COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS

The course aims at broadening and deepening the students' understanding of democracy through the study of twentieth-century European political history.

A good general knowledge of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history.

At the end of the course, students will be able to confront political issues from a historical viewpoint; to critically engage with historical sources – be they constitutions, political speeches, political essays, or films –; to present their reflections in a structured and consistent form orally as well as in writing, and to defend them in front of instructors and classmates.

The course deals with the political history of European democracy since 1945: the foundation, or re-foundation, of Western European democracies after the war; the new constitutions; party systems; the evolution of the public sphere in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties; the Southern European transitions to democracy of the 1970s; the crisis of Central and Eastern European communist regimes and their collapse; the challenges of the new millennium. The study of historical events will be given coherence by adopting a long-term methodological and conceptual framework that considers political modernity in its entirety, starting from the late eighteenth century. A significant part of the course will be devoted to discussing a diverse array of sources in class, on the basis of students' presentations.

There is no single textbook, but a number of readings for each week. Students will be expected to complete those readings before the lectures and classes. The readings will be the object of the final exam. The instructor will make the readings available online whenever possible. Students are expected to purchase P. Corduwener, The Problem of Democracy in Postwar Europe, Routledge 2017.

Students are expected to read the assigned material before the lectures and to actively participate in them. Class discussions will last 45 minutes and be led by two groups each: one group presenting the historical document or book in 15 minutes, one group criticising the historical document or book in 10 minutes. The remaining time will be dedicated to the debate.

All students are required to participate in a group presentation and write an individual paper (1500 words maximum) on the same topic of the presentation. The presentation will count 10% and the paper 30% of the final vote. Students who take the exam in the December session must hand in the paper one week before the exam date, via Turnitin. All other students must hand in their papers by December 31st, 2022. A final written exam (one or two open questions in 90 minutes on the readings and lectures) will count 60% of the final grade. The instructor may exonerate students who are unable to participate in the classwork. Those students must submit two papers (1500 and 1000 words, respectively) on two of the books discussed in class (Camus, Judt, Crozier et al., Havel, Huntington, Fukuyama), by their own choice. The papers must be handed in via Turnitin two weeks before the date in which the student chooses to take the exam.