Political Science

This course surveys a number of key debates in the very broad literature on electoral and political behavior in democratic states.  Topics include how citizens think about parties, politically salient groups and political issues, including how citizens make vote choices, the mechanisms behind differences in turnout and participation across different individuals and over time and levels in political knowledge.  The course provides a comparative examination of political behavior in democratic contexts, but because of the historical development of the research literature in this area, there is greater weight placed on the US relative to other countries. 

This course examines the purpose and application of theoretical paradigms in international relations. Theories provide frameworks to understand the behavior of actors in a complex and dynamic global environment. Distinct theoretical paradigms make central assumptions about primary factors that drive human action with implications for how we understand, explain, and predict issues and interactions in the international arena. Such factors range from scarcity and a drive for control (e.g., classical realism, neorealism, game theory); to a drive to cooperate for absolute gains (e.g., neoliberal institutionalism, liberalism), constructed identities based on historically-contingent meanings and values (e.g., constructivism), and unequal power relations that underpin a drive for autonomy, agency, and empowerment. (e.g., critical theories, feminist theory). The course teaches all theoretical paradigms with a focus on how they can be applied to better understand political issues and challenges in the contemporary global environment.

From the first European measures to the European Green Deal, this course focuses on energy transition plans and strategies. To do so, it analyzes the stakes inherent to the multilevel governance of energy in the EU, between European objectives, national policy-making, and local implementation of energy infrastructures. Through this multi-scale approach to public policy, the course explores and compares the challenges raised by the regulation of different energy forms in various European countries. It tackles renewable energies such as wind power, fossil fuels such as shale gas, and provides an overview of European energy policy-making through national case studies.

This course is an introduction to the social and political dynamics that shape the lives of Muslim minorities in Western Europe and North America. The first part of the course situates Islam and Muslims within the larger European and American histories, by comparing how church-State relations, colonial history, immigration and racial inequalities have affected their representations. The second part unpacks a series of public controversies over Islam and Muslims and explores what they reveal about Euro-American societies. Finally, the course investigates how Islam is lived among ordinary European and American Muslims. This course takes a comparative stance by covering a plurality of national contexts to become familiar with the various public and academic debates surrounding European and American Muslims.

The last fifteen years have been marked by a series of expressions of discontent around the globe, emerging in waves of protest (Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Gilets jaunes) and in so-called “populist” movements, both right-wing (Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, Bolsonaro) and left-wing (Bernie, Podemos, SYRIZA, Lula). This course analyzes these phenomena as a crisis of political identities in a context of growing precarity. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the course introduces, develops, and critically debates the main concepts of post-structuralist discourse theory (hegemony, antagonism, ideology), and their relation to communication theory, economics, and social psychology. The leitmotif of the course is the articulation of theoretical debate and empirical cases.

This course examines the main analytical approaches to the study of world politics, the course invites students to revisit the history of modern international relations, and to discuss, in this context, specific explanations of international political phenomena. While not exclusively, special attention is given to questions of conflict and cooperation in matters of international security.

The course reviews the major competing theories of international organizations over time and examines the history and current operations of a wide range of international institutions and organizations. Special attention is focused on developing a generalized understanding of the forces contributing to or inhibiting the effectiveness of international institutions and organizations and of the forces shaping the preferences and behavior of states in the world politics. 

This course is to help the students to

Understand concepts and theories of political parties in the United States.

Understand the various functions of political parties in the United States.

Understand and explain how partisan polarization has contributed to the crisis of democracy and the crisis of governance in the United States.

Analyze how partisan polarization in the United States would affect Sino-US relations.

The United States is one of the most important countries in the western world. Its domestic partisan politics have global implications, affecting the Sino-US relationship. This course is intended to give an overview of the scholarly works and popular debates about political parties in the United States. Topics include the theories and the development of party system in the United States, party organization, the role of parties in mobilizing voters, party and governance, partisan polarization, parties and foreign policies, and party politics and Sino-US relations.

This course examines institutional change in non-democratic and emergent and established democratic states. Students develop an understanding of democratic transition and consolidation (or a lack of them), and the breadth of institutional types in global politics.