SGIA40D15: Assessing Martial Power

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• To provide advanced knowledge of the complex ways in which social, political, and material context affects the changing construction of martial power in the modern world;
• To develop in-depth understanding of the diverse methods and approaches used to estimate military power and its relative applications, by states and scholars;
• To critically analyse the implications of divergent methods of assessing of military power for understanding the political utility of martial force in the contemporary world.

• The module will explore the main conceptual and theoretical approaches to understanding and analysing military power, providing a firm grounding in the societal, political, technological, and organisational factors that shape the development and employment of military force and the complex interdependencies between them;
• Students will be exposed to key debates over the definition of military power and its relationship to ideas about military effectiveness, to indicatively include concepts such as capacity, capability, and cohesion, as well as the practical challenges associated with generating and measuring each of these factors and processes;
• The module will provide students with the opportunity to apply practical tools used to estimate martial power, and to critically analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each approach for the development of military doctrine, and defence policy, and national strategy.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Through the module students will gain an understanding of:
• In-depth knowledge of the diverse sources of martial power, and the complex relationship between military institutions and their domestic and international context;
• Advanced understanding of the key conceptual debates relating to the estimation of military power and military effectiveness, and their implications for policy and scholarship;
• Detailed appreciation of the changing construction of military power in the modern world, and the historical evolution of dominant paradigms;
• Practical knowledge of the main methods used to estimate the relative power and potential performance of military organisations.

Subject-specific Skills:

• An advanced ability to analyse key concepts and theories on the sources of military power, and to appraise their significance for understandings of military effectiveness;
• The ability to assess the importance of cultural, societal, political, and material factors in developing martial structures and policies, and the implications of these for military change;
• The ability to apply a range of tools to analyse the design and structure of military organisations, in order to gain an appreciation of the functions and intentions this can reveal;
• The ability to recognise the inter-dependencies between hard and soft power in contemporary international affairs, and to form judgements about the potential applications and limitations of military power in specific contexts;
• The ability to engage in MA-level research projects focusing on military analysis within the field of defence studies or strategic studies.

Key Skills:

• Students will also develop some important key skills, suitable for underpinning study at this and subsequent levels, such as:
• construct and synthesise arguments critically for both oral and written presentation from different sources of material, including material delivered orally and in reports and essays.
• demonstrate an independent approach to learning, thinking (self-)critically and creatively, and problem-solving;
• to use sophisticated techniques of information retrieval and management using an array of print and digital resources;
• participate in and reflect on collaborative group work;
• formulate complex arguments in articulate and structured English in an effective way, within the discursive conventions and genres of academic writing and written to high academic standards;
• demonstrate effective time management.

• The module will be delivered as a block in workshop format over a period of an afternoon and two full consecutive days, and will involve a mixture of lectures, seminars, and group work, including role-play game and micro-simulation exercises.
• Formative assessment is intended to develop students' communication skills and powers of academic analysis, as well as effective time management. In-class discussions and presentations will contribute to the students independent learning and allow students the opportunity to exchange ideas, to explore issues and arguments that interest or concern them in greater depth, and to receive feedback from both the group and the lecturers on their own arguments and understanding. Debriefing sessions and presentations on group-work will further provide students with an opportunity to practice constructing and presenting complex arguments in a succinct and concise fashion. These will be the main form of formative feedback students receive on this module, and students will be made aware of this at the start of the module.
• Summative assessment will include a pre-workshop article review, and a post-workshop module essay, or policy report document. The exact form of the post-workshop assessment will depend on the in-workshop case studies selected by the module teaching staff, but will in either case be directly linked to the themes discussed during the workshop. The pre-workshop assignment is designed to provide students with a focused task to prepare them, through self-guided learning, for the workshop's discussion and exercise tasks. The knowledge, analytical points and literature advice for this assignment will be provided through a pre-session induction.

The formative assessment will take the form of continuing feedback in seminar and group discussions, together with feedback on oral presentations and team debriefs during group-work and simulation exercises.

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