Department of Political Science

Political Science (General)

Advanced Energy Policy

This online course covers energy policy.

Includes: Lessons, readings, videos

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Conflict, War and Revolution: The problem of politics in international political thought

This book is primarily intended for second year and upwards undergraduate students in general political theory and international theory, and advanced international relations students. Each chapter is also downloadable on its own for use in courses considering only some of the ten theorists covered.

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Energy, Markets, Policy, and Regulation

This online course at Pennsylvania State University provides a broad introduction to global markets for crude oil and refined petroleum products, natural gas, and electric power. A major goal of the course is to help students understand how market design, market institutions, and regulatory structures affect firm-level decision-making in the energy industries and ultimately, how these decisions affect the functioning of energy markets and the prospects for alternative technologies.

Includes: Lessons, assignments, videos, summaries

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, unless otherwise noted

Nationalism, Self-determination and Secession

This text on nationalism covers salient issues in the nation-building using themes of nationalism, self-determination, and secession to tie nation-building in with world politics. It covers introductory concepts in politics, from statehood to national self-determination.

Includes: Learning outcomes, summaries

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Oil: International Evolution

This online course at Pennsylvania State University covers oil production.

Includes: Learning outcomes, readings, lessons, videos, assignments

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Popular Culture and World Politics: Theories, Methods, Pedagogies

This edited collection covers salient issues in popular culture and world politics. It covers concepts in popular culture, from comics to video games.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Realism in Practice

This politics text covers issues in realism using a practical approach. It covers concepts in realism, from the refugee crisis to peaceful change.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Global Political Economy

Critical Perspectives on Migration in the Twenty-First Century

This migration text has been positively-reviewed and has been successfully adopted by other faculty. It covers concepts in 21st-century migration, from human rights to the 2015 migrant crisis.

Includes: Instructor resources, student resources, summaries.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Globalization and Labour in the Twenty First Century

This open access globalization text has been positively-reviewed. It covers introductory concepts in globalization and the human condition, from capitalism to labour in the twenty-first-century.

Includes: Instructor resources, student resources, summaries

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Principles of Political Economy, 3rd Edition

This text contains many of the same topics as mainstream textbooks, but it includes and takes very seriously heterodox critiques and alternatives to the mainstream approach to economics. It includes a whole range of alternative theories, including Post-Keynesian, Austrian, Marxian, radical, feminist, institutionalist, and other approaches. Following Wolff and Resnick, an even broader objective is to teach students that economics is a discourse and that no single voice can rightfully claim to have a monopoly on the truth about economics.

Includes: Key terms, summaries, review problems

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Sugar and Servitude: The Taste of Color

This module provides resources for teaching about the artistic practice of Kara E. Walker and its interrogation of whiteness and race. Materials also support teaching an overview of the history of the production, consumption, and meanings of sugar, particularly as that history has contributed to the Transatlantic slave trade and continues to depend upon coercive labor practices in the U.S. and globally. Included is a list of artworks produced by Walker that touch specifically on sugar and links to videos of the artist describing aspects of her practice; academic and literary texts that can inform students’ ability to read Walker’s complex visual texts; discussion questions and classroom activities to further their engagement with the material; and ideas for culminating projects.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 21st Century: A Living Document in a Changing World

This book covers concepts in the UDHR, from the conception of the UDHR to the implementation of human rights.

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Contemporary Issues in Human Rights Law: Europe and Asia

This edited volume analyzes human rights law issues from a variety of perspectives.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

International Indigenous Studies

Economic Aspects of the Indigenous Experience in Canada

This text explores the economic history and potential of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Includes: Summary, reflection questions, suggested activities

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Healing and Reconciliation Through Education

This open educational resource is focused on teaching the history of the colonial legacy of Residential Schools, with an emphasis on exploring the unique history of the Shingwauk Residential School which operated in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. This project builds upon decades of archival research and data collection, including the recording of oral histories, under the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre’s (SRSC) mandate of ‘sharing, healing, and learning.’ ‘Healing and Reconciliation through Education’ is designed to increase the capacity of the SRSC to educate local, regional, and national audience about the history of Residential Schools.

Includes: Interactive map

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

Historical and Contemporary Realities: Movement Towards Reconciliation

This open textbook is written as a resource for educators to teach students about the Indigenous historical significance of the lands encompassing the Robinson-Huron Treaty area and more specifically the Greater Sudbury and Manitoulin area. It also, through the use of interactive mapping strategies, serves as a guide for educators to develop a similar resource to document Indigenous stories from their own areas.

Includes: Learning activities, resources for more learning, maps

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Indigenous Information Literacy

This open access book outlines best principles for working with Indigenous print and oral sources in academic research. Topics include evaluating Indigenous print sources for credibility and authenticity, finding Indigenous authors, and respectfully working with Elders.

