Political Science

Visibility is commonly thought to be a positive attribute that plays a crucial role in influencing public opinion, prompting social change, and advancing individual and collective goals. But is this true, and how is visibility actually practiced? This course explores visibility as a meaningful social dimension of everyday life. Situated at the intersection of social theory, political science, organization studies, and urban research, it engages with key debates around visibility, including its relationship to recognition, stigma, power, surveillance, and socio-spatial politics in urban settings. The course discuss how visibility is practiced by individuals, groups, and organizations, and interrogates its implications across diverse contexts, with reference to discriminated minorities, the gig-economy and totalitarian regimes. The course equips students with foundational knowledge in the emerging field of visibility studies and introduce the “visibility lens” as a critical tool for analyzing contemporary debates and everyday phenomena.

This course focuses on the evolutions of domestic politics and foreign policy in Russia since the collapse of the USSR. After a brief introduction to the nature of the Soviet political system, the course is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the period of political transition following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the genesis of the political system in contemporary Russia. Contrary to hopes of liberalization, Russian society was plunged into a financial, economic, political and social crisis, which favored a rapid return to authoritarianism. The second part looks at the genesis of Putinism and how the ruling elite came to dominate society. Finally, the third part focuses on post-Soviet Russia's foreign policy and the implementation of its ambitions on the international stage.

This course explores the security issues faced by South Korea through the examination of traditional and non-traditional threats. It covers the historical context of the Korean Peninsula, ongoing military threats from North Korea, regional security dynamics, and emerging security dynamics such as cybersecurity and economic security. It covers several key concepts (alliances, multilateralism, regional geopolitics, deterrence, human security) that are essential for understanding the country's complex security landscape while providing a foundation for analyzing South Korea's national defense strategy, its international relations, and its security challenges. Through case studies and in-class discussions, students gain a comprehensive understanding of South Korea's security environment, and the strategies employed to address these challenges, while preparing to engage with contemporary security issues in East Asia with a nuanced and well-informed perspective.

This interactive course studies American conservatism as an intellectual movement, political ideology, political force and cultural phenomenon through difference approaches: political theory, history, historiography, cultural and media studies.

This course examines how international security is challenged by the risk of systemic disruptions that not only spread within a single system but may also spill over into other systems. Particular attention will be paid to the trinity of international security, risk, and uncertainty. Identifying, assessing, and mitigating risk are essential capabilities for achieving international security. 

This course deepen understanding of cooperation, forms of governance, and political institutions in the contemporary international system and its evolution, using the various analytical tools provided by theories of international relations. It explores the diversity of international actors and the complex nature of their interactions within an international system profoundly transformed by the end of the Cold War, shifts in power, and new rivalries among states. In particular, drawing on the study of the various settings, types, and levels of international cooperation, the course identifies the challenges currently facing the classical model of the international system based on state sovereignty and formal multilateralism. At the same time, it examines the extent to which this shift toward multi-actor (public and private) and multi-site international cooperation (toward what are called “complex regimes”) is impacted by the intensification of inter-state tensions.

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to Indigenous Studies in the United States, with a focus on key concepts, historical contexts, and contemporary themes relevant to Native American peoples. Through an interdisciplinary approach grounded in Indigenous epistemologies, it examines the plurality of worldviews, histories, and experiences of Indigenous peoples in the United States – and beyond – to understand the historical and contemporary relationships between Indigenous communities, settler-colonial systems, and current governance structures. Through the study of the relationship between Native American peoples and the U.S. government, the course critically examines topics such as sovereignty, self-determination, governance, land and the use of natural resources, Indigenous justice systems, gender-based violence, Indigenous education, linguistic and cultural transmission, among others. Additional discussions address the history of treaty rights in the United States, the U.S. federal and state recognition processes, the recognition of specific rights for Indigenous peoples at the international level, and evolving concepts of identity and indigeneity. While the primary focus is on American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) Nations within the United States, comparative perspectives on Indigenous Peoples worldwide are also provided. Interactive discussions, group exercises, and presentations by guest scholars and practitioners also provide interdisciplinary insights that bridge theory, practice, and community-based experience.

This course examines major figures of liberal political philosophy (Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill), and their defense of capitalism as a route to a more just and efficient society. It will look at whether it’s fair for the Australian government to force people to take jobs they don’t want while others inherit larger fortunes tax-free, whether employers have power over workers akin to authoritarian dictators, whether it should be illegal to sell human organs to save lives, and what role the assessment of capitalism should have in coming to terms with the history of colonialism in Australia and elsewhere. It'll also examine the role of markets in generating and distributing the coronavirus vaccine we desperately need, and what ought to be done to address the economic consequences of the pandemic.

What are the roots of the animosity between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in the United States? To what extent are we predisposed to racism and xenophobia and what can we do to remedy it? Why are our minds so prone to conspiratorial thinking? Why are political activists often hypocritical? Why do we often not practice the principles we preach (eat less meat)? Those questions lie at the core of political psychology, a field at the crossroads of cognitive and social science, to which this course introduces. The course emphasizes that human cognition is shaped by social goals of influencing others, fitting in tribes, and enhancing our personal reputations. It also strives to explain political behaviors from the "proximal" level of analysis (psychological mechanisms and social influences) but also from the "ultimate" level of analysis (the evolutionary selection pressures that shaped our minds through natural selection).

This course provides an analysis of the Russia-Ukraine War through the lenses of International Relations theories in general and the realist tradition more specifically. Based on a Weberian non-positivist epistemology consisting in an interpretive understanding of social action in order to provide a causal explanation of its origins, course and effects, it looks at why the war broke out, what course it has been going through, and which consequences it may have.