Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This course examines the concept of security and governance of security, and its application in different contexts and at different levels of analyses with a focus on developing societies, particularly Africa. It considers key theories and relates them to particular contexts. The course provides an intellectual and practical context to the notion of the security sector and the governance of security and develops and demonstrates knowledge, understanding, and skills to investigate the various ways through which "security" can be brought under "democratic governance."

Meat consumption has long been an emotionally charged issue, but contemporary debates over the ethics of eating animals are growing increasingly heated, fueled by the fact that modern livestock agriculture is held responsible for approximately twenty percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This system's aim has always been to profitably produce an abundance of animal protein and it does so with tremendous efficiency; humans eat so many chickens today that chicken bones are considered one of the primary geological markers of the Anthropocene. Although this plenty provides essential protein for human diets, it also comes at an immense cost to environments, laborers, and the animals themselves and has resulted in the dramatic restructuring of lands, markets, and culinary practice worldwide. This course helps students understand how and why large-scale meat production became a central part of today's global food system. To do so, it combines approaches from environmental, economic, and culinary history and focuses primarily on the agricultural exchanges between Great Britain, Continental Europe, and the United States, both of which had outsized influence in shaping the contours of food production worldwide. The course develops a greater knowledge of the histories of agriculture, food commodity markets, and individual consumption in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This course provides a platform for new thinking about international legal and institutional arrangements in the world of an urgent need for responsibility for the future. It also presents what role the United States and Europe play in this process. It considers whether global governance - a dynamic process in which legal, political, and economical arrangements unleash interests, change the balance of force, and lead to further reinvention of the governance scheme itself - and wider responsibility are possible.

This course considers the characteristics and political dynamics of the unprecedented geographical construction of the European Union. It is based on the interactive pedagogy of the flipped classroom: students appropriate resources and facts during the week and mobilize them in group work workshops during the course sessions. Students prepare and present serious simulation games.

This course considers international law's dynamics in the modern world and delves into some of the pressing structural, institutional, and thematic challenges of the international legal order. It explores the potential and risks posed by evolving norms, new actors, and failing institutions. It also critically studies the capacity of international norms, international institutions, and judicial bodies to deal with global issues like climate change and environmental protection, the right to self-defense, peacekeeping, human rights and democracy, and international criminal justice. This course provides important legal knowledge, both in terms of concepts and methods, to hone analytical and problem-solving skills.

This course provides a historical, financial, political, and institutional overview of international financial architecture. The first part of the course reviews the progressive construction of the multilateral system over the last few centuries, with a specific focus on the main UN organizations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and multilateral development banks. In the second part, the course focuses on the limits of the current architecture in the face of the multiplicity of new global challenges (the fight against poverty and inequality, global warming and the protection of biodiversity, food and energy security, the response to pandemics). The course concludes with a reflection on possible ways forward for the current architecture, in an increasingly volatile economic, financial, and geopolitical context. 

This course offers an introduction to the fundamentals of political economy of international relations through the survey of international economic organizations and other global coordination attempts and development economics.
While reviewing all types of countries, it particularly focuses on least developed and transition economies, exploring the relationship between international economic organization mandates, policies, and economic development in
practice. The course does not require a significant background in economics but a fundamental understanding of micro- and macroeconomics is helpful. The course offers a review of theoretical and practical core knowledge and a systematic application through group case studies.

This course introduces both the fundamentals of child protection systems in Europe and the way international humanitarian work incorporates child protection mechanisms in developing countries. It covers how the supranational governance of humanitarian organizations, the EU, and states construct their child protection policies and set political agendas. The seminar combines conceptual tools, historical insights, and empirical evidence to investigate the evolution of child protection policies in the context of economic, environmental, and security crises and is divided in two parts: European child protection political agenda; and international humanitarian work and child protection policies in West Africa. Classes are partly discussion-based and include moderated group debates and student oral presentations. The course imparts practical skills and strategies to policy-related issues from first hand experiences in service delivery and policy-making.

This course, which focuses on China's Xi Jinping era, provides keys to understanding Chinese positions on the international stage. It compares official statements with the reality of Beijing's actions to understand the motives, modalities, and consequences of Chinese foreign policy.

This course explores EU enlargement dynamics, focusing on the process, negotiation, and accession of candidate countries. It examines pre-accession processes, enlargement negotiations, and the reasons behind EU expansion from legal, economic, and political perspectives. The course compares past enlargement rounds and assesses their impact on EU institutions and policies, highlighting the evolving nature of enlargement dynamics. It introduces the scholarly debate on conditionality and the EU's approach to current candidates' membership aspirations, emphasizing the need to adapt the EU's institutional structure. Through a simulation exercise, students participate in EU negotiation simulations, discussing and negotiating specific policy domains based on EU acquis chapters. This approach fosters teamwork, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the negotiation process. The course also critically analyzes the principles and concepts underlying European enlargement policies, equipping students with comprehensive knowledge of enlargement negotiations, membership conditionality, and the interaction between candidate states and the EU.