Political Science

This course covers the different periods of collaboration between the United States and the United Kingdom in various domains (such as politics, economics, diplomacy, defense, culture) from the origins until now, with a sharp focus on the 1945-2025 period. It discusses foreign policy-making and provides an overview of the current state of the relationship. The course analyzes foreign policies with the recurring strategic features for each country concerned, and assesses crisis management and resolution options as regards complex defense and security issues.

This course provides both a base of knowledge on the foreign policy of the United States and an in-depth study on specific themes. It examines the pillars of U.S. foreign policy through the lens of current events (counterterrorism operations in 2021 and the war in Ukraine since February 2022). It covers elements concerning American foreign policy, its issues, its institutions, its legal framework, the governance of the main presidents, the major schools of thought participating in strategic decision-making, the concrete use of the defense and security tool since 1945 and the dilemmas posed to American power by the evolution of the contemporary world. It also discusses the national security enterprise, the major intellectual currents in American foreign policy, the main American commitments, and the future of American leadership. Thus armed with a more detailed knowledge of the terms of the debate, students better understand and analyze the workings of international news and have the necessary references to enter a professional environment concerned by the international policy of the United States. Other topics include containment; roll back; New Look Policy; peaceful coexistence; domino theory; graduated response; MAD; Star Wars; Bush-Rumsfeld Doctrine; Obama's New Beginning & Reset.

The course provides students with knowledge of the major theories and approaches to the analysis of international relations. In order to do so, it will focus on the structure of the international system, the dynamics of cooperation and conflict in the international arena, and the evolution of war in international politics. At the end of the course, students are able to distinguish the key factors underpinning cooperation and conflict in world politics and to use the major theories in international relations to understand contemporary international political phenomena. 

The course introduces students to the main theoretical traditions in international relations, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, the English School, and critical approaches to IR. It explores how these traditions conceptualize power, security, interests, institutions, and ideas, and how they contribute to our understanding of international politics. Students engage with the core theories of the discipline, such as balance of power, hegemonic stability, institutionalism, democratic peace, and capitalist peace. The course also examines the constructivist emphasis on norms and identity, the English School’s analyses of the evolution of the international order, as well as critical IR perspectives, which challenge mainstream theories by highlighting issues of inequality and colonialism.

This course asks whether the welfare state is justified, how extensive it should be, and what level of inequality and/or poverty is acceptable in a just society. Thus, the course examines the main theories of distributive or social justice in contemporary analytical political philosophy. Distributive justice is about the fair distribution of burdens and benefits in a society and some of the main approaches to this issue that we look at include liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism (left and right), luck egalitarianism, and relational egalitarianism and republicanism. The course also looks at some of the critiques, alternative approaches and applications of these theories, to areas like health and education.

At a time when liberal democracies are weakened by ideological polarization and the rise of populist movements challenging institutional checks and balances as well as the foundations of rational debate (Trumpism, the Bolsonaro episode, the AfD, etc.), it is becoming vital for future political, administrative, and academic leaders—who are often unfamiliar with scientific fundamentals, particularly in statistics—to acquire a basic grasp of such tools in order to define a framework for contributing to informed debate and evidence-based decision-making. This course provides them with that foundation through the lens of mathematical modeling. Concretely, it offers a rigorous methodology and a practical introduction to statistical modeling, taught through its logical application in structuring arguments and fostering debate. The objective is to equip students with practical tools that will allow them to analyze, interpret, and critically assess the use of data in their future professional environments, whether in strategy, economics, consulting, or public affairs management. With the help of AI-assisted applications, students learn to build, and interpret simple economic models, while developing a critical stance on the limitations and biases inherent in these models. The econometric article by Daron Acemoglu, recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize, serves as one of the course's central threads, alongside more operational examples drawn from the corporate world and public sector. Through these applications, the course also offers students keys to understanding the mathematical foundations behind how artificial intelligence operates. The overarching ambition of this course is to enable students to become autonomous, clear-sighted, and critical actors in the use of data—capable of shaping the framework of public debate and decision-making at a time when perceptions of reality are increasingly influenced and polarized by the subjective interpretations of both populist opinion leaders and the prophets of artificial intelligence and big data.

In this course, students critically explore the scientific base of the degrowth paradigm. Is “green” growth indeed impossible, and how would we know? How is growth tied to global production-consumption systems and their destructive impacts? How does the economic growth paradigm influence not only countries and organizations but also individuals who strive for performance maximization and more productive and marketable uses of their time? Through the lens of three different academic perspectives, students explore and discuss what “de-growing” economic systems, policies, and individual behaviors could look like.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. Using the perspective of political science, this course offers an understanding to the political economy of money and finance. Understanding, and questioning, the evolution of the global monetary and financial order and its democratic accountability is also an integral part of the course. Students learn to: 1. understand the political drivers of globalization and of global monetary and financial orders over time; 2. familiarize with the theoretical debates and methodologies used to measure and assess global economic and financial integration; 3. identify the key actors and institutions that pinpoint the contemporary monetary and financial order as well as its distributional consequences; 4. understand why policy space is reduced for many countries, especially developing and emerging market countries; 5. develop the analytical tools to reflect about alternative institutional and policy arrangements.

The course provides students with the political analysis of the global monetary and financial order, its historical evolution and contemporary challenges such as those associated with climate change and the use of new technologies. The first part of the course presents the main theoretical approaches, themes, and horizontal questions that characterize the analyses relating to the monetary and financial order. The second part of the course deals with specific themes linked to the current political challenges that the monetary order faces.

What is Zionism and in what context did it emerge as an ideology? Who promoted and who opposed it within Jewish communities before the creation of the State of Israel? What are the political, diplomatic, religious and cultural dimensions of Zionism? Is a study of the plurality of Zionism and its internal conflicts possible? Do Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism have anything in common? What happened to Zionism after the creation of Israel? What does it mean to label oneself a Zionist or Anti-Zionist in 1917, 1948 or 1967? What approaches and strategies did Palestinians adopt regarding Zionism? This course is at the intersection of history and political science. It addresses these impassioned and complex questions by reading and discussing primary documents (manifestos, leaflets, diaries, international declarations) and secondary sources each week.

This survey course focuses on the political dynamics of populism in contemporary European countries. The course begins by examining how social science researchers define and conceptualize populism, with a focus on identifying its boundaries - what is and is not considered populist.  Despite the widespread use of the term populism, disagreements over its definition and usage, as well as a general lack of clarity surrounding its meaning, hinder our understanding of populist politics and their causes and consequences. The course assesses competing academic definitions, explores subtypes of populism, and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of existing categorizations. The course addresses a number of key political dynamics and how they relate to populism, including attitudinal change, organizational formation, voting patterns, electoral performance, and protest and riot behavior.  We explore theorized causes such as economic downturns, political competition, migration, inter-cultural group tensions, global trends, and international relations.  In addition to examining its causes, the course studies the effects of populism, including its impact on democratic institutions, inter-group relations, and international relations. 

This course explores a variety of both qualitative and quantitative social science research to develop the skills for explaining causal mechanism in political phenomena. In particular, the class focuses on the logic of scientific inference, research design and measurement. This course also explores the uses and abuses of statistical reasoning in social and political studies. Students learn the basic rules of data analysis and the logic of statistical inference. It is a prerequisite for Research Methods B, which covers more advanced statistical techniques and research methods.