UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies Information

The Institute of International Studies (IIS) at the University of California, Berkeley is a multidisciplinary organized research unit (ORU). IIS represents an interdisciplinary arena of scholarship characterized by the analysis of connective and systemic dynamics in global politics and economics. International or global studies is distinct from area studies, which tends to focus on understanding individual countries, societies, or regions. International studies is primarily concerned with interactions among states and non-state actors across a multitude of arenas—from security and governance to economic and cultural exchange. It includes the study of cross border movements of people, ideas, money, goods, diseases, pollution, information as well as international institutions, international law, and global governance more generally. The addition of transnational problems that affect the world as a whole, esp. since the 1970s, has expanded the horizons of IIS, and includes phenomena that take place within the borders of one country but are studied across regions, such as migration, civil war, democracy, authoritarianism, humanitarian crises, human rights abuses, globalization, and climate change.