Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

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 provides a thorough introduction to child protection systems in Europe and how international humanitarian efforts address child welfare in developing regions, with a focus on West Africa. Divided into two modules, the first examines the European Union's child protection priorities—such as digital safety, AI governance, and deinstitutionalization—while the second focuses on the work of international organizations in tackling issues like poverty, gender-based violence, and conflict. Students engage with theoretical frameworks, case studies, and expert guest lectures to develop critical thinking and practical skills grounded in real-world policymaking and service delivery.

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.

This course is a workshop. Students work together to write a press article on subjects or events related to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries using the resources offered by RetroNews (newspapers, magazines) and Gallica (newspapers, magazines, and journals), two online sites belonging to the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF). Students gather and work on a corpus of articles to shed light on a specific historical subject or event, based on published historical research, while analyzing the political and social representations and discourse of the press of the period. Some student articles are then submitted to the RetroNews editorial team for publication.

This course covers the main issues at the root of most of the conflicts in Africa. It examines the conflicts and geopolitical dynamics that affect the Horn of Africa and identifies the historical, political, and military regional dynamics of these conflicts, as well as their broader international dimension. The course provides a critical analysis of Horn Africa's relations with the world as the new battle held between emerging powers such as the Gulf, BRICS, and traditional superpowers. It also provides a general overview of violent extremist groups and regional and international responses to the Global War on Terror. Finally, it discusses current wars as well as their strategic implications and connections to the most prominent global security challenges of the post-Cold War and post 9/11 world.