20638 - FUNDAMENTALS OF POLITICS - PREPARATORY COURSE

This course is an introduction to political science. The course aims at preparing the students for the MSc Politics and Policy Analysis. The lectures cover both seminal contributions and recent developments in the research field.

The course is organized in three parts. The first part introduces political science as an academic discipline and reviews the main approaches and methods developed within political science. The second part covers a set of major topics in political science, such as: the functioning of democratic and autocratic political regimes; differences between types of democracies (parliamentary versus presidential); the functions of elections; varieties of electoral systems and their consequences; types of parties and party systems; the role of institutional veto players (executives, legislatures, courts, federalism). The third part illustrates a set of theoretical and methodological tools commonly used in the scientific study of politics – among these, the comparative method, social choice theories, the spatial approach to electoral competition and voting, game theoretic models of political decisions. Examples are offered to analyze political actors and institutions and to explain political processes.

• Clark, W.R., Golder, M. & Golder Nadenichek, S. (2017), “Principles of Comparative Politics”, Sage, third edition.