Political Science

This course is an introduction to a series of theories and debates within the interdisciplinary study of religion and politics. It introduces students to the use of political techniques to question how authority is constructed in the secular and religious spheres and presented through institutions such as government, church, civil society, and international forums. The course develops students' understanding of how power, authority, competition, and identities are conceived in the modern world. Topics include secular and religious politics, Church and State, local and global religious civil society, and godly kingdoms and nation-states.

The contribution of political theory to the reflection on contemporary transformations of the model and democratic practices in the Western world (Europe, North America mainly) is presented in lectures. Particular attention is paid to the theoretical articulation that can be established between the democratic principle and three essential features of Western political history: the representative system, the deliberative device, and the participative device.

This class aims to provide a pan-European examination of the analysis of democratic performance on major issues affecting contemporary European democracies. continent's politics - one rooted in a comparative rather than a country-by-country approach. After reviewing ontological and epistemological foundations in comparative political science and setting the historical and socio-economic context, the module focuses on comparative analysis of prominent political issues facing European states (including mediatisation of politics, interest groups, social movements, immigration and multi-culturalism, gender and politics, new radical right challenges to established party systems) before concluding with a comparative analysis of democratic performance as measured by objective and subjective indicators of government outputs.

This course examines the key events and characteristics of Brazilian foreign policy of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. It discusses the various academic and political viewpoints regarding the general international integration of the country, provides a critical analysis of the decision-making of foreign policy, and explores the central themes of the country's international agenda.

The course introduces and defines the field of transitional justice. It looks into its historical evolution and address the rationales underlying it. The introduction furthermore includes an overview of the main mechanisms/components that can be part of the process of transitional justice and how they are interrelated. The course subsequently addresses several of these transitional justice mechanisms and this analysis predominantly focuses on the perspectives of the victims. Victims (and survivors) are not only a group, but also individual human beings and their wishes and interests in the aftermath of large scale conflict can be very diverse and even contradict the wishes of other victims or the group as such. In this context specific attention is given to the impact of violent conflict on women and children. Throughout the course critical attention is paid to the following justice mechanisms: apologies and forgiveness, memorialization and commemoration, truth telling and truth commissions, pardons and amnesties, compensation, restoration, restitution, international and regional criminal courts and tribunals, lustration, and vetting. The analysis concludes with a discussion of the various justice mechanisms and their potential to contribute to (or jeopardize) sustainable peace. In addition to issues such as justice and reconciliation, other matters are also significant in post-conflict societies as they greatly affect the consolidation of peace and stability. Justice and reconciliation only form one pillar of reconstruction, but also in other areas constructive action is required. Such other areas of concern include, for instance, security, wellbeing, and governance. The course therefore looks into the process of reconstruction and discusses which actions are required in order to move from the precarious early stages of post conflict transition to a more sustainable situation which allows for the consolidation of peace and stability. Case studies play an important role throughout the course and therefore a wide variety of cases are covered including The Holocaust and other cases of genocide (Armenia, Australia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, etc.). Although cases of genocide play an important role in this course, the case load is certainly not limited to genocide and other violent conflicts in Chili, Argentina, Guatemala, Indonesia, East Timor, Iraq, Syria, Congo, Central African Republic, are addressed, along with the torture practices of the U.S.

This course studies how American institutions, and more generally Western institutions, adapt to the rise of alternative forms of government that challenge the doctrines of globalization as we have known them to be since the end of the World War II. The course covers the following topics: the election of Donald Trump in the United States as part of the institutional history of that country; the election of Donald Trump as a departure from the status quo; the reaction of opposition forces; the message that the Constitution and the spirit of the Founding fathers tells us about how America society can adapt to this political break. The course measures how the constitutional texts combine flexibility and rigidity to keep democracy alive.

In this course students are introduced to some of the great works in the canon of western political philosophy. On the basis of selections of the primary texts from Machiavelli to Marx, supported by a modest amount of secondary literature, students survey some of the lasting justifications of political institutions in the western tradition, as well as important contributions to the analysis of political concepts such as legitimacy, freedom, and justice. During the seminars emphasis is placed on conceptual analysis and the interpretation of texts.