The course functions as a reading seminar, and it aims to

overview the history and development of democracy as an

Democratic decision-making/theories of democracy
idea and a practice, and also its literature as one of the
most important debate in social sciences since the 1950s.
During the semester, we discuss the most relevant
elements of democracy, like representation, participation,
elections, and governance, while in the second part of
semester, we focus on the current global challenges and
phenomena of democracy, like populism, deconsolidation,
hybridization, and the autocratic trends in politics. The aim
of the course threefold: 1) it helps students to work with
contemporary theories in their own works, 2) develops
their debate skills, 3) introduces them to one of the
leading topics of contemporary social sciences.

This course focuses on the IGOs - United Nations and

International organizations
Council of Europe – regarding their treaties and practices
on the development of international human rights. The
course analyses the role of international organization in
the contemporary world and it will investigate legal and
policy issues raised by the functioning of international
organizations. The course further considers the machinery
and functioning of the European Court of Human Rights,
including the individual complaint procedure and the so-
called conditions of admissibility of petitions. Through the
analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human
Rights the students will learn about the Court’s application
of the law and about the judicial interpretation of the
European Convention of Human Rights.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the

The methodology of research in international
relations
methodology of international studies. During the course
we discuss how to plan a research and what is a good
research question like. The students will get familiar with
the bases of both qualitative and quantitative research,
the different ways to create case studies and – among
others – the technique of discourse analysis.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the

methodological knowledge that is necessary for
conducting policy analysis. The students will acquire
knowledge which enables to participate in the preparatory
Policy analysis phases of decision-making in local and regional
municipalities, national and international organizations,
NGO-s and multi-national companies.

Theory of IR The course discusses the process and the main stages of
the development of international relations. It also focuses
of the different theoretical approaches of international
relations: liberalism, neoliberalism, realism, neorealism,
structural realism, the transnational wave – functionalism,
the theory of systems, critical theory, constructivism, the
theories of change (the complex pluralist-interdependence
school, mondialism), and the alternative approaches to
international relations (protecting the environment,
feminism).
 The course discovers the different theories of power. What
is power? Who possesses power? International relations is
traditionally prone to define power as the military
potential of states. The goal of the course is to exceed this
Governance and power
approach and analyze the question of power from
different perspectives, especially focusing on the relation
between power and governance.

The course focuses on the most important current changes

in today’s European political landscape and detects the
underlying social phenomena. It develops the political
European politics thinking of students in order for them to be able to
professionally analyze the European political events
happening in their everyday life.

The goal of the course is to provide an advanced

introduction to the key institutional mechanisms of
protections of migrants and refugee rights. The course
introduces students to the various theoretical approaches
Migration of international relations on migration and integration. The
course analyses the basic institutions of international
refugee law and the related EU legislation and the
judgements of European courts (ECHR, CJEU).

This course aims to provide an advanced introduction to

the key institutional mechanisms of human rights
protection. Our goal is to better understand the role of
national and international courts and other constitutional
institutions in the process of enforcing human rights. The
course examines the relationship between these
Institutions of Human Rights Protection
institutions, and their interactions which take place within
a legal framework that provides for a multilevel protection
of fundamental rights. We will also discuss the current
challenges relevant institutions face in relation to their
role and power in constitutional arrangements.

The course introduces the students to the mainstream theories

of equality and to the legal protection of equality and
treatment without discrimination
guaranteed under international and domestic law. After
the discussion of discrimination, and the definition of
Equality
equal opportunities, the course examines international
documents (United Nations, Council of Europe, European
Union) that prohibit the discrimination of members of
different vulnerable groups.

International development policy The aim of the course is to comparatively analyze

theoretical, methodological, institutional and practical
specificities of the regimes of international development
policy. It will enable the students to critically evaluate the
regional developmental inequalities of the international
system, focusing on the differences between the
developing and developed countries and regions, the
bilateral and multilateral humanitarian and project-based
development cooperation etc. By the end of the semester
the students are able to conduct case studies and analyses
 on the upper mentioned subjects.

The course introduces students into the basic principles,

International economic relations and finances
the role and importance of international division of labor.
The course covers different tools and effects of
commercial policy, as well as the phenomenon of
globalization including all its effects on national economies
and the disputes caused by it.

The course provides knowledge for students on the

current questions and challenges of security policy starting
from the historical importance of the end of the Cold War,
going on to the new security challenges and their nature.
Security studies The course will discuss the various interpretations of
security policy and contemplate whether the traditional
concept of security can handle the new challenges of our
era or it should be expanded or even deepened.

