Political Science

This course is a collective exercise to establish a portrait of each of the past ten presidential elections in France and create a systematic comparison with the 2021-2022 campaign and the 2022 vote. Through close investigation of these elections, the course examines fundamental, far-reaching elements in order to better understand the 2022 election. Studying the candidates, their platforms, their profiles, non-votes, votes against the system, the campaign, the context, and the debates, it identifies the most relevant criteria and establishes a description of each election to draw conclusions as to the elements that characterize the current campaign.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. Globalization has led to a broad transfer of policy making authority from the domestic to the global sphere. This power shift has facilitated review by global authorities of domestic decisions, but it has also shielded many global policy making processes from domestic monitoring and reviewing mechanisms. The course examines the roles of domestic courts and institutions, global tribunals and arbitration panels, global monitoring bodies and other global organizations, private organizations and NGOs in responding to the accountability gaps and opportunities created by globalization. Topics include: presentation and discussion of the different theories on the opposite trends described as internationalization of Constitutional law and “constitutionalization” of International Law; presentation and discussion of four national Constitutional law categories which have changed due to the globalization of political and judicial decisions: popular sovereignty; rule of law; the role of the Parliament; the role of the Constitutional court.

This course provides a detailed understanding of the European jihadi phenomenon, from its inception during the war in Afghanistan (1979) to the fall of ISIS (2019) and its current reconfigurations on the Old Continent (2020-2023). It is the results of a decade of on-the-ground research, it explores the way jihadi groups and organizations spread their ideas throughout the Old Continent, from the French “banlieues” to the British and Belgian inner cities, and from the German countryside to the Scandinavian metropolitan area. The course also covers female activism, online activism, and the way jihadism functions behind bars. It points out the poorly understood centrality of prisons in the making of European Jihadism and its current reconfigurations since the fall of ISIS. The course introduces jihadism and its key concepts, including pre-modern Islamic theology and jurisprudence to demonstrate how these references were appropriated and repurposed by jihadi ideologues for political ends. It concludes on the current debates in Europe surrounding jihadism and Islamism in the wake of the killing of Samuel Paty in France and subsequent attack in Vienna, Austria.

Chile has experienced a series of political, economic, social and cultural upheavals during the twentieth century. This course examines the phenomenon of violence, memory, and amnesia through the history of political conflicts. It underlines the roles of silence, oblivion, repression, and humiliation in the formation of authoritative and dictatorial regimes and opposes them to the exaltation of memory in the legitimization of a cause. The course involves a diachronic analysis, introducing the historical and sociological context of nineteenth century Chile, before exploring the period stretching from the beginning of the twentieth century to the democratic transition in 1989, and concluding on the return of speech through the victims' testimony. From the rise of political consciousness to egalitarian combats, from conservative regimes to progressive governments, from the experience of Popular Unity to Pinochet's military coup, the study of Chile is a probing illustration of the intertwine of opposites and contraries shaping a collective consciousness. The course proposes a multidisciplinary point of view in order to embrace the complexity of political and cultural change, as well as an innovative pedagogy; historical archives, testimonies, and documentaries provide the background for a reflective study relying on systemic analysis and strong bases of methodology. Guest speakers from different fields (lawyers, authors, film directors) are invited to address the group, in order to share knowledge and experience, and give professional and personal points of views on different aspects of the course, stimulating an interactive conversation with the students.

This course introduces the world of intelligence; both the theoretical and practical concepts, as well as how it works in both the public sector (government agencies) and the private sector (corporations and intelligence vendors). It provides an understanding of concepts such as the Intelligence Cycle, intelligence analysis, intelligence collection methods (human intelligence, open-source intelligence, signals intelligence) and briefing techniques. The ethics of intelligence and the differences in the public and private sector are introduced, as well as career options in intelligence. This course uses case studies of intelligence operations in both government and corporate environments to expose real world applications of intelligence tradecraft.