Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This course offers a study of the Second World War from a worldwide perspective. It explores these themes in two parts, in unfamiliar places and across unusual timescales. The first part begins with the question of what makes (and unmakes) a war a "world war" and reviews the conflict's development from its origins to its ending, well beyond the familiar 1939-1945 chronology. In the second part, it explores themes both familiar and unfamiliar from a global viewpoint, from the war's multinational forces to its ecology, economy, and popular memory.

This course performs micro-genealogies of various strands of “practical philosophy” and “philosophical practice,” both ancient and modern, to rethink how philosophy can provide the conceptual tools needed to tarry with the complexities of individual and social life. It addresses questions such as what is happiness and the good life; at what expense do we find happiness; what are the conditions for freedom; and how to engage with death, illness, and finitude. This course critically examines how happiness has been imagined in the past and the present, from virtue and duty to wellness and bliss.

This course is an initiation to writing for the theater, examining the link between writing and spoken text. It includes several writing exercises that lead progressively toward a short play which is then workshopped among the class. In addition to this practical dimension of writing, the course includes reading and discussion of the dramatic texts of various actors.

This course provides a critical understanding of the major issues currently faced by European countries, and the interplay between Member States, European institutions, global challenges and democratic legitimacy concerns. It analyzes the facts to understand the major causes and potential consequences and think of possible solutions to address challenges existing in the euro area, those created by the unprecedented migrant flows in Europe, stemming from climate change. The course also looks at the rise of Euroscepticism and the issue of democratic deficit in the European Union. The course provides a critical approach and a solid understanding of the major issues and debates on the topics covered during the class.

In examining how contemporary political power is organized, notably through constitutions, this course presents a view of issues past and present, legal and political, French or foreign, national and international.  It also offers several keys so that students can orient themselves among the facts, the information, and the documentary sources.  Students are given a certain amount of information but also encouraged to build intellectual and practical skills to bring out their critical thinking abilities, their ability to hold a rational argument, and stimulate their creative intellectualism.  The themes examined in the course include: defining a certain number of fundamental notions related to the analysis of constitutional law and the political institutions; examining several examples of foreign political institutions; and understanding the trajectory, the situation, and the characteristics of today’s French institutions.  Through case studies and applied examples, each course meeting is an opportunity to enrich the methodology required to examine these issues.

This course addresses the key issues that affect the economy and society in emerging markets: globalization, slowing growth, Covid-19, demography, women, urbanization, religion, commodities, water, renewable energies, climate change, currencies, enterprises, and geopolitical power politics. The course considers how the emergence of BRICS, the five major emerging national economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and the following wave of emerging countries appearing in the South, from Nigeria to Indonesia through Ethiopia and Vietnam, has created a strategic challenge for the OECD countries. The emerging markets are analyzed as both growing markets and competitors, with which new partnerships must be invented.

With the different food crisis and increased protectionism, agriculture is coming back in the policy makers' agendas. Food security, food sovereignty, and sustainability are now central to the debate. This course provides an understanding of the main challenges facing the world food markets. It introduces the basis of agricultural economics and policy with a particular focus on the European Common Agricultural Policy. The role of international institutions and trade liberalization is also discussed, in particular concerning developing countries. Agricultural specificities in the WTO and regional negotiations are detailed. Finally, policy evaluation tools are briefly presented, based on some examples.

This course provides a key understanding of the historical and ideological foundations of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary regime and its foreign policy. From the Iranian Revolution in 1979, a turning point in Middle Eastern and global contemporary politics, it overviews the deep changes in the ideological and political landscapes resulting from the establishment of the Islamic Republic: the impact on political Islam, the regional equilibrium, Iran's place in the international community, and the reactivation of rivalries and confessional tensions with neighboring countries. The study of the Iranian political and religious model through a multidisciplinary perspective helps to understand the immediate consequences of the Revolution, its longer-terms effects, and the regional reaction.

This course provides a critical view of global issues that are ubiquitous, but often overlooked or simplified in public debate. It is based on rich illustrations to understand the profound interdependence of social, environmental, economic, and security issues internationally. Topics covered include: conflicts and security; global inequalities; environmental problems or the "return of the sacred"; the diversification of the actors on the world stage; re-geopoliticization of the world; the transformations of the international system; from economic governance or the search for lost regulation; environment and International Relations. This course mobilizes contributions from other perspectives from sociology, political theory, economics, human geography, and global and comparative history.