Political Science

This course investigates the cosmopolitan ideal in academic discourse as well as in everyday political and social life. It explores cosmopolitanism in relation to debates in political theory and international relations as well as dynamics surrounding international migration, transnational advocacy networks, and global governance. The course also examines the cosmopolitan perspective in relation to key global issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic, global climate change, economic inequality, nuclear proliferation and the challenges posed by resurgent nationalism and authoritarian populism.

This course provides an overview of the goals institutional actors are pursuing when they design and reform an electoral system. It discusses conceptual dimensions and criteria for categorizing and comparing electoral systems and studies specific national cases to assess the impact of electoral laws on party systems, legislator behavior, and interbranch relations. The course explores both aspects of intraparty and interparty politics. After completing a long series of case studies, it adopts a comparative perspective to discuss recent scholarly research in this field. 

Recent years have seen a debate about the waning of war, though for millions of people around the world, wars and violence are part of their everyday lives - with implications far beyond the war-torn states’ borders. This course introduces students to major trends in warfare (types of wars, the actors engaged in wars, targets in wars, funding of warfare, technology of warfare), theories explaining these trends, the relationship between warfare and state-building, and ethical questions concerning how wars are fought. The course first looks at major concepts and theories, and then moves on to examine contemporary debates and issue areas such as international law, international institutions such as the UN Security Council and NATO, civil wars and peacekeeping, climate-conflict nexus, weapons of mass destruction, cyber warfare, new technology, future weapons, and killer robots.  

This course 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 provides an understanding of key issues involved in environmental politics, from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Environmental issues are critically discussed, with particular reference to the role and responsibilities of great powers in the international politics of climate change, power inequality, and the global ecological crisis. Students acquire and learn: 1) the essential conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools necessary to tackle and understand environmental issues; 2) knowledge regarding the major interpretations of environmental security; 3) basic knowledge about major environmental powers (United States, China, European Union, India, Brazil, Russia) and international institutions and issue areas (UN Security Council, multilateral environmental agreements, international climate leadership, coal politics); and 4) how to apply the acquired tools to the analysis of concrete cases.

This course examines transnational global climate change developments through the lens of broader debates about transnationalism in world politics. It explores how and under what conditions sub-national and non-state actors such as cities, corporations, NGOs, and Indigenous peoples have become central to global efforts to address climate change. The course also considers the diverse forms of transnational governance led by these actors and the relationship of these initiatives to multilateral treaties and other state-based forms of climate change regulation. It reviews efforts to assess whether transnationalism contributes to a more effective global response to climate change and reflects on the normative issues raised as transnational actors and forms of governance become more deeply embedded in global climate politics.

The course focuses on Japan`s Environment and Energy Policies, especially its policies toward renewable energy. From a comparative perspective alongside other East Asian nations and Northern Europe (Norden), it analyzes Japan's role in global climate negotiations and its policies toward renewable energy in the context of its traditional reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

By the end of the course, students should be well-versed in global environmental issues as well as Japan's policies for combating climate change and promoting a shift toward renewable energy. An understanding of the current state of Japan's transition toward using renewable energy for energy generation; the further electrification of transportation, and the shift toward a hydrogen economy, is also an expected outcome.

The institution and the development of international organizations constitutes a major phenomenon of contemporary international society. This course introduces the law of international organizations including their constituent treaties; the role of states within them; the functioning of their components; and the methods of production and implementation of the law they offer. The course also reflects on the functions of international organizations within contemporary international society to discuss if they are places of governance, regulation of the international community, or simple mechanisms structured by coordination of the interstate relations.

This course covers the role of revolutions in shaping history. From the Cold War, to the “new world order” following the end of the Cold War, to the present day, the course considers how and why revolutions happen, what constitutes a revolution, and how revolutions achieve (or fail to achieve) social and political reform.

This multi-disciplinary course covers three broad topics: the architecture and various state and non-state actors of formal peacebuilding processes; negotiation between states as a key diplomatic function; and the phenomenon of third-party mediation in conflict resolution. These topics are covered from both the theoretical and practical perspectives, so the course literature, lectures, and exercises provide a balance between what the academics state and what actual diplomats, mediators, and non-state actors experience in the field of peacebuilding. The course also involves detailed case studies of contemporary conflicts in the Middle East region in order to explore these various processes in action and provide a degree of area studies specialization, including the conflicts in Lebanon, Palestine-Israel, Libya, Yemen, and Syria.

This interdisciplinary course explores classic literature and contemporary perspectives on reproduction from the perspectives of history, sociology, anthropology, and law. It examines the crucial role reproduction plays in how relations between nations are negotiated, both symbolically and materially. From colonial to metropolitan households, notably via military contexts, the “domestic” has been re-signified by the transnational: nannies, international adoption, and gestational surrogacy have historical links with 19th and 20th centuries' wars. Focusing on the exchanges and connections between the economic, the political, and the intimate, it examines how these increasingly global processes affect individuals, families, and (imagined) communities from multiple lenses: ethnicity and race, nation, class, and gender. It considers how notions of kinship, citizenship, and human rights have become the subject of intense scrutiny, notably through public debates on private and state management of collective life through (bio)technologies of measurement and intervention. Case studies range from analysis of gender dynamics of armed rebellions in Africa to reproductive politics in the United States. Key concepts and policies pertaining to biopolitics, birthing, welfare programs, domestic labor, marriage, and care work are discussed.