Political Science

This course provides an overview of the decision-making process under the Fifth Republic and introduces the various components of the French Army and the strategic environment within which France's action takes place (European Union, NATO, UN).  It then examines security evolutions and considers the place of nuclear dissuasion and the technological revolution on the battlefield. The second part of the course is dedicated to the analysis of the French military interventions since 2001: from Afghanistan to Iraq, to the Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria, and Sahel; the diversity of the French Army's theaters of operation showcases various key concepts: power, strategy, French Africa, common spaces, the responsibility to protect (R2P), et cetera.

This course begins by covering the classical concept of the totalitarian state, as developed by Hannah Arendt and others, taking Hitler and Stalin as their models. Subsequent modifications and debates regarding the theory of totalitarianism, especially in the Soviet Empire, are discussed. The course questions what popular attitudes and psychological reactions exist towards totalitarian atrocities, such as the Holocaust, and under what psychological conditions are individuals capable of offering resistance. While these phenomena may now appear to be bygones of merely historical interest, the psychological aspects of “totalitarian situations” remain acutely important, even in present-day democratic societies. The massacre in My Lai, the obedience experiments carried out by Stanley Milgram, and other psychological studies provide shocking evidence of how easily average citizens are in danger of behaving inhumanely in social situations.

This course reconsiders the relationship between industrial society and war. Away from the capitalist peace theory, the course reconsiders industrial revolutions and economic reforms through the lens of security. It raises the question of the variety of capitalist models. In a very pragmatic way, it studies the correlation between conflict and the rise of a new economic power. Topics include theories of hegemonic transition, the rise of China and United States trade wars, understanding trade wars in the 21st century and the modern economy, and economic interdependence when security is at stake. At the crossroads of economics, history, and political science, the course adopts a comparative approach with cases taken from the United States, China, Russia, the European Union, and Japan.

This is a graduate level course that 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 is designed to explore the frontiers of interaction between politics and markets. It addresses the factors underlying cross national variation in economic performance and income inequality by investigating the ways in which the international economy affects state autonomy, the welfare state and the politics of income redistribution. The course is structured around two key questions: to what extent do differences in institutional settings shape fundamentally different models of democratic capitalism; what is the role of institutions, firms and labor unions in determining the different arrangements in capitalist countries. This course examines cross-national evolution and variation in welfare states in industrialized countries and especially in Europe. Topics covered include: a comparison of the political economy of welfare states; differences in welfare state models; the extent to which differences in institutional settings, coalition politics, and economics shape fundamentally different models of welfare states. The methodology is comparative with a focus on theoretical models.