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1st in London for Politics graduate jobs and further study (LEO 2024)

International Politics BSc

Key Information

Course code

L240

L241 with placement

Start date

September

Placement available

Mode of study

3 years full-time

4 years full-time with placement

Fees

2025/26

UK £9,535

International £20,400

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Entry requirements

2025/26

ABB - BBC (A-level)

DMM (BTEC)

29 (IB)

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Overview

3rd in London, 11th in UK for Politics - National Student Survey 2024

You only have to turn on the news or open a newspaper to see how differently the nations of the world are governed. What is democracy and democratisation? How has US foreign policy changed in the last 20 years? What is globalisation?

Politics is an exciting and dynamic subject, simulating debate and offering insight in how the ever-changing world around us works. It’s also a degree that can demonstrate your intellectual acumen and understanding of world affairs, which will be an asset in so many fields of work.

As well as providing a foundation in the approaches and theories of politics and international relations, through this degree you will develop your understanding of the importance of politics in a globalising and integrating world.

Whether you’re studying modern Africa, imperialism or Trump’s foreign policy, you’ll not just learn about politics, you’ll be analysing politics using the tools of political science and philosophy to help deepen your understanding and critical thinking.

Opt for a placement year and you'll gain work experience that is highly valued by employers. Brunel students have secured placements in the Environmental Audit Committee, the House of Commons, Directorate of Gender Affairs, HM Treasury and the Competition Commission, to name only a few.

You can also opt to take part of your degree abroad in one of our partner universities in Europe, or participate in an exchange programme to China or the USA to study politics in a different part of the world whilst experiencing a new culture.

Brunel is a dynamic university choice for your politics course. You’ll be taught by politics experts who are often called on to comment on radio and television. The Brunel campus has hosted the filming of BBC’s Question Time and is a political hub during local and national elections.

Brunel politics graduates enter diverse careers. Many of our former students go into politics and the civil service and some are currently at GCHQ and military intelligence. Others work in the public and private sector like the NHS, international banks, business consultancy, law, NGOs and the media. Whichever route you chose, an international politics degree with Brunel will set you up for a successful future.

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Course content

The course content is made up of a variety of subject area strands that can be studied across all three years of the programme. At every level, there are modules relating to each strand. After taking the compulsory modules in the first year, you can choose to study across a range of strands, or specialise in particular strands. Below is a list of the strands :

American Politics: The United States is hugely influential both as a global power and as a political beacon. This strand assesses the nature of the American polity exploring across the three years the role of America’s political institutions, key issues facing the American political system and the role and function of the media in fashioning American government policy.

Comparative Politics: The relationship between different polities is a key area of modern political science research. This strand engages with this by assessing in a comparative frame: different countries, their political systems and the actors engaging with the political systems. Comparisons across countries and/or across time are used to explore the differences and similarities between the systems to answer questions on who gets what, when and how in terms of allocation of resources within and between polities.

International Relations/World Politics: The architecture and operation of the global international order is a key pillar of the modern world. This strand assesses the nature of that system, how it came into being and where it is going. This will include assessing the nature of the global political order and its key institutions and players, major theories that allow one to understand this and key contemporary issues such as foreign policy, conflict and peace, both generally and in specific geographical regions, e.g. the Middle East, Africa or Asia.

Methodology and Research Skills: This strand will help you develop the tools for sustained research in political science. This will include research design, qualitative methods, such as interview techniques, as well as quantitative analysis of, for example, polling data. There will be an opportunity to take this to an advanced level and develop key transferable research skills.

Political Ideology and Theory: This strand explores political thought across the ages from ancient times to the present. You will begin with a broad survey of major ideas in political theory, before being able to look in greater depth at particular ideologies, e.g. liberalism, Marxism, fascism and particular concepts such as multiculturalism and equality.

Compulsory

  • Conflict in the Modern World

    The module aims to provide an overview of how conflicts are studied - practically show how conflicts are measured, illustrate how conflicts occur, who are involved and how they stop.

  • Introduction to American Politics

    This module introduces students to the institutions and processes of the modern American political system. It relates these institutions and processes to the diversity and complexity of turn-of-the-century U.S. society. Students learn about a range of methodologies and research skills relevant to the discipline of political science and begin to develop an interdisciplinary approach to understanding American politicians and voters.

  • Introduction to Comparative Politics

    The module introduces students to the study of comparative politics and examine how the design of political institutions reflects competing visions of democracy and the implications this has for the processes that link citizens and policymakers. Students will focus on various aspects of the political system such as the differences between parliamentary and presidential systems, federal and unitary systems, electoral rules, party systems.