Includes: Reflection exercises

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous Communities in Western Canada, 1877-1927

This open book explores the means used to facilitate and justify colonization, their effects on Indigenous economic, political, social, and spiritual lives, and how they were resisted.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Living on the Land: Indigenous Women’s Understanding of Place

This edited open access volume examines how patriarchy, gender, and colonialism have shaped the experiences of Indigenous women as both knowers and producers of knowledge. From a variety of methodological perspectives, contributors to the volume explore the nature and scope of Indigenous women’s knowledge, its rootedness in relationships both human and spiritual, and its inseparability from land and landscape.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Memory and Landscape: Indigenous Responses to a Changing North

In this edited open access volume, Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors bring together oral history and scholarly research from disciplines such as linguistics, archaeology, and ethnohistory. With an emphasis on Indigenous place names, this volume illuminates how the land—and the memories that are inextricably tied to it—continue to define Indigenous identity. The perspectives presented here also serve to underscore the value of Indigenous knowledge and its essential place in future studies of the Arctic.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Our Stories: First Peoples in Canada

Our Stories: First Peoples in Canada is a multimedia resource developed with Indigenous peoples from across Canada. Eliciting an unsettling of Western authority, this textbook encourages recognition that moves beyond a colonial lens. Please note that while this resource is free to read and share, it is not licensed for editing or remixing.

Includes: Images, videos

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Restoring Indigenous Self-Determination: Theoretical and Practical Approaches

This edited volume covers self-determination for Indigenous peoples around the world.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Shingwauk Narratives : Sharing Residential School History

The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) holds 10 letter books of the first principal of the Shingwauk Residential School, Rev. Edward F. Wilson, and the fourth principal Rev. George L. King. These letters range in date from 1875-1904, and include a wealth of information about the early history of Shingwauk and Wawanosh. This open education resource shares stories compiled from the information in the letter books. Shingwauk Narratives discusses the in depth history of residential school, colonialism, and the establishment of the Shingwauk Residential School.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

International Relations

E-International Relations

Offers a collection of open education textbook titles on international relations under the copyright of CC BY-NC-4.0.   The following five example titles are from the collection.

1. Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics

Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics combines social science and cultural studies approaches to IR, showing why contemporary Border Studies needs to be trans-disciplinary if it is to avoid reproducing the epistemological and political order that has led to contemporary global crises like the rise of ISIS, global migration, or increasing contestations of the State form as such. The volume offers a critical epistemology of global politics and proposes an enriched vision of borders, both analytically and politically, that not only seeks to understand but also to reshape and expand the meanings and consequences of IR.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

2. Critical Perspectives on Migration in the Twenty-First Century

This edited volume provides a critical overview of recent migration flows and offers answers as to why people flee, what happens during their flight and investigates the various responses to mass migratory movements. Divided in two parts, the book addresses long-running academic, policy and domestic debates, drawing on case studies of migration in Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

3. Migration and the Ukraine Crisis: A Two Country Perspective

The aim of this collection is to shed light on the forgotten migrant crisis at the EU’s doorstep and make sense of the various migration processes in and out of Ukraine and Russia. The book is divided into two sections. The first section deals with migration processes that have taken place within Ukraine or have involved Ukrainian citizens’ migration out of the country, excluding Russia. The second section discusses Russia’s response to the inflow of migrants from Ukraine, its changing policies and their effect on migrants, as well as other processes related to the phenomenon over the course of the Ukraine crisis.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

4. Reprogramming the World:  Cyberspace and the Geography of Global Order

The central claim of this book is that digital technologies are rewiring the way that society understands and thinks about global order as Cyberspace changes the content of international borders.  While international governance has never been a static process, the reprogramming being described herein is extraordinarily different from previous shifts in international governance. It is not the result of a war or of a contingent of sovereigns negotiating rules; it is a technologically driven process that redistributes power within that system and challenges the core concept of territorial sovereignty.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

5. The United Nations:  Friend or Foe of Self-Determination?

This book takes a practical approach to discussing what role the UN plays in cases of self-determination and, importantly, it also ventures beyond this area’s usual discussions of the inherent conflict between self-determination and sovereignty. The chapters address the pursuit of the right to self-determination through a variety of case studies, such as post-statehood in South Sudan and East Timor; Indigenous peoples; hybrid self-determination in post-intrastate conflict; the balancing of the human rights approach in Cyprus; remedial right to secede in the cases of failed states; Palestinian and Sahrawi resistance; geopolitics in Jammu and Kashmir; and the forgotten story of micro-states. Overall, this collection shows that the solutions may be found in moving the paradigm beyond the state-centrism of the system and the UN itself.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

The North American Arctic

The North American Arctic addresses the emergence of a new security relationship within the North American North. It focuses on current and emerging security issues that confront the North American Arctic and that shape relationships between and with neighbouring states (Alaska in the US; Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada; Greenland and Russia).

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

The R2P: Challenges and Opportunities in Light of the Libyan Intervention

This edited volume covers the Liberian intervention, from the revolution to peacemaking.

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Peace Studies

Contemporary Issues in Human Rights Law

This book analyzes issues in human rights law from a variety of perspectives by eminent European and Asian professors of constitutional law, international public law, and European Union law.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

The Distinction of Peace

This peer-reviewed open textbook provides a critical account of the social mechanisms that make up the peacebuilding field, and offers deep insights into the workings of Western domination and global inequalities.

Includes: instructor and student resources.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Peace and Democratic Society

This peer-reviewed open textbook highlights the inadequacies of some of the widely accepted explanations for violence—including the idea that the world is experiencing a ‘clash of civilizations’— the author makes a plea for a global, multilateral debate on the causes of conflict, and an understanding of the multiple identities of the individuals involved.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 21st Century: A Living Document in a Changing World

This peer-reviewed open textbook offers a 21st-century commentary on the original Universal Declaration of Human Rights document, furthering the work of human rights and illuminating the ideal of global citizenship.

Licence: CC BY 4.0