INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL THEORY AND IDEOLOGY - 2025/6
Module code: POL1030
Module Overview
This module serves as a broad introduction to the theoretical study of politics. It introduces students to key political thinkers and then, in the second semester, discusses how some their political ideas have informed political ideologies. The module will provide students with a comprehensive overview of the western political tradition of political thinking from Ancient Greece to Fukuyama¿s End of History.
Module provider
Politics & International Relations
Module Leader
LEVERINGHAUS Alex (Politics IR)
Number of Credits: 30
ECTS Credits: 15
Framework: FHEQ Level 4
Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A
Overall student workload
Independent Learning Hours: 218
Lecture Hours: 22
Seminar Hours: 22
Guided Learning: 22
Captured Content: 16
Module Availability
Year long
Prerequisites / Co-requisites
None
Module content
In the first semester, key themes revolve around ancients - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli - and modern - Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Rawls - political thinkers. Key concepts covered include the state, liberty, justice and democracy. Additional topics include questions of sovereignty, political obligation, liberty-rights-citizenship, equality and welfare state, justice.
The second semester covers major ideological traditions, including fascism, populism, conservatism and neo-conservatism, classical and modern variants of liberalism, social democracy, socialism, communism, anarchism, ecologism, and fundamentalism.
Assessment pattern
| Assessment type | Unit of assessment | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | Essay (2000) | 50 |
| Coursework | Manifesto (2000) | 50 |
Alternative Assessment
None
Assessment Strategy
The assessment strategy is primarily aimed to develop the students¿ writing skills, which is not only key to their academic success but also their future employability (especially for students seeking employment in think tanks or with MPs).
To this end, the module uses two pieces of written coursework weighted 50%/50%.
- Essay: A short essay on a think from the first half of the module (2000 words).
- Manifesto: An applied exercise in which students have to write a contribution on a particular policy for a (fictional) party manifesto, from within one of the democratic ideological traditions discussed as part of the modules) (2000 words).
The requirement for students to stand on their own two feet intellectually, even when confronted with complex and unfamiliar material, is important in building their resilience and resourcefulness.
Module aims
- To introduce central issues and themes in the western tradition of political tradition and to show how these are reflected in political ideologies.
- To familiarise students with a range of key thinkers and theorists from various areas of the world since antiquity to the contemporary era.
- To engage students with the debates and conflicts in perspectives between different philosophical approaches and ideological outlooks.
- To develop and deepen students' global and cultural intelligence and the basis for sustainable thinking, and their interest in understanding political issues taking on the perspectives of the theories on the module.
- To enable students to integrate a wide range of views from a variety of sources and to identify the schools of thoughts to which they are attached.
- To enable students to produce succinct, cogent arguments aware of the assumptions and premises, the frameworks on which they depend, and in doing so to improve their argumentation skills and writing skills, which enhances their employability in terms of ability to express themselves.
- To encourage students to get their hands on and 'do' philosophy themselves by interrogating the thinkers under discussion every week and critically assess their politics as well as their link to contemporary political ideologies.
- To help students understand the difference between theoretical questions about politics and empirical ones (answered by political scientists and international relations scholars)
- To help students become globally and culturally aware through understanding how traditions of thought have shaped social and political culture, which partly accounts for cultural differences
Learning outcomes
| Attributes Developed | ||
| 001 | Identify different theoretical approaches to political in terms of the philosophical and ideological perspectives that underlie them. | CK |
| 002 | Understand and assess the respective strengths and weaknesses of approaches in political theory. | CK |
| 003 | Identify how key thinkers have informed contemporary political ideologies. | CK |
| 004 | Present an account of the practical repercussions of theoretical approaches for policy questions. | CKPT |
| 005 | Make use of the diverse religious, cultural, and philosophical environment represented in the classroom, as well as the modular material. Learn how to negotiate profound disagreements within politics. | CK |
| 006 | Strengthen resourcefulness and resilience, digital capabilities, and overall employability skills in managing assessment-related challenges, including the use of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy to search for information, the use of the History of Philosophy podcast series to complement more traditional academic resources and writing clearly argued pieces of coursework on unfamiliar and complicated concepts. | PT |
Attributes Developed
C - Cognitive/analytical
K - Subject knowledge
T - Transferable skills
P - Professional/Practical skills
Methods of Teaching / Learning
The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:
Introduce students to a new topic, and provide room for student-led discussion of the topic.
The learning and teaching methods include:
Lectures, seminars, enquiry-based learning, prescribed and independent reading, and assignment preparation.
Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.
Reading list
https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: POL1030
Other information
None
Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.