  • Introduction to World Politics

    This module explains why we have war, peace and events in between in the international system. It examines concepts such as power, the environment, race and gender through lenses provided by International Relations, Comparative Politics and Geopolitics. It presents the latest methods to understand world politics at the global and ultra-local levels, and begins to provide tools to understand and analyse politics on the inter and intranational levels.

  • Reason, Unreason, and the People: Political Thought from Hobbes to Freud

    This module introduces students to the main thinkers in political thought through the idea of reason and unreason, and asks: who are the people?

  • Global London

    Through focusing on the concept of ‘Global London’, this module shows you how the social sciences can enable you to better understand their lived social environment. It introduces you to the techniques used by a range of disciplines within social science for gaining and validating knowledge of the social world and equips you with an academic skill base appropriate for university study. 

Compulsory

  • From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World

    Preparing students for their final year dissertation begins in the second year in From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World. This module introduces students to a variety of analytical perspectives, research methods and techniques used in designing a research project in politics, international relations and international politics.

  • Theories of International Relations

    This module introduces students to major theoretical approaches in the study of International Relations. These theories are employed to examine and understand contemporary actors in world politics such as states, international organisations, non-governmental actors as well as major issues and problems such as war, terrorism, climate change or nuclear proliferation. The aim is to give students a critical understanding of IR theory

Optional

  • Climate Politics

    This module aims to enable students to attain a comprehensive understanding of key concepts and theories in the politics and political economy of climate change. It will provide students with resources to assist them in making informed judgments on a range of questions and debates.  

  • Colonialism and Decolonization in Africa

    Africa is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented regions of the modern world. More often than not, its history is presented as a long series of human disasters, conflict, and disorder. However, Africa’s modern history is also one of resistance, and dynamic and creative responses to changing circumstances. This module examines Africa’s multifaceted history since about 1800.

  • Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

    This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

  • Comparative Electoral Systems

    This module aims to provide students with an understanding of political institutions and their impact through institutional analysis and modern institutional theory and explores single case studies, cross-case and cross-temporal comparisons. The module is divided in three parts; part one covers the theoretical approaches in new institutionalism, part two covers specific institutions and part three covers the influence of institutions on policy.

  • Explaining Politics: Quantitative Political Science in Practice

    This modules aims to provide students with the skills to analyse political data and introduce methods for gathering and understanding data. Students will be encouraged to critically engage with the use of existing statistical data in political discourse and demonstrate the importance of quantitative analysis in domestic and international politics.

  • Insurgency and Counter-insurgency

    This module examines the concept and development of insurgency and counter-insurgency from the classical period to the present, with an emphasis on the post-1789 period, especially the post-1945 wars of decolonisation. The module will conclude with the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ and current examples of insurgency and counter-insurgency. 

  • Issues in American Politics

    This module familiarises students with contemporary issues on the American political agenda and demonstrates how politicians adapt policy stances and organisational and electoral strategies to accommodate change in political debate. Students are encouraged to adopt a more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to learning about American politics by examining social, moral, cultural and economic issues through a partisan political perspective.

  • National Security Intelligence

    This module furnishes students with an overview to the field of national security intelligence. It also examines in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.

  • Plato’s Republic

    This module involves a close reading of the foundatonal text in political thought: Plato's Republic.

  • The State and Revolution

    This module provides students with an understanding of the historical emergence of two of the central concepts of modern political thought: the state and revolution, or the constitution of political order and the process of fundamental political transformation. We study the development of these concepts in some of the major events of political modernity, from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

  • Unity and Cultural Diversity

    In this module students will gain an understanding of the texts of political theorists who focus on the issue of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity. Students will also gain an understanding of case studies that help to illuminate the difficulties of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity.

  • The African American Struggle for Civil Rights, 1941-1992

    This module aims to examine the tactics and strategies employed by African Americans during the period 1941 to 1992, thereby helping students to gain a critical understanding of the roles of various groups within African American society in the pursuit of civil rights. 

Compulsory

  • Advanced Research Skills for Politics and International Politics
  • Dissertation in International Politics

Optional

  • Advanced Applied Quantitative Methods

    This module will introduce methods suited to analysing complex political data as well as encouraging students to engage with and communicate the use of existing statistical data in the study of political science and in practical application in the political world.

  • Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

    Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

  • Borders, Nations and Belonging in Modern Europe

    From Brexit to the wall between the USA and Mexico, borders are an important part of contemporary political debate. But where do our ideas about borders come from? Why do borders represent such powerful symbols? And who makes decisions about who can and cannot cross? This module explores these questions (and others) through the history of borders in modern Europe.

