Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This course provides students with a clear idea of the diversity of European social policies, their political background, and allows for the assessment of their performance. The course also provides an in-depth account of current welfare reforms, in the perspective of their historical development. The social science analysis concepts (de-/re-commodification, path dependency, Varieties of Capitalisms) are used in order to understand the issues at stake in recent debates concerning the welfare state and the trajectories of their reforms.

This course examines the role played by international law during European colonization and after the decolonization movement of the 1950s and 1960s (exploitation colonies) and the 1980s and 1990s (settlement colonies). The first part of the course shows how traditional international law was a colonialist and racist international law that legalized the entire colonial movement. The second part looks at the ambivalent role of contemporary international law: on the one hand, it is used to repair colonial history; on the other hand, it helps to perpetuate a regime of domination and contemporary neo-colonialism.

The history of historians is part of a range of representations and appropriations of the past. It differs from them while echoing them. The scientific approach, based on a quest for truth and objectivity, using procedures and rules for the administration of evidence, coexists with a multitude of social and political relationships with the past, which have continued to multiply over the last forty years. Memorial claims, demands for reparations, ideological constructions, and the reinvention of traditions fuel numerous and contradictory discourses on the past, which take various forms (literature, cinema, visual arts, commemorations, collections, etc.). The past is a shared object, the uses of which are at the heart of political and social conflicts, particularly through the spread of the phenomenon of victim competition. The challenge of this course is to understand the logic and forms of these various uses, while defining the specificity of historical knowledge, its requirements, and its objectives. It also involves questioning its possible role in the current context marked by the resurgence of political nationalism, religious fanaticism, and attacks on democracy.

This course provides a foundational understanding of international relations and foreign policy analysis from both a theoretical and historical perspective. The first part of the course provides an overview of the origins and historical evolution of international systems in world history, shedding light on the emergence of a global international system. It then examines how historians and political scientists approach the study of international politics, seeking to identify differences, potential overlaps, and mutual synergies. The second part of the course explores the diverse set of theories that can be leveraged to make sense of international politics, namely realism, liberalism, constructivism, the “English School,” and critical approaches to international relations. The third part of the course investigates the wide range of domestic and international factors that influence foreign policy decision-making processes, including individual decision-makers, group dynamics among senior advisors, bureaucratic politics, domestic politics, and the role of societal actors in shaping foreign policy outcomes. The final part of the course zooms in on the sources and methods of inquiry in the study of foreign policy and international relations. It discusses the methodological issues related to empirical research on foreign policy and international relations, looking in particular at archival research and interviews with foreign policymakers. 

Mapping and cartography have long been used in social sciences, in geography and beyond. Political scientists, historians and sociologists have increasingly used such tools, which have become more and more present in the media, the administrations and the corporate world as well. Maps in all their forms have gained a strong foothold in all these fields and are now easier to produce thanks to the digital tools making their production easily accessible by non-specialists. This workshop has two main objectives. The first is to master critical approaches to cartographic designs, not only thanks to a better understanding of the foundations of cartography but also of their status as a discourse on various objects of study. The second is for the students to acquire skills enabling them to make their own maps and designs with some of the basic digital tools available, in relation to multidisciplinary issues.