98696 - INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS

Learning outcomes

The course provides notions about the method, concepts, categories, and key patterns of Political Science. At the end of the course the student will be able to describe and interpret political phenomena and, especially, the functioning 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

This course is designed to give students an exposure to the breadth, variety, motivations, and challenges in the study of politics. Students will engage fields of inquiry that dominate the study of politics, including parties, behavior, institutions, international relations, and cooperation, inter alia. In addition, students will be introduced to – and participate in debates on - common but problematic concepts such as democracy, justice, equality, fairness. Pedagogically, the course surveys core debates in the study of politics, highlighting the main components in current political science research. As devised, this course will offer students the opportunity to engage with core contributions and controversies in order to advance their own understanding and study of politics.

A detailed syllabus is available on Virtuale

This course is part of the BAES program (UnaEuropa) and is not open to Erasmus (or other) students.

Readings/Bibliography

The main textbook is Garner, R., P. Ferdinand, S. Lawson, and D.B. MacDonald. 2020. Introduction to Politics. Oxford University Press.5^th edition

 

Other readings will be made available on Virtuale: https://virtuale.unibo.it/

Teaching methods

Lectures and Activity Seminars. There is also the expectation that students will engage in independent and unguided research on the issues that most interest them. In particular, students may explore in detail aspects and issues introduced in the lectures; link them to wider issues in political research; and reflect critically on them.

Assessment methods

There will be three assessments. The first two are short assignments that will ask students to respond to questions related to topics from the previous weeks. This will be done electronically (on EOL: https://eol.unibo.it/ ). The dates of these assignments will be following the seminars on 19 October and 11 November. Students will have until the following Sunday evening to complete the assignments). The third and final assessment will be a final exam held in the exam period according to the UNIBO academic calendar.

The final mark has 2 parts:

• [1] 50% of the final grade is the average of the two short assignments.
• [2] 50% of the final grade is a final exam covering material from all parts of the course.

Teaching tools

Course material includes presentation slides, book chapters, academic articles, documents, and other materials. These will be made fully available to students via Virtuale: https://virtuale.unibo.it

Office hours

See the website of Paul Matthew Loveless