02492 - Comparative Politics

Academic Year 2016/2017

  • Docente: Sofia Ventura
  • Credits: 8
  • SSD: SPS/04
  • Language: Italian
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Forli
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in International relations and diplomatic affairs (cod. 8783)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing the students with the basic knowledges about the comparative method and about concepts, models and theories for the analysis of contemporary democracies (political institutions, leadership, parties and party sysems, electoral systems, public opinion and political communication).   Further, the course focuses on the functioning of some important western democracies. At the end of the course students are supposed to be able to manage  political science concepts and models in order to describe and analyse the most important contemporary democracies and their transformations.

Course contents

- Comparative method

- Democratic regimes in comparative perspective; concepts, models and empirical cases:

*The state and the nation

*Decentralization and federalism

*Systems of government

*Leaders, parties, party systems and electoral systems


- Recent transformations: the presidentialization of politics and the audience democracy

Readings/Bibliography

1) P. Isernia, Introduzione alla ricerca politica e sociale, Bologna, Il Mulino, chapters III and V.

2) G. Sartori, Logica, metodo e linguaggio nelle scienze sociali, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011, chapters I and VI.

3) T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge University Press, 1979, chapter 1.

4) S. Rokkan, State Formation, Nation Building, and Mass Politics in Europe. The Theory of Stein Rokkan (ed. Peter Flora), Oxford University Press, 1999, Part one, chapters V, VI, VII, VIII, Part two, chapters II, IV.

5) A. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracies, Yale University Press, 1999, chapters 1, 2.

6) D. Caramani (ed.), Comparative Politics, Oxford University Press, 2013, chapters 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13.

7) T. Pokuntke e P. Webb (a cura di), The Presidentialization of Politics: a comparative study of modern democracies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, chapters 1 and 15.

Teaching methods

Teaching  lessons

Assessment methods

All students will be evaluated on the basis of two written works in class at the end of the course.

Students not attending the lessons must to contact the professor.

Teaching tools

Power point

Office hours

See the website of Sofia Ventura