Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This course introduces the theories, concepts, and models of public policy analysis. Highlighting the importance of public policies in shaping relationships between the government and the governed, it helps students to unpack the complexity of the policy process, that is how public problems emerge and public policies are developed in order to address them. Insofar as public policies are considered a critical dimension of governmental activities, this requires going beyond the mere study of their substance: while interesting in its own right, it only provides a limited understanding of the contradictions inherent to public policy-making and of the changing nature of the policy process over time and across different political and institutional contexts. By contrast, shifting the focus on how the public policy process works contributes to the opening of the “Black Box” of public policy making and going beyond a managerial and functionalist approach to the policy process. In order to do so, the course guides students through the various stages of the policy process, including problem framing, agenda-setting, decision-making, policy implementation, and evaluation. It also assesses the way various actors, interests, and institutions shape the policy process and in return, the extent to which public policies account for economic, social, and political changes. Finally, it also discusses the international and multilevel dimensions of public policymaking, as well as its complex interplay with other forms of regulation (e.g., market, networks). This is done by drawing on a large range of examples across policy domains (e.g., environment, transport, health, education, etc.). In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of policy studies, the course draws on authors, concepts, and models drawn from political science, law, sociology, and economics.

This course examines the role of the intellectuals as well as the shift from a historicity regime which was in place during this period, followed by the growing disillusionment when faced with the repeated tragedies of history. It also revisits the important era of master thinker in the 1960s: Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Aron, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes. Prerequisite for this course is a knowledge of the political history of France from post-World War II to 1968, or the Fourth Republic and the beginning of the Fifth Republic.

The course analyzes the historical trajectory of India's foreign policy by reviewing the thematic and geographical entry points over the last fifty years. It considers the contrast between Nehru's idealistic, international perspective of the world and the realistic, internally focused vision of his successors Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. In addition to diplomatic and military developments, transnational actors like the diaspora are also considered. Topics covered in the course are: the cardinal points of India's Foreign Policy; India-Pakistan relations; India-US relations; India-China relations; strategic partnership with the URSS/Russia; facets of Multilateralism; the Pakistan - Afghanistan - Iran conundrum seen from India: multiples crises, multiples challenges; India's Look East Policy; New Delhi's Policy vis-à-vis India's Diaspora; India and the multilateral order; India's strategic vision and defense policy; from non-alignment to the BRICS.

This course gives students keys to understand the contemporary international pop-culture, its sources, stereotypes, typical scenarios, stories, characters and the role of Europe, USA, and Japan in shaping it. It focuses on the mutual influences between video games, comics, animation, movies, TV shows, and novels. The conceptual background is pragmatic sociology and ethnology. The ethnological conception of culture is key, though the class does not focus on theory. The class first presents a typology of medias and imaginaries of pop-culture. In the second part, it offers a selective history of pop-culture focusing on the emergence of the elements that now form the mainstream pop-culture.

This course is a practical workshop where students create a methodological reading grid to allow them to decode with certainty what news is factual and what can sometimes be used for propaganda purposes. The course covers how to review images, sources, publication dates, itineraries, virality, and context to authenticate the veracity of content.

 

The course is organized around a series of topics. It begins by covering the economic analysis of electoral turnout and voting decision, the selection and motivations of politicians and their impact on public policy, and questions about political accountability and corruption. The next part of the course focuses on the role of mass media and its impact on electoral politics and policy-making, as well as the issue of political distortions through examples such as patronage politics, lobbying, and political connections. The last part of the course is on issues related to crime, conflict and violence, as well as the origins, persistence and impact of political institutions. The course is primarily based on the reading of recent research papers and the in-depth discussion of their theories, methods, and results. There are no pre-requisites; however, previous exposure to economics courses and familiarity with quantitative methods are desirable.

The first part of this course presents the historical, political, and economic context in which the Internal Market of the European Union (EU) was founded and the Institutions introducing the guidelines of the European economic policy. The objective of an open economy market with free competition is based on the respect of four fundamental freedoms: free movement of goods, free movement of persons, freedom of services, and free movement of capital and payments. Their analysis constitutes the core of the second part of this course. Furthermore, specific instruments ensuring equal juridical chances for all economic operators of member states complete the general frame in each field of law. Therefore, a third part of the course examines the regulation of the internal market and the drafting of rules preserving free competition, but also the Europeanization of rules on corporate law and intellectual property law.

This seminar provides an introduction to contemporary Latin American politics. First, a general panorama of the historical trends is presented with a focus on the regional's problems of democratization during the last century. Second, it concentrates on the public regional agenda to study different topics like the violence, the crisis of the welfare state, the crisis of political representation, the populism phenomenon and the risks of an authoritarian regression in the continent.