PSCI 389: Global Governance

Deepen your knowledge of the world.

Looking to change the world? PSCI 389: Global Governance is the course for you!

This course allows you to understand how the world is governed and the different players involved with the goal of developing a better world order. This article will tell you everything you need to know about PSCI 389, including its learning takeaways, class structure, and the required readings and assignments. We’ll hear not only from Dr. Maissaa Almustafa, who teaches the course, but also from a student who took the course. Read on to learn how you can stand up, speak out, and create a better world for everyone!

About PSCI 389: Global Governance

What you’ll learn

In a nutshell, global governance describes how the world is controlled. Delving deeper into world order than international relations, PSCI 389 examines the many different factors that contribute to how the world is governed. This includes examining the different actors involved, how they are organized, and the impact of treaty and trade agreements, as well as what happens when there are global crises. You’ll also learn about aspects of global governance that are often overlooked, such as the governance and treatment of the Global South, Indigenous issues, activism, and gender identities. PSCI 389 requires experience in higher level academic writing, so students must be at least in their 3A term to take this course. However, it is open to all faculties and majors, so everyone can have the opportunity to better understand how our world works and try to change it for the better.

Major themes

• Actors in governance
  • While there can be comparisons drawn between global governance and international relations, global governance focuses on the relations between different actors. This can include states, but also includes other, non-governmental organizations as well, like activists and institutions. You’ll get to look at the world with people at the centre, rather than countries or governments.
• Power dynamics
  • Through studying the different actors in global governance, you’ll investigate the power dynamics that exist between them. You’ll learn that some organizations and states have more power than others, and how this affects people in different parts of the world.
• World order and globalization
  • Global governance allows a means by which to study the world order, or how the world is organized. This is very much affected by globalization as people, information, and goods are exchanged and controlled. You’ll examine the world that we live in and the effects of globalization, as well as suggest ways to improve the current world order.

Readings

The readings for this course provide diverse perspectives on global issues, organizations, and populations. In Dr. Almustafa’s course, the reading list is centred on people and the power dynamics between them to demonstrate the inter-connectivity of actors in the global order and individual experiences of affected peoples. At the end of the course, you’ll get to reflect on what you’ve read and propose ways of reforming the current global order while keeping the people at the heart of global issues.

Assignments

In PSCI 389, you’ll complete multiple assignments of varying sizes to demonstrate your understanding of the readings as well as your comprehension of global governance and issues. Your mark is based on attending classes, writing reflection papers, and completing a research paper at the end of the course. A standout of this course is an oral presentation, where you’ll research a global issue and present it to the class, providing a case study as well as facilitating class discussion about the topic.

An average PSCI 389 class

At the beginning of the course, you’ll be provided with the foundational readings you’ll need to understand global governance and political theory referenced later on. In class, you’ll examine questions including the definition of global governance, the development and changes that occur in global governance, and what institutions and actors are involved. After Reading Week, you’ll begin to apply these theories to global issues. When she teaches the course, Dr. Almustafa likes to show documentaries in class, which allows students to visually experience the concepts and issues covered in class.

Why take this course?

In PSCI 389, you’ll examine how our world works and the different factors that affect global events and crises. You’ll gain a better understanding of how the world is governed, as well as consider opportunities for improvement as you grow into an involved citizen in your community. Even if you don’t envision a career as a burgeoning politician or revolutionary activist in your future, this course allows you to practice your communication skills and learn how to form and defend your own arguments.

About Dr. Almustafa

Dr. Maissaa Almustafa earned her PhD in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research focuses on refugee journeys and the lived experiences of people experiencing forced displacement. Through a transnational perspective, her work looks to highlight the individual stories and narratives of refugees in an effort to increase refugee protection globally.

Why do you like teaching this course?

“I feel like this course offers us the opportunity to connect all these actors, study them, and examine the power dynamic between them and how they interact. The institutions we have are all involved in governing our world order and it’s important to see the way they are behaving by expanding that lens and the focus beyond the state itself. This allows us to understand the way that the world is governed and organized, which will open up opportunities for a better world order.”

How do you engage students during class?

“I take a very engaging, critical approach, trying to bring history and politics and lived experiences together. I try to challenge students with big questions about world crises and how they are connected to historical trajectories and power dynamics, and connect all these dots together. We start with different pieces of the puzzle, and I explain to them that our mission during the term will be to put the puzzle pieces together in order for us to understand how our global order is governed.”

What do you hope students will get out of this course?

“I hope they understand the importance of the role of different actors that they don’t usually consider when we talk about the governance process of our global order. Also, when we talk about global crises, I would like them to think beyond the state-centric discourse and start to be creative about different methods of governance. This will help them be more socially responsible.”

What do you hope to add to the course in the future?

“The problem is that this course has a lot to cover. I try not to reduce the list of topics. I would, however, like to add more role-playing activities, which students love, particularly when it comes to climate change. For example, we try to mock COP conferences and divide the class between Global North, Global South, and activists, and they debate. Students ask for more and more of these activities, so I hope I can bring more activities like this to the course. And, actually, I learn from their presentations and positions when we allow time for them to bring these insights about different actors and the power dynamics between them.”

What is your favourite topic in this course?

“When I added the topic of gender to the course, I noticed that students were really engaged with the topic and the way it was presented to them through the readings. I started to feel, like, wow, this is really interesting! It was my students’ reflections that made me more interested in keeping the aspect of gendering global governance in the course and exploring it with a critical perspective.”

About Neil

Neil graduated in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts. He double majored in Political Science and Legal Studies. 

Why did you take this course?

“Going into the course, I wasn’t really as familiar with global governance. Typically with Political Science courses, they tend to be about domestic politics, like Canadian politics, and also foreign politics, different agreements, history, Indigenous politics, and political theory. When it came to global governance, we didn’t have a lot of discussions in most of my classes. So I took this course because I wanted to understand how the world works from both a political science standpoint as well as a legal studies standpoint.”

What is the most important thing you learned in this course?

“This course challenged the way I thought and allowed me to critically analyze readings. It taught me how to look at what you’re reading and how you understand it and what kind of other underlying factors might be at play. So for one of the topics, we talked about structures of power, which we always tend to look at from a top-down approach. But in this course, we looked at it from a bottom-up approach, focusing on the people at the bottom rather than the state power at the top. This made me a better reader and writer, as we had to do reading summaries where we had to reflect on the readings and challenge the way we saw things.”

Would you recommend this course to other students?

“Absolutely. One of the things I really liked about this course is that there are between 20 and 30 students in it. And something Dr. Almustafa really likes is when we converse with each other. So she’ll ask questions and we get to actually have conversations. I found in a lot of my classes that we didn’t really get to have conversations unless it was a seminar class in fourth year, but here we actually get to connect and collaborate with our peers. This helps us get more comfortable with giving presentations and taking seminars in the future as we gain the ability to talk with others and get comfortable with that ahead of time.”

Special thanks to Dr. Almustafa and Neil for providing interviews for this article!