Political Science

This interdisciplinary course focuses on one of the most important recent developments in Spanish society: the onset in the 1990s of mass immigration from Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Spain's long history of expulsions, enforced religious uniformity, colonialism, contending regional and national identities and loyalties, and the marginalization of the Roma minority, provides an obvious starting point from which to consider both migrant experiences in Spain, and the way migration is reconfiguring contemporary attitudes and identities in Spanish society. Against this historical background, the course examines the dynamics and demographics of migration to and—again more recently—from Spain, and more generally, migrants' integration into the education system, the labor market, and social, political and cultural life. Class discussions and readings analyze the Spanish response to immigration, whether in the shape of laws and public policies, media representations of migrants, or public attitudes and behavior towards newcomers and ethnic minorities, including racism. The course ends by considering the impact of the ongoing economic crisis on immigrants, and the interplay between migration and current nationalist tensions within Spain, particularly the areas surrounding Catalonia and the Basque Country.

This course addresses the major challenges of a kind of political organization which is highly depreciated and suffers from a worrying lack of confidence from the citizens in every contemporary liberal democracy: the political party. The course focuses on the problems of both new and traditional political forces: from electoral decline to financial issues, from ideological void to organizational disintegration, it analyzes the role of political parties today and explains how they are trying to reinvent themselves in modern-day democracies. With a concise overview of a major subfield of the political science literature, this course demonstrates how an everyday subject can be observed through different perspectives, and how a mosaic of academic works can be used to draw a global picture which goes beyond current democratic dead ends.

This course studies the main steps of the French-German reconciliation and cooperation, and their impact on the European construction and transatlantic relations. The emphasis is not only on the bilateral dimension of this relationship, but also on the international one. A large role is given to the post-Cold War era and to the different Franco-German initiatives which came about during the development of the European Union and continued through the failure of the European Constitution. At the heart of this course are the visions and the philosophies which are often quite different of President Macron towards Germany. The course discusses the role of the “Franco-German couple” in the European Union and how the visions and philosophies are often very different in terms of European integration.

The course introduces students to a range of theories and concepts used in the academic study of public policy. It explores issues that cross the remits of different levels of government (local, regional, national, international/supranational). The course is presented in a way that facilitates a comparative analysis of political systems in different places and at multiple levels. It brings together academic expertise and practical experience, by inviting policy practitioners to present case studies.

This course explores the main political and moral theories that have been developed to face the new reality of unprecedented ecological upheaval caused by human activity. It imagines political solutions (environmental ethics, critique of technology, radical ecology, ecological democracy) to address several questions at the heart of contemporary political debates: whether humans should have a moral obligation towards nature and living beings; recognize a crime of ecocide; fight against the ideology of technical progress and invent new forms of life that are more resilient and respectful of the environment; reaffirm the importance of the precautionary principle in public action; and imagine a new social and ecological contract that would include non-human life forms and future generations.