00895 - Political Science (A-E)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the student - possesses a basic knowledge of the main approaches developed within the discipline for the analysis of political phenomena; - will know the conceptual and theoretical tools for the study and understanding of political processes and institutions; - will be able to analyze the main aspects of the functioning of political systems from a comparative perspective.

Course contents

The first section defines the basic concepts on which the course focuses (politics, political regimes, forms of political participation), the long-term processes at the origin of democratic political regimes and their peculiar characteristics are recalled, in comparison with the undemocratic regimes; democratic actors and institutions are presented in a comparative key. After that, some classes will be devoted to the application of the above mentioned analytical categories to the cases of the major European countries and the United States.

In the second section, a reflection on the perspectives and challenges that democratic regimes face in the first part of the 21st century will be proposed. In particular, the topic of autocratization, its causes and the possible forms of democratic resistance will be covered.

A detailed schedule of classes will be distributed at the beginning of the course.

Readings/Bibliography

First part:

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

Second part (texts will be provided by the teacher):

Lührmann, Anna, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2019. “A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New about It?” Democratization 26 (7). Routledge: 1095–1113.

Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2013. “Populism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, edited by Michael Freeden and Marc Stears, 493–510. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Enyedi, Zsolt, and Stephen Whitefield. 2020. “Populists in Power.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies.

Lieberman, Robert C., Suzanne Mettler, Thomas B. Pepinsky, Kenneth M. Roberts, and Richard Valelly. 2019. “The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and Comparative Analysis.” Perspectives on Politics 17 (2). Cambridge University Press: 470–479.

Deibert, Ronald J. 2019. “The Road to Digital Unfreedom: Three Painful Truths About Social Media.” Journal of Democracy 30 (1): 25–39.

Diamond, Larry. 2010. “Liberation Technology.” Journal of Democracy 21 (3): 69–83.

Tomini, Luca, Suzan Gibril, and Venelin Bochev. 2023. “Standing up against Autocratization across Political Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Resistance Actors and Strategies.” Democratization 30 (1).

Teaching methods

Teacher's classes (first part) and seminar discussion (second part).

Assessment methods

For those who take the partial exams during the course and participate in the seminars, the evaluation will be based on three elements. At the end of the first part of the course there will be a partial test (multiple choice questions). At the end of the seminar module a second partial test will be held, in the form of an "open book" short essay. Furthermore, students will be evaluated on the basis of their active participation in the discussion during the seminar lessons.

Those who will take the exam at the end of the course (because they did not take the partial exams, because they took them with insufficient results, because they refused the grade), will answer a multiple-choice test (like that of the first partial test), and write a short essay on the subject of democratic backsliding (as in the second partial test). In short, the exam in the end-of-course sessions will cover the same program and will follow the same format as the partial exams.

For more details, please see the introductory section of the course on the Virtuale platform.

Office hours

See the website of Filippo Tronconi

See the website of Angelo Vito Panaro