88015 - Politic science (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

he course provides notions about the method, concepts, categories, and key patterns of Political Science. At the end of the course the student is able to describe and interpret political phenomena and, in particular, the funtioning and transformations of democratic political systems. The course also provides students with intellectual tools for decoding the current political debate, as well as with logical and linguistic tools for communicating the results of their analysis to an audience of specialists and non-specialists.

Course contents

The course is organized in lectures and seminars, as detailed in the following program. Lectures (28 hours in remote on MS TEAMS) aim to introduce students to the core tenets of the discipline. Seminars aim to provide occasions for in-depth discussions of class materials and exercises. The division into lessons and seminars is specified in the program that follows. For the seminar section, students will be divided into 4 groups according to their preferences and according to rules concerning the current pandemic emergency: two groups will do the seminar in classroom 12 hours and two groups will do the seminar remotely on MS TEAMS 12 hours. Therefore, a total of 38 classroom hours are scheduled for each student. Students are required to carefully read the assigned material before the session and - in the case of seminars - active participation through presentations of existing scholarship and case studies will also be expected. Regardless of the health-related conditions and the specific organization of the course, students will be able to follow the lessons of the entire course remotely on MS TEAMS.

In the first part, the basic concepts of poltical science are defined (politics, political regimes, forms of political participation), the long-term processes at the origin of democratic political regimes and their peculiar characteristics, in comparison with the undemocratic regimes; democratic actors and institutions are presented in a comparative percpective (parties and party systems, electoral systems, parliaments, governments).

The second part provides a description of the political systems of the major European countries, with particular attention to the forms of political participation, electoral competition, the structure of parliament, the legislative process, the formation and stability of governments, territorial institutions, main characters of policy making and the role of the country in the international scene. These lessons will be mainly frontal.

The final sessions, mainly organized as seminars and with the class divided into subgroups, will deepen the political system of the United States of America, in the year of the presidential election, through the categories and models introduced previously, also in a comparative perspective.

A detailed syllabus will be handed out at the beginning of classes.

Readings/Bibliography

Salvatore Vassallo (ed), Sistemi politici comparati, Il Mulino, 2016 (second edition).

Additional readings on the US will be circulated at the beginning of classes.

Teaching methods

Lectures and seminars. Students are invited to read the reference texts of each class in advance. The diagrams and figures shown by the lecturer will be made available to students.

Assessment methods

During the course there are three written tests, each of which consists partly of closed-ended questions and partly of open-ended questions.
The final evaluation will be equal to the average of the scores reported in the three intermediate tests. The evaluation obtained on a single intermediate test cannot be rejected. Anyone who does not participate in a written test (for whatever reason) can participate to the make-up session in January.
Who, having passed the three partial tests with sufficient final result, is not satisfied with the grade, will be able to take an oral exam on the whole program. Based on the oral exam, the final grade may be increased or decreased.
For those who have not passed the exam through the three partial tests or have not taken them, a written exam will take place in one of the end-of-course sessions and will cover the whole program. Also in this case, for those who have obtained a sufficient evaluation but are not satisfied with the grade, an integrative oral test is scheduled on the whole program. Again, the final grade may be increased or decreased.

Teaching tools

Teams online platform. Video projector. Pc. Course materials will be available on the IOL online platform.

Office hours

See the website of Filippo Tronconi

See the website of Bruno Marino