM on the Tuesday before each class.