International Relations
International Relations at UCSD is more than the study of politics across national boundaries. Our graduate students are trained to understand the close links between international and domestic politics, and between politics and economics. International security and political economy are our particular strengths. From the causes of war to the determinants of foreign economic policy, our program emphasizes cutting-edge theory, methodology, and the development of advanced research skills.
The Department of Political Science and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) are home to 10 faculty members who teach and conduct research in international relations. This is one of the largest concentrations of international relations faculty in the nation, which means that students receive a great deal of individual attention. We also offer an exciting mix of highly distinguished senior scholars and talented junior faculty researching a wide variety of substantive topics in international relations.
Lawrence Broz (Assistant Professor of Political Science) is a political economist specializing on monetary and financial institutions, including exchange-rate regimes and central banks. Peter Cowhey (Dean of IR/PS) is an internationally recognized expert on telecommunications policy, trade policy, and investment policy. He is the former chief of international policy for the Federal Communications Commission and adviser to the U.S. trade representative. Kristian Gleditsch (Assistant Professor of Political Science) is an authority on applications of statistical methods to the study of international conflict and cooperation. His recent work examines international aspects of democratization and political change as well as transnational influences on civil wars. Peter Gourevitch's (Professor of Political Science, Professor of IR/PS) pioneering works on international political economy and the “second image reversed” have helped define the field of IPE. Stephan Haggard (Professor of IR/PS) is the author of several highly respected studies of the comparative and international political economy of developing countries. Currently, his research is on the political and social consequences of economic globalization. Miles Kahler (Professor of IR/PS) has published extensively on international monetary and financial relations, as well as on regional organization. His research interests include globalization and governance, relations in the Pacific region, the evolution of the nation-state, and international institutions. David Lake’s (Professor of Political Science) work on international trade, security, and regionalism has received wide recognition. He is currently extending the methodologies of political economy to examine state rent-seeking in democracies, hierarchies in international politics, and delegation to international organizations. David Mares (Professor of Political Science, Adjunct Professor of IR/PS) analyzes regional militarized disputes and civil-military relations in Latin America, among other topics. His current research explores the links between economic cooperation and political and security relations in Latin America. Branislav Slantchev (Assistant Professor of Political Science) produces sophisticated models of interstate negotiations during war, war termination, and the establishment of post-war institutions. His other interests include the development of property rights in nations transitioning to market economies. Barbara Walter (Associate Professor of IR/PS) is an authority on international security, with an emphasis on internal wars, conflict termination, and bargaining and cooperation. Presently, she is researching international bargaining failures, territorial conflict, and recurrent civil war.
The international relations curriculum at UCSD is rich and diverse, as befitting a department of this size and stature. We offer a unique set of key courses in international relations that students can augment with additional seminars on special topics: Quantitative Approaches, Formal Theory, International Political Economy, and Modern Diplomatic History (see Field Requirements for more detail). This set reflects our view that only robust grounding in both theoretical tools and substantive knowledge can produce great researchers.