Political Science

This course offers a study of comparative politics. Topics include: political regimes; political institutions; comparative political dynamics; the welfare state.  

This course introduces the Sahel region, whose strategic importance is expected to rise in the next decades. Located between the Maghreb and the Gulf of Guinea, the Sahel region is at the crossroads of many strategic issues. The course analyzes security threats (socioeconomic difficulties, cross-border trafficking, ethnic tensions, etc.) and terrorist threats as a result of the numerous cross-border and rural spaces characterized by a security vacuum that contributes to criminal and terrorist groups' activities. It examines the states’ structural weaknesses and political tensions that have jeopardized the region’s stability, as well as the rapid demographic growth and urbanization that could lead to new socioeconomic prospects or increased instability.

Is the West in decline and what are the main emerging powers? Are we heading toward a new world order or even great power conflict? These are some of the big questions students seek to answer in this course.

This course examines contemporary politics and government. It deals with the nature of politics and its study, and how the study of politics differs from doing politics. Students examine the long spread of democracy (and some of its recent reversals) and the nature of representation, and they look at left and right in contemporary politics, and the challenges posed by populist parties. The course also deals with institutions which are found across different democracies. The course has both conceptual and empirical elements. The empirical elements of the course focus on consolidated democracies (countries which have been democracies for thirty years or more), and more particularly on English speaking democracies. 

Over the last decades, public decision making has developed from a traditional hierarchical model to managerialist approaches (New Public Management) and more recently to the public governance paradigm. This latter approach emphasizes the involvement and engagement of stakeholders different in nature and interests in order to create shared value and to reach sustainable goals. This paradigm aims to generate better-informed and long-lasting solutions through inclusive and dynamic decision-making processes. Being able to design, implement, and manage public policies consistent with this paradigm is increasingly relevant for all involved stakeholders, including public, private, and non-profit organizations. This course offers the understanding of the complexity of decision-making processes in the public sector, with a focus on implications due to different governance models, multiple stakeholders, and public-private relations. The course provides tools, competences, and skills in order to understand, critically discuss, and to design public (as well as collaborative) governance models and decision-making processes to support strategic choices of public interest and/or relevance. The course uses formal lectures and a mix of class discussions (involving practitioners who share concrete public governance examples with the class), case studies, incidents, and simulations. 

The goal of this course is to increase students' cultural sensitivity through an in-depth examination of the many layers that make up French history while at the same time exposing them to how this history shaped the physical city of Paris itself. Through comparative examination of current events in France and the US, the course also sensitizes them to differences in cultural norms. Lastly, the course seeks to increase students' understanding of how a nation's “eternal values and universal truths” develop in response to a people's particular historical experiences (e.g., the place of religion in the public sphere). The assigned readings and topics in the syllabus vary from year to year in order to align them with recent major events. Past units have included a variety of topics, such as: “The Veil”, Health insurance as a social or a socialist program; Presidents and the use and extent of power/elections; Women in the public eye; War and terrorism; Income distribution and the human costs of urban development. In each unit, the current issue is paired with careful study of related moments in French history (e.g., Huguenots in the 16th c. with Muslims today; a president with Napoleon). Readings expose students to the various ways history is/can be written. Readings include: First-hand accounts and editorials; Essays by specialists in political, social, economic, and urban history; Seminal texts of reference (e.g., “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen”). In this course students develop written and oral rhetorical skills as well as their analytical skills through class discussion on readings, in which close attention is paid to both style and the use of evidence to support an argument, in-class analysis of things like political cartoons, and the deciphering of political messages embedded in the iconography of monuments' façades. Students are presented techniques to read visual evidence. Students engage in a photo-essay project that sends them to the Invalides in small groups. The final exam tests students on their ability to compare a set of recent newspaper articles/editorials to explain the differences in American and French attitudes by providing the appropriate historical background.

This course presents a broad overview of non-profit organization management. Based on public administration and strategic management theory, it focuses on practical problem-solving ideas. Topics to be considered include: shaping an organization’s vision and mission, SWOT analysis, decision-making, establishing strategic management capacity, inter-organizational cooperation and partnership, and other management techniques.