  • Crisis and Critique

    The main aim of the module is to provide students with an understanding of some of the major socio-political crises in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the ways in which they have been understood by political theorists.

  • Critical Perspectives on International Development

    You will gain a theoretical and historical overview of the changing relationship between anthropology and international development as you learn to understand the multiple ways in which anthropological research can enhance our understanding of contemporary policies and practices in international development. 

  • European Union Politics: Problems and Prospects

    In this module students will discuss the development and functioning of the EU from its inception to the present day and be introduced to and learn to evaluate a range of theoretical perspectives on the EU’s creation, development and functioning. Students will examine a range of political problems in the European integration process, such as legitimacy, domestic and social impact, institutional and policy reform, enlargement, and future directions.

  • Fascist Italy, 1919-1945: Revolution, Conflict and Collapse

    This module explores the rise and fall of Fascist Italy through political, socio-cultural, economic and military perspectives, among others.

  • Marx and the Critique of Political Economy

    This module involves reading several key works by Marx, culminating in several weeks on Das Kapital

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the modern world-system

    This module will explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.

  • Long Walk to Freedom: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid in South Africa

    Encouraging students to consider the extent to which the current situation in South Africa is a product of the colonial era, postcolonial circumstance, or Africa’s deeper past. It will familiarise students with the main developments in Africanist and South Africanist historiography and encourage students to study South African history from both an Afro-centric and European perspective.

  • Making the Social

    An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

  • Media, Politics & Power in America

    This module seeks to familiarise students with the contemporary issues agenda in American politics. It seeks to demonstrate the ways in which politicians and institutions adapt policy stances and organisational strategies to accommodate changes in the nature, content and direction of political debate.

  • Parliamentary Studies

    This module aims to provide students with a detailed understanding of the UK Parliament by examining its structure, internal processes, and different committees, and to give students an understanding how to transfer the skills they have acquired when thinking about social, historical and political issues to practical ongoing issues that parliament is encountering in its committees or in legislation it is devising.

  • Public Policy Analysis

    How do governments make public policy? Why do public policies vary across countries? How can public policy be analysed? These are the questions that will be explored in this module. The module will provide the participants with a strong theoretical foundation for analysing public policy and skills to communicate the analyses to non-academic stakeholders in public policy.

  • South Asia – Societies and Development

    In this module we explore the theoretical and empirical debates surrounding the politics, society and economics of South Asia as a region and its place in the larger world. We focus in particular on countries of the Indian subcontinent that were former colonies of the British Raj – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

  • Terrorism and Counterterrorism

    This module aims to address a series of empirical questions regarding the causes, conduct, and consequences of campaigns of terrorism in the modern world. It provides students with an understanding of a series of key debates in the social science literature.

  • The Arab-Israeli Conflict

    We survey the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering three overarching themes: 1) Origins of the Conflict; 2) Evolution of the Conflict; and 3) Peace and its Limits. The module covers the origins of both national movements, the development of the conflict under British rule, the major Arab-Israeli wars, peace agreements, and it ends with recent events. 

  • Violence and Conflict in Eastern Africa

    In this module students will explore the role of violence and conflict in the course of eastern Africa’s modern history. Students will gain an in depth understanding of the ways in which violence and conflict have influenced economy, society and polity in the modern era, through a consideration of broad themes, such as age, ethnicity, and resources, as well as specific case studies taken from across the region.

  • War and Humanitarianism

    This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of the main themes in the anthropology of war and humanitarian assistance. These include the anthropology of violence, how societies respond in the aftermath of violence, the origins of humanitarianism, the concept of emergency, refugees and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’.


This course can be studied undefined undefined, starting in undefined.

This course has a placement option. Find out more about work placements available.


Please note that all modules are subject to change.

Careers and your future

Our students pursue a wide variety of jobs after graduating. Some Brunel graduates such as John McDonnell MP, or former Labour party general secretary Baroness McDonagh, opt for careers in politics. Others have joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office, the Civil Service, GCHQ and military intelligence.

Our students pursue a wide variety of jobs after graduating. Some go into Politics and the civil service and have worked for Members of the Parliment such as John McDonnell MP, or former Labour party general secretary Baroness McDonagh. Other graduates have joined Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office, GCHQ and military intelligence. Others work in the public and private sectors, law and NGOs whilst some graduates become researchers, teachers and librarians.