The aim of the course is to examine what kind of dilemmas

emerge in policy-making for the public, the analysts and
the decision-makers themselves. The students will be
introduced to the determining approaches of foreign
Foreign policy analysis policy analysis, and will learn to give different
interpretations to certain decision-making situations in
world politics. The role of ethics, utopias and analogies will
also be discussed.

The course examines the questions of life, dignity, privacy

and autonomy. The participants of the course discuss
these questions based on classical literature (Kant,
Human dignity Dworkin), contemporary authors (Dupré, McCrudden), and
judicial cases (foreign court decisions, ECHR, Hungarian
Constitutional Court decisions etc.).

The course freedom of religion examines issues of religious

freedom in a theoretical and comparative perspective. The
students get introduced into controversies around
toleration, secularization and post-secularism, and on
Freedom of religion these bases will discuss various church-state models and
different solutions of freedom of religion and belief,
including religious expression, schooling, and exemptions
from mandatory laws (religious accommodation).

The aim of the course is to introduce the students to the

national and international legal protection of national and
ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities. The contribution
and jurisprudence of international institutions, including
the United Nations and the Council of Europe will be fully
considered. The course will examine the most important
Minority rights
theoretical literature and provisions of the Hungarian Basic
Law regarding the minorities. The course gives special
attention to the political representation of the national
and ethnic minorities, as well as to minority protection,
especially in the case of the Roma and religious minorities.

Freedom of speech The course on freedom of speech covers issues related to


Elections and Rights of Political Participation
The foreign affairs and international development
policy of the EU
Trade policy
Post-colonial theories
Humanitarian aid and development
communicative freedoms broadly understood. After an
introduction into theories of freedom of speech, the
course takes on discussing the issues of defamation,
offensive speech and religious speech, support for
terrorism, freedom of information, symbolic speech,
freedom of assembly and association.
This interdisciplinary course provides a profound insight
into the contemporary challenges and academic
discourses of democratic elections and rights of political
participation (suffrage). Consequently, the sources of the
classes come from the fields of democracy and electoral
studies on the one hand, and human rights and
constitutionalism, on the other. The aim of the course is
that the students should be able to analyze and evaluate
the current tendencies of national lawmaking and
international legal development in the fields of electoral
systems and voting rights (like, among others:
disenfranchisement, delimitation processes, remote
voting, campaign and freedom of speech, and so on.).
The course introduces students into the development of
the EU’s foreign relations from the 1950s until today,
including its background, nature, institutions, budget, tools
and decision-making processes. Moreover, the course also
pays special attention to the international development
policy of the EU.
The course provides an overview of international
commercial relations. Its purpose is to give a general
picture to the students about the different aspects of
international commerce, including the institutional system,
the relevant EU regulations, and the WTO regulations.
Moreover, it also aims at presenting the most important
international theories of this policy area and to govern the
economic background as well, besides the legal aspects.
The class provides an introduction to the diverse field of
postcolonial studies. It introduces the key concepts and
analytical perspectives, while its focus ensures that it stays
useful and informative for IR students, who will be able to
employ the techniques of postcolonial analysis for a great
variety of research problems.
This course aims at allowing students to develop an
understanding of social science engagements with
international development, aid and humanitarian law whilst
focusing their attention on the global challenges of poverty,
inequality, environmental problems and migration crises.
Moreover, the course will introduce students to the most
important questions of humanitarian law, which include
law of armed conflicts, the methods and tools of armed
conflicts and the protection of victims of war (civilians,
prisoners of war, the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked). The
students will get to know this constantly evolving subject
through various readings, and through analyzing case law
as well. At the end of the semester, students will be able to
discuss and analyze key debates in the theory and practice
of international development and will have a firm

