INTL SIGNALING & COMMUNICATION

Prerequisites: Instructors permission prior to registration. 

The purpose of this course is to delve into how states infer what others are likely to do in the future and how they try to project desired images of how they will behave.  This involves both purposeful or intended communication, as in diplomacy, and the ways in which perceivers try to discern others' capabilities and intentions from attributes and behaviors that the senders cannot readily manipulate. 

We will examine a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches to the topic, many of which could seem mutually exclusive, but the goal of this course is not to determine which approaches and theories are ‘right’ and which are wrong, but rather to equip students with the tools and background they need to consider real and hypothetical interstate signaling interactions from multiple angles.