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98696 - INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS

Academic Year 2025/2026

                
                        Docente:
                        Paul Matthew Loveless
                    
                        Credits:
                        6
                    
                        SSD:
                        SPS/04
                    
                        Language:
                        English
                    
                        Teaching Mode:
                        Traditional lectures
                        
                            Campus:
                            Bologna
                        
                            Corso:
                            First cycle degree programme (L) in
                            European Studies (cod. 6653)

                                    Course Timetable
                                
from Sep 30, 2025 to Dec 10, 2025

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

Politics and Political Science

The State and Beyond

Political Ideologies and Philosophy

Political Theory

Varieties of Regimes

Democratization, Consolidation, and Backsliding

Political Institutions

(Democratic) Political Systems

Political Parties and Elections

Legitimacy and Representation

Political Behavior: Values, Attitudes, and Opinions

Political Behavior: Voting & Political Participation

Political Culture

Democratic Political Culture

Political Communication

Technology and Politics

Environmental Politics

Social Movements

Power and the Global Order

Globalization, IOs, and Multi-level Governance

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. nb Some copies of this textbook are available in the departmental library.

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

Assessment methods

There will be two assessments. The first are weekly assignments that will ask students to respond to questions related to topics from the previous week(s). The assignments will follow Weeks 2-10 for a total of 9 assignments. This will be done electronically (Virtuale: https://virtuale.unibo.it/ ).The second assessment will be a final exam held in the exam period according to the UNIBO academic calendar.

The final mark has 2 parts:

[1] 30% of the final grade is the average of 8 assignments (the lowest assignment grade will be dropped).
[2] 70% 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 [https://virtuale.unibo.it/] .

Office hours

See the website of Paul Matthew Loveless