UK entry requirements

2025/26 entry

  • GCE A-level ABB-BBC.
  • BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma DMM in any subject.
  • BTEC Level 3 National Diploma DM in any subject, with an A-level at grade C.
  • BTEC Level 3 National Extended Certificate M in any subject, with A-levels at grades BB.
  • International Baccalaureate Diploma 29 points. GCSE English equivalent Standard Level 5 or Higher Level 4.
  • Obtain a minimum of 112 UCAS tariff points in any subject in the Access to HE Diploma with 45 credits at Level 3.
  • T levels: Merit overall in any subject.

A minimum of five GCSEs are required, including GCSE Mathematics grade C or grade 4 and GCSE English Language grade C or grade 4 or GCSE English Literature grade B or grade 5.

Brunel University London is committed to raising the aspirations of our applicants and students. We will fully review your UCAS application and, where we’re able to offer a place, this will be personalised to you based on your application and education journey.

Please check our Admissions pages for more information on other factors we use to assess applicants as well as our full GCSE requirements and accepted equivalencies in place of GCSEs.

EU and International entry requirements

English language requirements

  • IELTS: 6.5 (min 5.5 in all areas)
  • Pearson: 59 (59 in all subscores)
  • BrunELT: 63% (min 55% in all areas)
  • TOEFL: 90 (min R18, L17, S20, W17)  

You can find out more about the qualifications we accept on our English Language Requirements page.

Should you wish to take a pre-sessional English course to improve your English prior to starting your degree course, you must sit the test at an approved SELT provider for the same reason. We offer our own BrunELT English test and have pre-sessional English language courses for students who do not meet requirements or who wish to improve their English. You can find out more information on English courses and test options through our Brunel Language Centre.

Please check our Admissions pages for more information on other factors we use to assess applicants. This information is for guidance only and each application is assessed on a case-by-case basis. Entry requirements are subject to review, and may change.

Fees and funding

2025/26 entry

UK

£9,535 full-time

£1,385 placement year

International

£20,400 full-time

£1,385 placement year

Fees quoted are per year and may be subject to an annual increase. Home undergraduate student fees are regulated and are currently capped at £9,535 per year; any changes will be subject to changes in government policy. International fees will increase annually, by no more than 5% or RPI (Retail Price Index), whichever is the greater.

More information on any additional course-related costs.

See our fees and funding page for full details of undergraduate scholarships available to Brunel applicants.

Please refer to the scholarships pages to view discounts available to eligible EU undergraduate applicants.

Teaching and learning

You'll be taught by world leading experts in your field of study, and have the opportunity to interact with fellow students on London’s leading campus University.

Your programme will consist of a variety of learning and studying activities, including lectures, seminars and discussions. Students will study six modules during two terms across the academic year (4 modules and a dissertation in the third year). Each module will have on average two-to-three hours in person contact time per week in lectures, seminars and workshops in the teaching terms. There will also be the opportunity for a further six hours per week to seek guidance during module lecturers’ feedback and consultation hours. Additionally, students will be able to seek support in individual meetings with their personal tutors, both on campus and online. There will also be regular cohort meetings and student society events, at both programme and departmental levels. Field trips and excursions to support students’ learning will be organised throughout the year.

All lectures, seminars, cohort meetings and other social activities will occur in person on the Brunel campus. It is expected that students will regularly attend these events, as sustained engagement with a learning community is a central dimension of the Brunel experience. Online provision of some activities will be made available when it is appropriate to the learning outcomes of your programme.

Students are strongly advised to purchase core texts from module reading lists, although copies are also available via Brunel Library.

Access to a laptop or desktop PC is required for joining online activities, completing coursework and digital exams, and a minimum specification can be found here.

We have computers available across campus for your use and laptop loan schemes to support you through your studies. You can find out more here.

You’ll be taught in lectures and seminars by academic staff internationally known for publishing and presenting papers worldwide. Their research is often reported in the press and media, which will help to keep your learning contemporary and cutting edge.

You’ll also benefit from the expertise of staff who are consultants to government departments including the Cabinet Office, Home Office and Ministry of Defence in the UK; the council of Europe; the Georgian Ministry of Defence and the Canadian Department of Citizenship Abroad.

Also, the proximity of the Brunel campus to central London’s world-class research facilities, the British Library, Westminster and Whitehall, means you will be best placed to immerse yourself in an established political arena.

Should you need any non-academic support during your time at Brunel, the Student Support and Welfare Team are here to help.

Assessment and feedback

You’ll be assessed by a combination of coursework and exams, but most of your time will be spent in private study and reading. In your final year you will produce a final dissertation on a subject of your choice under the guidance of a dissertation supervisor.