Insegnamento a.a. 2018-2019

The course has two parts, one primarily on conflict and one primarily on cooperation and functioning of institutions. The main topics of part one  are:

• Interstate conflict onset and relationship with interdependence.
• Civil war risk and the role of resource availability.
• Inequality of resource endowments and geography as  structural causes of conflict.
• Genocides.
• Terrorism.

In the second part we cover primarily the role of United Nations, the WTO and other international organizations nd international agreements. Special attention is devoted to EU institutions and to the recently more pressing problems related to migration and globalization.

Students are supposed to aquire the ability to:

• Assess the risk of conflict in a given described situation or scenario.
• Compare conflict risk of different scenarios.
• Relate interstate or civil war risk to different  types of interdependence or institutions or regimes.
• Resolve simple mathematical examples of situations.
• Transform complex situations in  simple model formats that allow to structure  and give sequential logic to the events.
• Explain violence incentives at all level in terms of material and non material ncentives and preconditions.
• Analyze the role of different types of international organizations or agreements for peace and cooperation.
• Understand the key evolution steps of national and supranational institutions.
• Evaluate the necessity of further integration in Europe.
• Evaluate the impact of migration and globalization shocks on the necessity or desirability of international institutions.

• Distinguish the effects of a market change (like protectionism jump) on civil war risk, depending on the internal characteristics of the country and depending on the network of trades and position of the country in such a network.
• Make logical conclusions on the effects of changes in market conditions on interstate war risks, depending again on the network of interstate trades and on the position of a particular diad or link in such a network.
• Evaluate the desirability of various types of intervention policies by  individual super powers or by international organizations.
• Consult companies on relative attractiveness of investment locations given the geopolitical expected events  that we learn to evaluate.
• Participate to many kinds of debates about the future and evolution of WTO, EU, individual nation states.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)

Each class is a lecture, but there are several guest speakers and the material of different sections are covered by expert instructors. 

Students are evaluated on the basis of a partial and a final exam. Partial exam constitute 40% of grade and 60% for the final exam.

Collection of articles and book chapters or dispense, to be decided at end of June.