Type of course

Admission requirements

PhD students or holders of a Norwegian Master´s Degree of five years or 3+ 2 years (or equivalent) may be admitted. PhD students must upload a document from their university stating that they are registered PhD students.

Holders of a Master´s Degree must upload a Master´s Diploma with Diploma Supplement / English translation of the diploma. Applicants from listed countries must document proficiency in English. To find out if this applies to you see the following list: http://www.nokut.no/Documents/NOKUT/Artikkelbibliotek/Utenlandsk_utdanning/GSUlista/2016/GSU_list_English_14112016.pdf

For more information on accepted English proficiency tests and scores, as well as exemptions from the English proficiency tests, please see the following document: https://uit.no/Content/254419/PhD_EnglishProficiency_100913.pdf

The course has 15 seats. If the number of applicants exceeds the number of places available on the PhD course, applicants will be ranked from category 1 to 4.

Category 1: People admitted to the PhD Programme at UiT

Category 2: Participants in the Associate Professor Programme that fulfil the educational requirements

Category 3: Doctoral students from other universities

Category 4: People with a minimum of a Master´s Degree (or equivalent). (A Norwegian Master´s Degree of 5 years or 3 (Bachelor Degree) + 2 years (Master’s Degree).

Course content

Democracies around the world have witnessed an increase in political distrust, fueling polarization and political instability. Trust in government includes subcategories of trust in local, state, and national and international government as well as trust in departments and officials at these different levels of government. The sources of declining trust to the political system, and how trust can be developed, can be analysed from different angles. This course focuses on different perspectives on trust:

- structural perspectives, including cleavage structures (local, national, international) and cultural perspectives

- perspectives on institutional performance, democratic values and development of trust in society through participatory governance

Objectives of the course

The students have the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

The student has thorough knowledge of:

- theoretical perspectives on trust

- how theoretical perspectives explain declining trust locally, nationally, and internationally

- how theoretical perspectives advice the enhancement of political trust

Skills

The student is able to

- discuss trust perspectives

- formulate research questions on trust-relations

- provide an individual presentation on trust-relations using theoretical perspectives

-use trust perspectives to analyse theoretical and/or empirical observations

Competence

The student is able to understand and use perspectives on trust analytically.

Language of instruction and examination

Teaching methods

Students submit a draft paper two weeks before the gathering in Tromsø

The gathering in Tromsø is structured as follows:

Day 1: Introduction and lectures

Day 2: Lectures and paper presentations

Day 3: Paper presentations and summary

The lectures are divided into an introduction and 4 modules for a total of 9 lecture hours.

Paper presentations are chaired by the course lecturers, and organized as a 10-minute introduction by the author followed comments from ‘main opponents' and then other students and lecturers.

Each student is appointed as ‘main opponent’ for two papers.

The curriculum for the course is approx. 800 pages.

Recommended reading/syllabus