Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This introductory course explores the current role and relevance of international negotiation and examines its interaction with global governance. It is an invitation to enhance the use of certain analytical and investigative methods while deepening key concepts and theoretical approaches of political science. Combining theory, practice, experienced negotiators' insights and case studies, the course delves into the everyday reality of the international negotiations to grasp their diversity and coherence. Grounded in current international affairs, it invites students to engage in debates on the present and future use of international negotiation.

This course examines key international relations (IR) theories—Westphalian and Asian Global International Society (GIS)—questioning their relevance to Central and South Asia. It critically assesses whether traditional theories like Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism, alongside non-Western perspectives (Chinese, Indian, and Islamic), adequately explain the region's geopolitical and security challenges. The course analyzes China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), shifting security architectures, and post-NATO Afghanistan, highlighting tensions between theory and reality. Through problem-driven analysis, it challenges assumptions about how Western and Asian GIS traditions interpret state behavior and power shifts. The course explores whether regionalism and security complexes shape international interactions in ways overlooked by mainstream IR. Can existing theories fully capture China's strategic ambitions and evolving security dynamics? Engaging with these debates, students gain a broad understanding of IR across different GIS traditions and critically examine the gaps between theory and practice in this geopolitically significant region.

Climate change is a global policy challenge whose solutions need to transcend national borders to address its multilayered causes and courses of action. This course reflects on transnational climate governance through the case of the EU Green Deal by exploring case by case its relevant stakeholders: in-house policymakers, member states, civil society, private and international actors. These stakeholders are viewed in parallel to climate policy domains (social and intergenerational justice, carbon markets, sustainable finance), and its tools (lobbying, negotiations and legislative procedures). This course provides a comprehensive approach to studying climate governance, combining theoretical concepts with practical examples, engaging students with real-life policy developments.

This course explores the complex regulatory environment of AI systems, which ranges from regulations and governance instruments to ethical principles and industry standards. It starts with an introductory session explaining what AI technologies are, zooms in on their benefits and the novel risks they give rise to, and investigates the role different legal modules can play in regulating them. At the end of the semester, it explores the question of whether the race for AI will thwart regulatory efforts, and to what extent ethical principles can serve as a complement to legal and industry norms.

This course introduces and presents the authors and founding texts of contemporary thought; the latest works in social and political sciences, whether by philosophers, essayists, scientists, or today's key players: political decision-makers, tech innovators, and ideologists working behind the scenes to influence the world of tomorrow. All are pioneers of the most hotly debated theories. Our era is one of great ideological conflict. Antagonistic conceptions of what the future of our societies will or could look like are clashing. Each class session is an opportunity to address these disruptive ideas, which largely break down traditional categories. Four major themes bring together the most recent analyses and doctrines: new practices of power, ecological reflections that pit ideas of progress against those of degrowth in unprecedented terms, artificial intelligence as a threat or an opportunity for our societies, and finally, the questioning of traditional economic models that have always been taken for granted. A journey through the works of Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and inspirer of Trumpism, to those of Giuliano da Empoli, the thinker behind the “new predators.” It is also be an opportunity to compare the ecological thinking of Jean-Marc Jancovici's Shift Project with Naomi Klein's radical ideas.

This course focuses primarily on the study of French diplomatic actors, their practices, and their interactions with their counterparts in various contexts, including international crisis management, multilateral negotiation processes, and power relations within the French state. At the same time, it encourages students to produce an analysis, to generalize where possible, and to propose theoretical explanations for the social phenomena studied. Designed as an interactive seminar, this course provides participants with an opportunity to refine their understanding of the issues involved and sharpen their critical thinking skills by reading selected texts and meeting with key players in the field. Thus, diplomats with varied profiles are invited to at least two sessions to allow the group to compare academic perspectives with practitioners' experiences and, for those particularly interested in careers at the Quai d'Orsay, to gain a concrete understanding of the profession. The approach draws mainly on political science, but also on sociology and history, in a multidisciplinary perspective to shed as much light as possible on the subject in all its complexity.

This course centralizes the use of feminist legal theory as a serious mode of inquiry into analyzing law, legal reasoning, and legal reform. It studies four dominant strands of contemporary feminist legal theory, including liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, critical race feminism, and postmodern feminism in queer theory. While this course focuses on common law-based perspectives of feminism, it uses these diverse terrains of feminist legal thought in order to analyze challenges and various areas in social and public discourse internationally. Thus, while the first part of the course is dedicated to acquiring the useful knowledge and background of strands of feminism, the second part of the course creatively applies these tools in practical areas of sex equality issues in employment, consent, abortion, transgender rights, prostitution, and pornography.

This is a beginner level French language course for students who have previously completed one or two semesters of French. It focuses on the four skills of listening comprehension, spoken production, reading comprehension, and written expression. It develops skills to understand audio and video with multiple speakers, talk about events that happened in the past, describe objects and images, conduct a simple discussion and give an opinion, read and understand short texts, write a short informal letter or email. It covers adjectives, comparatives, superlatives, pronouns, adverbs, indefinites, prepositions, verbs, vocabulary for real-life situations, phonetics and spelling. 

This is a beginner level Italian language course for students with no prior Italian language background. It teaches listening comprehension, spoken production, reading comprehension, and written expression in Italian. It focuses on understanding instructions and following a very simple conversation that relates to everyday life, introducing and talking about ones self, asking questions about someone else, understanding a very simple text relating to daily life, writing a dialogue, short text or email. The course covers articles, nouns, adjectives, demonstratives, possessives, pronouns, adverbs, numbers, prepositions, interrogatives, verbs, vocabulary for real-life situations, and phonetics and spelling.

This course provides a panorama of how behavioral approaches can help to understand key issues in the political and social sciences. It examines the central cognitive and behavioral processes relevant to the analysis of social and political dynamics. Through a combination of formal lectures and class discussion, the course provides the tools necessary to apply a behavioral perspective to political and social issues. Furthermore, the methodological and theoretical limitations and challenges of these approaches are discussed throughout the semester in order to enable students to think and apply these approaches critically.