Political Science

The course introduces students to the political economy of global health. It evaluates the underlying social, political, and economic causes of ill health and the role of various policies in responding. An emphasis is placed on analyzing the role of institutions, aid flows, corporations, and macroeconomic changes in global health. The course gives students an understanding of core concepts, issues, and debates in global health. Students apply social and political science perspectives to the analysis of health problems and identify research questions and designs on global health topics. The course requires students to have completed an elementary statistics course as a prerequisite. The course is split into three parts. Part I offers an introduction to Global Health topics. The first two sessions introduce the main debates in global health: the global burden of disease project, Primary versus Selective Health Care, horizontal versus vertical health systems, Universal Health Coverage, DALYs, and the theory of epidemiological transition. The next six sessions evaluate in more specific detail the history, epidemiology, and economics of leading sources of death and disability worldwide. Part II focuses on better understanding the wider causes of ill health and potential modifying factors. It covers different methods for measuring and mapping the scale of health inequalities across countries and over time. It also reviews the ongoing debates about whether inequality is a causative factor in health outcomes. This component of the course reviews evidence on the impacts of financial crises on health, from the Great Depression through to the recent economic downturns in Europe and North America, as well as implications for health of radical populism and fascist political movements. Finally, it evaluates the roles of health and social security systems in responding to these health determinants. Part III maps key players and actors in global health. This part of the course evaluates the political economy of global health. It assesses who holds power, covering the role of the World Health Organization, Private Philanthropic Foundations and other non-state actors, International Financial Institutions, and Multi-National Corporations. It reviews debates on alternative forms of redistribution, from charity to aid to lending programs. Finally, this section evaluates the histories of engaging with commercial determinants of health and alternative regulatory systems.

The course provides a general and comprehensive approach to world affairs while introducing the international legal perspective. It covers both the essentials of public international law and particular legal regimes such as coercion, use of force, human rights, State territory, and space law with respect to selected world affairs and international conflicts. The course highlights the interaction between international politics and law and the role of international law in the world governance. It’s focus both on theory and practice and on interdisciplinarity allows a better understanding of international negotiation, norm-making, legal argumentation, and interpretative techniques.

This course examines the place of Europe - its countries, and the institutions they have created in the global order from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Students study how Europe has articulated its interests on the international stage, how the EU has evolved as an actor in foreign and security policy, what characterizes the European perspective on key issues and on international politics more generally, and how the EU relates to other regions and powers, including the United States, China, and Russia. The course proceeds chronologically, beginning with the origins of the Cold War and European integration in the 1940s and 1950s, and proceeding to analyze Europe 'between the superpowers' as the Cold War unfolded, its place in the American-dominated 'unipolar moment', and where the continent stands now as the 'rise of the rest' leads to the emergence of a more diffuse international order. The course concludes with a strategic foresight exercise in which students depict divergent scenarios for Europe in the world over the coming decade.

This course provides a deeper understanding of International Organizations (IOs) by studying their origins, structures, roles, politics and future. The first part of the course broadly introduces relevant theories of International Relations, and more specifically theories of IOs/international cooperation. The second part of the course covers the most prominent international organization-the United Nations (UN). The course focuses on four broad themes: international security, economic development, human rights, and environmental problems in discussing the UN. 

This course offers an introduction to the key concepts, theories, methodological approaches, and empirical evidence on social inequality and social mobility. First, it focuses on the structure of inequality; considering how unequal societies are today and how and why this has changed in recent decades.  Second, the course discusses who gets to occupy privileged positions in society and why. It explores how characteristics that are not in peoples' control, such as socio-economic background, shape important outcomes in their lives, such as their level of education, their job, or their income. Finally, it explores what policies can reduce inequality of opportunity in society.

This course examines paradigms in Brazilian foreign policy, as well as the role of economic development on Brazilian foreign policy. Topics include the Republican regime and foreign policy; Americanism and Pan-Americanism; the Cold War and foreign policy; impact of the economy on foreign policy; independent foreign policy and globalism; foreign policy of the military regime and Americanism; geopolitics and national security doctrine; revival of globalism and consolidation; democracy and foreign policy; post-Cold War and Brazilian international insertion; actors in Brazilian foreign policy.

This course explores the social, cultural, and political history of the global Cold War through the lens of forced migrations and humanitarian aid. While traditional Cold War narratives perpetuate images of refugees fleeing from Eastern Europe to the West, the course challenges this clear-cut dichotomy. It expands the geographical range of forced displacement to include emergencies in the Global South by paying attention to entanglements across and within different regions. It studies major organizations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees across other agents, such as non-governmental organizations, regional, and national institutions. It takes into consideration refugees' agencies, trajectories, and cultural production. It then situates refugees within local communities, stressing the challenges and the opportunities of integration. Sessions are organized through a combination of lectures, discussions of primary and secondary sources, and students' presentations.

This course provides a general overview of secularism in the world. Reading texts, scientific articles, press articles, and historical documents, it reviews case studies with a comparative approach from political science, history, sociology, philosophy, and theology. Topics include the regime of separation of the Churches and the State in France, the secular state, the American civil religion, the Italian concordat, the Danish case, Turkey, the Mexican separation, and the Belgian derogatory regime. 

The course is conceived against the background of important debates on the conceptualization of development in global academic and policy contexts from the post-independence period (1960s) to date. This course is concerned with the notions of "emergence" and "transition" and pays special attention to African economies that are increasingly cited as having "achieved" some level of prominence in this regard. Students are encouraged to engage critically with mainstream thought on African experiences as they examine the interaction between theoretical frameworks/debates and empirical realities.

This course provides an advanced, comparative insight into citizenship debates with a specific focus on the intersection between citizenship, migration, and belonging. The course primarily concentrates on Europe and Northern America but systematically introduces comparative elements with other regions of the world (Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East) to provide a wider, global perspective on the politics of citizenship. The course delves into the transformations of citizenship regimes through the review and discussion of key scientific contributions in the field of citizenship studies, which has developed at the nexus of different disciplines over the past thirty years (political science, sociology, history, law). Beyond discussing citizenship and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion it entails, this course is also an opportunity to address more general concerns in social science research, such as how to assess change, how to ensure comparability across contexts, and how to address the gap between policy on paper and policy in practice.