Dr Mathias Koenig-Archibugi

This course is available on the MSc in International Relations, MSc in International Relations (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in International Relations (Research). This course is not available as an outside option.

Technological change can generate major benefits but also significant harm. The course examines harms that display three features. First, their impact is not limited to the country of origin but extends across borders, raising the problem of international collective action. Second, their impact may be particularly severe in the future, raising questions of intergenerational justice. Third, the harms are potentially catastrophic in magnitude. The scope of the course encompasses nuclear technologies, biological research with the potential to cause pandemics, growing antibiotic resistance, geoengineering, misaligned artificial intelligence, and cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism. The combination of international and intergenerational dimensions can make the governance of such risks especially challenging. The course applies to such problems the insights on the conditions for effective cooperation in a world of sovereign states that are offered by the current literature in International Relations and related disciplines. 

The course has three parts. The first part analyses the features and implications of major risks that transcend national borders and have long-term impacts. The second part examines international governance schemes - those that are already in place, those that are being negotiated, and those that have been proposed. The third part consists of a classroom simulation of the negotiation of an international agreement aimed at mitigating a major contemporary risk, to be chosen in consultation with the students taking the course in any given year.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the WT.

The sessions of the last two weeks of the term will be entirely dedicated to the simulation.

1. A class presentation between Week 3 and Week 8 on the topic covered that week.
2. A background paper for the role performed in the simulation, due in Week 9. 
3. Participation in policy simulation in Week 10 and 11. 

Essay (100%, 4000 words) in the ST.