Development policy and welfare: the efficacy of
spending development funds
Institutions of security
Conflict and peace studies
Critical security studies
Crisis management (Risk and society)
grounding in the historical and political contexts of the
topic.
The aim of the course is to familiarize students with the
principles of development policy, its efficacy and
consequences, based on the most important foreign
academic literature. The course pays special attention to
the dilemmas surrounding the usage of EU funds and to
discuss the unique perspectives of less-developed EU
member states.
In this course we will address a variety of topics relevant
for an Institutions of Security course not covered by other
courses of this MA programme. The course intends to fill
gaps and complement knowledge. Its focus is security in all
its contexts. However, as another course offers insights
into transnational and human security matters, it will
complement those topics from a (somewhat) different
perspective. Its main aim is to present and discuss topics
related to the underlying thinking on security both
historically and with the help of main security concepts
that underline the activity of the states and some other
security actors. The course will begin with an analysis of
the expectations towards the state and a warming up on
the state as still the most important actor of international
relations. It will move on to a short historical introduction
and its repercussions for our era. Then a few different
approaches and ways of thinking to international security
will be presented followed by the structure of the current
international system and then approaches of various
security institutions.
The aim of the course is to introduce students into the
theory of armed conflicts, conflict resolution and durable
peace, illustrating these issues with several case studies
which analyze the causes, the structure and the
development of the related processes. The course
introduces theoretical models for understanding peace
and conflict, both in the classical and in the critical sense.
As for the practical side, it focuses on the contemporary
transformations of peace and conflict in the international
system, including topics such as the changing nature of
warfare, terrorism, non-state actors, economic security
and resource wars, human rights, peace missions and R2P.
The aim of the course is to introduce the numerous
approaches of critical security studies, including the
Copenhagen, the Welsh and the Paris Schools. The course
describes the origins, the development, the present state
and the unanswered questions, debates and controversies
of the theories related to these critical schools, and makes
students familiar with the most well-known pieces and
applied methodologies of their leading scholars.
It is the primary objective of the course to familiarize the
students with crises and crisis management with an
emphasis on crises caused by human behavior and with no

Liberty and security
Citizenship theories
Nationalism and Nation-building in CEE
Minority rights and diaspora politics in CEE
Elections and Rights of Political Participation
A Contemporary History of the Roma Exclusion in
CEE
focus on natural disasters.
The course focuses on the intersections and controversies
of liberty and security, two important notions, the
counterbalance of which forms human societies and
affects state policies significantly. It uses an
interdisciplinary methodology and is conducted with the
cooperation of colleagues from different research areas.
The course raises the question whether and in which cases
the nation’s security may justify the consequent
restrictions on citizens’ freedoms, illustrating it with
contemporary examples.
The course introduces students to the various theoretical
approaches to membership in political communities,
including the various theories from the liberal tradition,
republican, multiculturalist, communitarian, cosmopolitan,
feminist, nationalist accounts.
The aim of the course is to introduce students to the field
of nationalism and nation building and to explain the
theoretical framework of the topic. The course
concentrates on the major theories and approaches to
nationalism with special focus on the CEE region.
The course’s aim is to introduce students to the field of
nationalism, ethnicity and national minorities in CEE
following the demographic changes after World War II.
The course will also illustrate the changes of the national
and ethnic minorities’ political and demographic status,
the development of the nationalities policies and the
constitutional and legal standing of the national and ethnic
minorities living in CEE.
This interdisciplinary course provides a profound insight
into the contemporary challenges and academic
discourses of democratic elections and rights of political
participation (suffrage). Consequently, the sources of the
classes come from the fields of democracy and electoral
studies on the one hand, and human rights and
constitutionalism, on the other. The aim of the course is
that the students should be able to analyze and evaluate
the current tendencies of national lawmaking and
international legal development in the fields of electoral
systems and voting rights (like, among others:
disenfranchisement, delimitation processes, remote
voting, campaign and freedom of speech, and so on.).
The interdisciplinary course will give an overall assessment
of the situation of the Roma in CEE. The issue is
investigated from a comparative, interdisciplinary
perspective in a historical context. During the semester the
history of the Gypsy/Roma issue is examined in the
context of CEE national histories based on state policy
documents. The course challenges the discourse that
constructed Roma according to the viewpoints of state
power and promotes a discourse of equality and human
 rights.

The aim of this course is to sharpen students’ academic

writing skills and improve their capacities for critical
thinking, formulating and developing arguments, making
their case in a clear comprehensible manner. During the
Academic writing course students are taught how to write a focused paper,
identify a central question and hypothesis, define their
methodology and structure. Special attention is paid to
best practices in observing rules of academic honesty.

The thesis is an academic essay on a topic of international

relations – or closely related discipline – confirming to all
academic requirements of style, referencing, structure
and argumentation. The thesis is 18 000 words -long
Thesis writing seminar (plus/minus 2000 words, references included), written in
Calibri, font size 12. This seminar helps students finding a
suitable thesis topic for them, as well creating a
professionally relevant and feasible research plan