Political Science

This course offers an introduction to the study of comparative politics. It addresses some of the discipline's most important questions: Why are some countries democratic, while others are not? Does democracy improve the well-being of its citizens? Do elections identify the general will? Are constitutional courts necessary to enforce the constitution? Does democracy help combat economic inequality? Do social networks accentuate political polarization? The course approaches these questions in a scientific way, introducing the main difficulties researchers face when studying politics. Can we identify causal relationships in politics? Which units of analysis need to be compared in order to draw meaningful conclusions? In doing so, the course examines how science is always about comparison, but understanding which comparisons are relevant and which are not requires a lot of consideration.

This course provides a social history of the ideas that radically questioned the construction of modern states in Europe and the world and the social and economic order that underlies them. It places these ideas in their context while highlighting their internal logic, from the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries to contemporary popular uprisings. In particular, the course focuses on the way in which these ideas are articulated in ideologies, carried by collective actors, based on knowledge that is both scholarly and profane and aimed at hegemony. It analyzes how these ideas circulate between different social and national spaces and are received and retranslated there.

This course reviews the theories and approaches that are typically used to analyze the political economies and political regimes of countries in the global South. The reliability, validity and normative implications of these theories will be evaluated with reference to key case studies - in many cases drawn from the African continent - in order to illustrate or problematize their claims. Though this is a political science course, our study of the politics of the South will be informed by debates that span a number of disciplines, including history, economics, law, anthropology and sociology.

This course introduces students to the study of the dynamic interaction between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of power in the global economy. The course presents the key concepts and theories of IPE, and how these can be used to understand pressing empirical and economic policy questions facing policymakers and citizens in the 21st century.

This course focuses on the emergence and early structure and function of international institutions. It discusses the various departments or “organs” within the United Nations and the responsibilities they hold.