Politics

Politics is a broad area of study that tends to overlap with all the other major humanities and social science disciplines. It is an excellent discipline for learning about the interrelationships in the human world, and for acquiring a diverse range of interpretive, analytic and synthetic (especially conceptual) skills. The discipline is engaged in critical debates about resource allocation, decision-making, social behaviour and political action, the management or resolution of conflict, power struggles, ideologies and political movements, and the nature of the government and the state, including relations between states. The study of politics is ultimately concerned with important questions about the nature of power and authority, with the relationship between theory and practice, and with trying to understand the nature of social existence and the conditions needed for establishing more desirable forms of human community.

Politics at Monash aims to offer students an understanding of many aspects of the contemporary world, coupled with a solid intellectual grounding in the key debates, texts and traditions of inquiry in which the discipline is immersed. The Politics program at Monash emphasises three broad areas:

• politics and governance: Australia and the world
• international relations and global politics
• political theory and philosophy

and students are encouraged to choose explore the different facets of political studies.

Availability

Politics is listed in A2000 Bachelor of Arts at Caulfield and Clayton and 0202 Bachelor of Letters at Clayton as a major or minor, and A0502 Diploma of Liberal Arts at Caulfield and Clayton as a major.

Outcomes

In addition to achieving the broad outcomes of their course, students successfully completing this major will be able to:

• recognise, interpret and analyse theoretical and ideological perspectives on politics with regard to key elements of power and public institutions, freedom and transformation, closed and open political systems
• critically discuss and evaluate outlooks on key political debates concerning power, freedom and political change at global, regional, national and local levels
• critically relate political theories and ideas to major contemporary issues of human rights, political violence, value conflict and cultural difference, and to a range of political institutions and processes including leadership contest, political parties, interest groups and social movements.