Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This course covers the scope of local government activities in France and the political nature of the financial decisions that accompany these initiatives. An explanation of the institutional and financial constraints facing the local public sector, along with an analysis of the reforms undertaken by the state, leads to a reflection on what decentralization means in France today and how it is evolving. The course considers the future prospects for local government action in France and compares this situation with other models of local government organization internationally. It also reflects on the current and future role of local governments in environmental transition policies and how their financial decisions may or may not contribute to them.

This workshop studies how to read and analyze journalistic content on cultural themes in a professional manner. It provides an opportunity to question journalistic expression by analyzing the facts and data it provides, the credibility of the information transmitted, and the meaning of their publication on certain dates and distribution platforms. The course examines quality, balance, and relevance of the sources; tone, rigor, and atmosphere of the expression; precision of the information; point of view of the narration; identification of the news; typology of the publications; analysis of the formats; and platforms of distribution.

This course examines the evolution of the historiography of the Cold War, with its recent transformations, to then analyze the nature of today's international relations marked by the “return of competition between the super powers,” an expression created by the Pentagon in 2016. The Chinese and Russian analyses of the evolution of the world that we have long called "Post-Cold War" is also studied.

This multidisciplinary course considers equality, discrimination, affirmative action, and multiculturalism within the specific context of the U.S. experience. This experience is characterized by three structural features that Alexis de Tocqueville famously identified: the passion for equality, the salience of racial divisions, and the judicialization of politics. Elaborating upon those intuitions, the course relies extensively on history (that of ethno-racial and religious minorities since the early nineteenth century), law (through a thorough analysis of some of the key Supreme Court decisions in this area), political science (through the study of the emergence, development, and partial decline of race-conscious policies such as affirmative action and the redistricting designed to increase the number of Black and Hispanic elected representatives), and political philosophy (by discussing theories of social justice and equality, notably those of John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Michael Walzer).

This course presents an overview of the major Sunni and Shiite Islamist organizations that have developed and spread throughout the twentieth century. Through the cases of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Jama‘at ul-Tabligh in India, the Hizb al-Tahrir in Palestine, the Islamic Da‘wa Party in Iraq, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and even the afghan origins of al-Qaeda, the course explores the origins, ideology, social bases, and actions of these organizations, as well as their various forms of transnationalization in the Muslim world. The circulation of actors and ideas are particularly developed in order to highlight the anchoring of Islamism in an increasingly globalized space.

This course provides an understanding of the recent developments in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology and their consequences on the banking sector and central banks. Cryptocurrencies and Fintech questions the banking system in its essential intermediary role but also central banks as provider of legal tender currency. Cryptocurrencies like BTC built on blockchains, work on a decentralized scheme disrupting our hierarchical system. This is a serious challenge for Central Banks and regulators since the banking and financial system greatly influences the state of the economy. Cryptocurrencies - the Bitcoin in particular - were born as a way to develop an alternative to the existing system judged corrupted and biased by human action. Cryptocurrencies are more than just the design of a new monetary system, it offers an alternative design for the organization of the society based on decentralization and trust. The course investigates the consequences of their further adoption on banks and central banking together with the response of Central Banks and regulators. After a review of our traditional banking and financial system, the course introduces cryptocurrencies starting with Bitcoin, the Ethereum, stablecoins and CBDCs. The last part of the course is dedicated to the emergence of different regulatory frameworks at the international level, in particular MICA and Genius Act.