The assignment
Important: These pages provide guidance on how to write your tutor-marked assignment (TMA). Please ensure that you read all this information right through to the checklist at the end. Before you start work on this assignment, please ensure that you have read the Assessment Guidance specific to this module and are familiar with the advice in Social Sciences Assessment Information. These sources contain support and guidance that you may need in writing your TMA including, for example, advice on plagiarism, referencing and the marking system. Note that failure to comply with relevant guidance could result in the loss of marks or other penalties.
There are two parts to this TMA. You need to complete both. On the following pages, you will find guidance on how to complete each of the different parts of this assignment.
Part 1: Essay plan, forum posting and reflection (15% of the mark for this assignment is awarded for taking part in this activity)
1. Post a plan of your essay on the TMA 05 forum.
2. When subsequently writing your TMA, reflect on how consulting other people’s essay plans on the TMA 05 forum has helped you to identify at least one strength and one weakness in your original plan.
Word limit for your essay plan: no word limit
Word limit for your reflection: 120 words
Part 2: Essay (85% of the mark for this assignment)
Are we living in a world purely defined by the states that make up its political units and the international relations between them, or are other political actors and relationships just as important?
Word limit: 2000 words
On the following pages, you will find:
• learning outcomes addressed by this assignment
• student notes for each part of this assignment
• a checklist to ensure you have done everything required for this assignment.
Learning outcomes
This TMA allows you to demonstrate:
• knowledge of the leading actors and institutions in contemporary world politics
• an understanding of the role of international organisations in global politics
• familiarity with how such institutions interact on the world stage and relate the local to the global; the national to the international
• an understanding of competing claims about the role of the state in global politics.
Student notes
Part 1
Approach
For this task, you are being asked to post a plan of your essay on the TMA 05 forum and, when subsequently writing your TMA essay, to reflect on how consulting the plans of others has helped you to identify at least one strength and one weakness in your original plan.
Your essay plan can be in any style you choose, but within your plan you should explicitly identify the materials you have selected as most relevant to the essay.
In order to post your essay plan on the TMA 05 forum, you will need to find the forum on the ‘Forums’ page of the DD211 module website.
To post your plan, select ‘Start a new discussion’ (each plan should have its own thread), and either write in or copy and paste your essay plan. Once you are ready to post your essay plan, click on the ‘Post discussion’ button and you will see your post appear.
Please note: you should aim to post your essay plan on the TMA 05 forum at least one week before the TMA deadline of 17 April 2023. You are strongly advised to submit your plan as early as possible.
Once other students have uploaded their plans to the forum, look through them and compare them with your own plan in order to identify at least one strength and one weakness of your own plan.
Sharing and comparing essay plans amongst your tutor group should help you to prepare more fully for writing your essay, and to develop critical insights into your approach to planning essays. The strength(s) and weakness(es) that you reflect on can be related to any aspect of your essay plan, but you might want to focus particularly on how successfully you have identified relevant materials in your plan.
Your reflection on your essay plan should be written up in no more than 120 words. It should be included with your essay as part of your TMA submission. You will not be graded on the content of your plan, but 15% of the final mark will be based on your reflection on your plan. Please submit your plan, reflection and essay to your tutor by the deadline.
Writing a good answer
To be successful in this part of the TMA, you should:
• post your essay plan on the TMA 05 forum
• identify a strength and a weakness in your own work after consulting the essay plans of other
Part 2
Approach
For the essay, you are being asked to consider whether and how non-state actors matter within the international system, relative to states themselves. Crucially, this is not a question of whether non-state actors exist, but rather of evaluating the role they play and how this relates to the actions of states. As such, it requires broad engagement with the whole of Block 5 (the globalisation of world politics), especially as ‘international relations’ should be seen in wide terms, including both global and international politics as discussed in Week 21.
In terms of international relations theory, Week 21 will be critical to this assignment. As a starting point, you will need to consider how the different theoretical perspectives – realism, liberalism and constructivism – might offer different viewpoints on this question. Reflect on what each of them says about the relative importance of the state in international relations and what each says about the ways in which non-state actors can play a role. These theories all offer very different perspectives on these questions, so it will be important to show that you have weighed up the evidence for each in your essay, even if you ultimately decide that one of them carries more weight. Using the theories is also very helpful in avoiding an essay that simply describes what non-state actors and states do in the international system, because they offer a framework for analysing why they play the roles they do and how consequential those roles might be.
Week 23’s content focuses more narrowly on the impact of non-state actors and will be a vital resource for the essay. The material considers these in general terms, before narrowing down to a more detailed discussion of terrorism. All of this content is highly relevant to the essay, but keep in mind that terrorists are not the only kind of non-state actor, nor even necessarily the most important. As a result, it is probably more useful to work from the theories in Week 21, for which you can provide examples, rather than starting from a case study and working out to a theory. Tackling it from a theoretical starting point will also make it easier to incorporate content from Week 23 on human rights.
You might also usefully consider the content in Week 24 (on the European Union) for its discussion about where the boundary of state action lies. The EU is an ambiguous case in terms of the degree to which state action is still in the hands of its member states – depending on your theoretical approach – which opens up a broader question of whether all non-state action in the international system still necessarily relies on the existence and operation of states. Week 23 asks the same question in a rather different way: can any of the structures or ideas that underpin the practice of human rights internationally exist if states do not uphold them? Both weeks offer some useful points for reflecting on the essay question as one that is not just ‘either/or’, but something potentially more interconnected.
Given the breadth of material that can be engaged with to answer the question, significant thought should be given to selecting material that most effectively demonstrates your understanding and enables the adoption of an analytical approach. You are therefore urged to spend time planning and reflecting on the plans of others (see Part 1 of this TMA) in order to strengthen both your own thinking and the presentation of material. Examples and illustrations of your main argument could be drawn from any part of Block 5 and you should try to avoid basing your entire argument on any one case.
Analysis is a central part of this question and the analytical content of the essay will be in the exploration and evaluation of how relevant theory helps us to understand international politics. It is therefore important to ensure that across the essay there is a clear focus on this element of the question.
Key sources
• Week 21 is a critical starting point for this assignment, and provides much of the analytical and theoretical content relevant to this essay. In particular, Chapter 17 of the module book and Section 5, ‘How to make use of IR perspectives’, will be important for your understanding of the different theoretical perspectives in international relations and how they are actually used. Activity 4 in Section 4.1 of Week 21 will also be useful in helping you develop your understanding.
• Week 23, on human rights and justice, and Week 22, on the European Union, both have useful content to further develop your ideas and argument about the interconnection of states and non-state actors.
• Week 24 ‘Challenging the State: non-state actors’ provides essential material for the work of non-state actors, including a number of examples. The interview with Kate Adams offers some useful ideas to build upon.
Writing a good answer
To be successful in this part of the TMA, you should:
• demonstrate your understanding of the different theoretical perspectives presented in the module material
• evaluate their role in understanding international politics by moving beyond description to the adoption of an analytical approach
• illustrate your essay with relevant examples in order to consider the extent to which non-state actors matter in international relations and how this might vary across different types of activity.