Political Science

This course interrogates the intersection of environmental studies with ethical and political theories of justice. It engages with issues of environmental justice and injustice on a global scale and provides special consideration to the intersecting dimensions of race, ethnicity, class, and gender as well as global economic inequality and settler colonialism. An important dimension of the course is learning about the understandings of environment and claims to justice mobilized by social movements seeking to address environmental injustice. Beginning with an introduction to theories of environment, justice, and scientific knowledge production and continuing with an investigation of themes in environmental in/justice, the course considers how capital flows and the distribution of power shape who has access to the necessities of life and to clean environments and who does not, and how the world itself is being radically altered by human action. Finally, it considers what ethical and political obligations humans may have to more-than-human beings, and how the struggle to protect these beings is often tied up with the social justice struggles of marginalized human groups. The course continually returns to the question of how plural understandings of justice and the environment underwrite or challenge environmental destruction and socio-economic inequality and examines the social movements locally and globally that are challenging and, in some cases, transforming such inequality. Through readings, in-class discussions, guest lectures, selected films and documentaries, and a final project, students reflect critically on the root causes of the uneven distribution of the basic resources necessary for life.

This course provides a holistic understanding of conflict and of how and why it occurs from the intrapersonal level to the international level. It introduces concepts and techniques related to the negotiation process as well as examines negotiation pitfalls, preparation, fixed-pie and mixed motive perceptions, distributive and integrative negotiations, negotiation styles, ethics, and key issues.

This course introduces students to the nature, types, structure, and dynamics of international conflicts as well as the mechanisms used in addressing them. It explores the conflict behavior of states at the international arena, the impact of such behavior, and the likely conflict resolution mechanisms needed to address them. Also, the course keeps students abreast with post-conflict peace building strategies; the role of international institutions such as the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and ad-hoc tribunals in addressing human rights violations during periods of transitions and the general role of culture in these endeavors. 

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. The course focuses on the debate regarding pension’s policy and how it affects individuals, a debate which interests policy and academic audiences. The lifecycle model is employed as a key tool for analyzing the issues of interest and for understanding existing analyses. Finally, the course addresses topical policy questions and the recent contributions to academic literature about how individuals are affected by, and respond to, public policy. The course focuses on the role for government intervention in the economy (why should government intervene?), and on some principles that might guide the design of economic policy. The course focuses on public policy regarding pensions / social security, and how this affects the decisions of individuals regarding consumption and savings. Topics include motives for government intervention in the economy, raising government revenue, and pensions and social security.

This course is concerned with how public problems are formed and framed. It considers how public problems become, or do not become, items on the public agenda in order to lead to policy development. After introducing the notion of agenda setting, the course develops the social problem approach, and then exposes leading concepts to explain the character of the agenda in modern times.

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 provides a comparative approach to European politics, analyzing the interplay between national and EU-level decision-making. It examines how political authority is delegated from voters to representatives, governments, and EU institutions to understand broader European political processes. Throughout the course, it explores the institutional diversity of European democracies, comparing parliamentary, semi-presidential, and majoritarian systems and analyzing how electoral rules shape party competition and voter behavior. It also examines the European Union’s governance structures and how they interact with national decision-making, influencing both domestic policies and broader integration efforts while assessing how different economic models shape national economic policy preferences. 

Additionally, the course investigates the political and social impacts of migration, welfare state reforms, and sovereignty conflicts, as well as the rise of populism and Euroskepticism, exploring how these forces reshape both national and European politics. Rather than focusing on a single-country approach, this course draws on comparative examples from multiple European countries to highlight similarities, differences, and key trends.