Political Science

This course examines human experience as a source of truth, knowledge, and belief about war. Representations of human experiences of war play a significant role in human culture and society, often defining social memories and collective understandings of war. As such, this course examines how human experience is transmitted and interpreted via historical sources as well as cultural objects such as films, novels, and video games. It also engages students with key social, political, and moral arguments about the representation of war experience in the media, museums, monuments, and commemoration rituals. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course analyzes different aspects of global political networks in the context of entangled history. The main focus of this course concerns visions of international order after empire in the twentieth century. The five modules deal with: 1) Framing Global Visions; 2) Colonial and post-colonial networks; 3) Nationalism, self-determination and world-making; 4) International institutions; 5) International and Global Ideologies.

The first part of the course concerns an introduction to the category of the ‘global’ in historical studies in order to provide an analytical framework to ideologies and ideas of world order. The second module of the course focuses on colonial and post-colonial networks through migration, economics, and law. The third module discusses nationalist and federalist visions for global order, analyzing the relations between nationalist movements and international political spaces. The topic of the fourth module is the idea of international institutions in the twentieth century.

At the end of the course, students have acquired an understanding of the concept of entangled history centered around global political networks. Students also have familiarity with the ways in which global visions have emerged in the twentieth century, and with their critiques. Students will have gained knowledge of the ways that influential ideas and ideologies have shaped historical events and processes on global scale. Students will have identified the relevance of different traditions of global thinking including internationalist, liberal, anti-imperialist, and federal approaches. On successful completion of this module, students will be expected to have constructed a solid theoretical framework within which specific research interests could be developed.

This course offers students the opportunity to consider the nuances of American politics. Working across broad themes of democracy, inclusion, exclusion and power, the course provides a detailed examination of American politics.

This course explores the theory and practice of modern British politics. It familiarizes students with the ways in which British democracy has evolved, how it operates today and some of the challenges that confront it. Students gain knowledge of the of the political system and learn about how and why the system operates in the way it does, as well as the quality of contemporary democratic governance. 

This course examines China’s changing international relationships in Asia and beyond through frameworks and concepts in the international relations literature. Part I sets out the context, Part II examines some of the main approaches in international relations, while Part III applies these to questions of regionalism in East Asia, maritime politics, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

This course provides an introduction to the comparative politics of the US and the UK.  Attention is given to similarities as well as differences, and the course uses comparative analysis to throw light on the political systems in both countries.  Occasional reference is made to other countries. The course is structured around four themes: ideologies and foundations, institutions, political actors, and policy.

Students examine how we form opinions about the world, cases of conflict, diplomacy, and the role of non-state actors and major global institutions in creating/sustaining the world around us today. In particular, students assess the different assumptions within particular approaches to IR, their methods and understanding of who and what matters in global politics; how approaches conceptualizes international institutions, and the relationship between agency and international structure. Students investigate issues like whether there is equal sovereignty in the world today, what do we mean by "North-South relations" and the links between theory and practice. Key concepts include anarchy, sovereignty, power, hegemony and empire, the state, and the international system.

This course focuses on why countries democratize, when democracy consolidates or backslides, and what drives these processes. It considers a variety of challenges to democracy at the national and international levels such as corruption, discontent, economic inequality, globalization, legitimacy, authoritarian contestation, technological change, polarisation or populism. The aims of this course are to introduce key concepts and theories in the study of democracy, to foster an understanding of broader processes such as democratisation, democratic consolidation and backsliding around the world, to develop analytical skills necessary to identify and scrutinize the contemporary challenges to democracy.

This course provides a better understanding of France, its population, their characteristics, and the country’s political life. The curriculum focuses on current French society and its evolution in relation to the weight of history, its territorial dynamics, and cultural and political ideals.

This course introduces the discipline of international relations and provides students with the intellectual and analytical tools to understand how the world came to be how it is today, and where it might be headed in the decades to come. Topics include mainstream and critical perspectives on international relations, placing Western and Global South perspectives on the discipline into dialog with each other, global inequality, and the conflict in Israel/Palestine.