The course aims at making students familiar with the key problems, concepts and tools of political science, as well as with the empirical results produced by the discipline through the application of its method in comparative perspective.

Knowledge and understanding: The course will make students familiar with the key conceptual and theoretical tools at the core of the discipline, as well as with the empirical results produced by the discipline through the application of its method in comparative perspective. Applying knowledge and understanding: At the end of the course, students will be able to: 1) Critically review a scientific article; 2) Apply theoretical models to make sense of real politics; 3) Understand the processes and dynamics of contemporary politics; 4) Compare and assess contemporary political processes in comparative perspective. Making judgements: We expect students to be able to assess and understand real political processes in light of the main theoretical tools and approaches developed by the discipline. Furthermore, they are expected to be able to discuss critical political issues in comparative perspective, as well as to understand why, how and where certain political processes occur and which are the main political actors involved in these processes. Communication Skills Throughout the course students will participate to various discussions, and will have the opportunity to offer an in-class presentation, based on their own reading of a relevant article from the scientific literature. Presentations are aimed to familiarize students with scientific articles, to improve their critical reading of scientific literature, and to develop their public-speech skills. At the end of the course, students will be therefore able to publicly discuss relevant issues at the core of the discipline. Learning skills Students will acquire the tools allowing them to make autonomous and independent evaluations of current political issues in their complexity and specific dynamics. In particular, they will acquire the ability to construct knowledge and arguments based on a variety of materials, ranging from textbooks to actual research articles, to research monographs, to fellow students' presentations, and finally to discussion. These skills will be developed and stimulated by means of discussions, presentations in class, and critical review of scientific articles and books on current socio-political issues.

Political science is the scientific analysis of political phenomena. As such, it analyzes, through the specific methods that guide empirical research in the social sciences, the processes and dynamics that govern politics, with specific regard to the behavior of political actors and how it is shaped by political institutions. As a result, each topic in the course will feature a review of the main theories and tools, as well as the presentation of recent empirical results. After a short introduction, the course starts by introducing democratic regimes and their characteristics, comparing and contrasting them with non-democratic regimes, and discussing regime change and democratic change. It then proceeds by presenting the process of democratic representation in a democratic political system, in terms of: a) its key actors (citizens, parties, interest groups, social movements); b) the processes of interaction between such actors, in terms of both electoral and non-electoral accountability (elections; interest representation; other processes); c) how both processes are differently shaped by different political institutions. After a specific analysis of the characteristics and interaction processes of political institutions (parliaments, cabinets, public bureaucracies, courts), part of the course is dedicated to public policy, i.e. the actual decisional output of the political system, and how it affects the distribution of power within the system. A particular attention will be then devoted to different varieties of democracy. Finally, contemporary challenges to the very concept of "closed" political system are briefly discussed.

Main reference textbook [required] : Caramani (ed., 2023), Comparative Politics (6th ed), Oxford, OUP. [briefly: CP] Other materials distributed through this website (see specific weeks).

The course adopts a dynamic and interactive approach which attributes great importance to students' participation and involvement in teaching sessions. The more traditional teaching methods are accompanied by interactive methods and tools that require students to be constantly active not only in class sessions, but also on their own at home.

FINAL WRITTEN EXAM: 40 questions in 45 minutes. Correct answers are based on: (a) reference reading chapters for all course weeks; (b) class instructor presentations, and class slides distributed throughout the course (excluding student slides). If no additional activities are performed, the final exam awards 100% of the grade. Additional activities: CLASS PRESENTATIONS: students can offer an in-class presentation during the course. Individual, 5-minute in-class presentations of a short research article (from week 3 onwards) can award the presenter up to 4 “tokens”. Each token provides maximum grading to one question of the final exam; thus, an in-class presentation can provide maximum grading to up to 10% of the final exam (students will then perform the final exam on a smaller number of questions). BOOK REVIEWS: students can enlist for performing a book review (choosing from a list of classic books in political science). Enlisted students will have to read the book, and – in the last weeks of the course – they will attend an in-class written assessment where they will have to answer four (short essay) questions about the book, with each correct answer awarding one token. Thus, a book review can provide maximum grading to up to 10% of the final exam (students will then perform the final exam on a smaller number of questions). As a result, students performing both an in-class presentation and a book review can ensure maximum grading for up to 20% of the final exam, before the actual exam (and performing the final exam on a smaller number of questions).

Final theses are usually structured in terms of a research question (relationship between variables: explanation of a political outcome in terms of another phenomenon or characteristic), and should be structured as follows: 1) one or more case studies are presented; 2) the relevant literature on the more general relationship between variables is reviewed; 3) the particular case(s) are finally analysed by relying on such literature. Unfortunately, we can only supervise a limited number of theses. As a result, in order to offer students equal opportunities, we employ the following procedure: 1) Criteria for accepting requests are: a) exam grade; b) quality of the proposed project. 2) Based on past experience, we suggest to only apply with an exam grade of 28-29 or higher. Requests with lower grades might still be considered, but they will definitely have lower chances of being accepted. 3) Early requests will not be accepted: rather, all requests will be considered at once, in a single round after all exam calls 4) Thesis requests should be presented in the form of a one-page project (perhaps with some initial bibliography) detailing the research question and the specific case studies considered. We will then publish a shortlist of potentially acceptable requests; shortlisted requests will then be discussed together in one-to-one meetings scheduled shortly after, and a decision will be made after these meetings.