CURRICULUM OF THE POLITICAL SCIENCE 2-YEAR MA PROGRAM
FOR THE 2011/2012 ACADEMIC YEAR
Last update: April 4, 2012 13:58
Academic Writing for Political Science - David Ridout, Tom Rooney, Eszter Timar, Robin Bellers (mandatory non-credit course)
The course explains the fundamental concepts and empirical relevance of the world of political institutions on a basic level, through extensive readings. Academic Writing provides an integrated three-part academic support program for CEU students. The aim is to equip you with the writing and language skills you need to carry out your graduate level work at CEU, as well as in any professional or academic English-speaking environment. The program includes a taught course in the pre-session and first semester, individual writing consultations all through the year and a self-access component for independent learning
Thesis Writing - Eszter Timar (mandatory course for second year students, 1 ECTS)
The overall aim of this course is to help you develop as a writer within the English speaking academic community by raising awareness of, practicing, and reflecting upon the conventions of written texts. In addition to addressing issues related to academic writing, the course will also focus on other language skills you will need to complete your graduate level work in English.
Scope and Methods: Research Design and Techniques - Tamas Meszerics and Greg Bognar(mandatory course, 4 ECTS)
The course will acquaint the students with some of the foundational questions in the philosophy of social sciences; it will offer a brief outline and evaluation of the main methodological approaches. By the end of the course students should be able to write a coherent research outline and justify their methodological choices.
Quantitative Methods: Analyzing People - Levente Littvay (placement exam based mandatory course, 8 ECTS)
A large portion of political science research published today utilizes statistical analysis. It is crucial for political scientists to be familiar with the most commonly used statistical techniques to be able to read and understand the literature. The focus of this course is to get behind the numbers and provide a basic overview of the most commonly used statistics. The goals of the course are to provide students with the most basic tools to understand quantitative political science literature, build a foundation for those who wish to apply these techniques. It aims to introduce supplemental information on appropriate design of quantitative research and the principles of data collection and handing. Beyond the most basic concepts we will utilize dedicated statistical computer software to help us analyze social science data. This will minimize the need for calculating mathematical statistics by hand. While the core materials, the notes and the textbooks are identical for both Quantitative Methods courses but the assignments and in class quizzes will predominantly focus on problems where we wish to understand why people do what they do in the context of political behavior. Both courses will arm you with the ability to understand and conduct basic statistical analysis independent of the specific topic of research (people or countries).
Quantitative Methods: Analyzing Countries - Levente Littvay (placement exam based mandatory course, 8 ECTS)
A large portion of political science research published today utilizes statistical analysis. It is crucial for political scientists to be familiar with the most commonly used statistical techniques to be able to read and understand the literature. The focus of this course is to get behind the numbers and provide a basic overview of the most commonly used statistics. The goals of the course are to provide students with the most basic tools to understand quantitative political science literature, build a foundation for those who wish to apply these techniques. It aims to introduce supplemental information on appropriate design of quantitative research and the principles of data collection and handing. Beyond the most basic concepts we will utilize dedicated statistical computer software to help us analyze social science data. This will minimize the need for calculating mathematical statistics by hand. While the core materials, the notes and the textbooks are identical for both Quantitative Methods courses but the assignments and in class quizzes will predominantly focus on problems where we wish to understand how countries and their institutions function and relate to each other. Both courses will arm you with the ability to understand and conduct basic statistical analysis independent of the specific topic of research (people or countries).
Comparative European Politics – Anton Pelinka (mandatory course, 8 ECTS)
The course is designed to start with the essentials of European politics – the understanding of democracy, of parliamentary systems, of elections, of parties and interest groups. Based on these essentials, specific political systems will be approached – major (i.e. larger) as well as smaller countries. The phenomenon of political transition and the analysis of the European Union as a political system will be studied at the end of the term.
Political Economy I: Capitalism and Democracy – Dorothee Bohle (mandatory course, 4 ECTS)
The course aims to introduce some of the core theories and key concepts in political economy by focusing on the uneasy relationship between capitalism and democracy. The course will focus on a number of “big questions” about politics and economics, such as: Under which conditions is capitalism compatible with democracy? How does the disproportionate power of business affect democracy? Which are the relative strengths and weaknesses of politics versus markets in bringing about economic growth and socioeconomic equality? How does economic globalization and European integration affect democracy? In order to address these and similar questions, the course will review classical, Marxist, sociological and institutional approaches, and draw on the experiences of European capitalist democracies, East and West.
Foundations of Political Philosophy - Zoltan Miklosi (mandatory course, 4 ECTS)
This course is designed to introduce students into some of the central problems in contemporary political philosophy. For the most part, the discussion and readings will be structured thematically: after a brief discussion of some foundational works by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the course will provide a more in-depth analysis of a few selected issues of primary importance about the ground and scope of the authority of the state. These issues are the following: First, what, if any, are the moral grounds of our obligation to obey the state? In this context, we will take a look into various contemporary theories of political obligation. Second, we take up the issue of distributive justice: when is the distribution of material resources among members of society just? We will discuss the once dominant theory of utilitarianism, and then turn to different versions of liberal egalitarianism. The problems examined will include: when, and to what extent, is inequality between individuals unjust? What is the “metric” of egalitarian justice? Third, we discuss some issues related to the “neutrality” of the state: is it morally permissible for the state to endorse, encourage, or enforce any particular conception of the good life, or some other ideal? Is it permissible for it to enforce the conventional morality and historical traditions of the community when doing so would infringe the rights of individuals?
Political Communication I – Lina Dencik (mandatory course, 4 ECTS)
This course provides an introduction into the relationship between news media and politics. It considers the role of news media in democratic society and looks at the processes that come to shape the news environment of today, including questions of sources, public relations, ownership, regulation and media ethics. It discusses the implications of central developments within the production, distribution and reception of news media for political processes and engages with key empirical case studies that are relevant for these debates.
Comparative Political Research – Carsten Schneider (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The aims of this course consist in making students familiar with the basic rules of doing comparative research and introducing them to the most influential approaches and salient topics in comparative political science. The course, thus, will help students to evaluate the methodological merits of those political science publications that use a comparative approach, to recognize which intellectual tradition they belong to, and to design their own comparative research strategy. The course is structured into four parts: basics of the comparative method; meta-theoretical paradigms in comparative research; major themes in comparative research; and presentations of students' drafts of their final paper. The course meets twice a week. Most of the sessions will be a mix between lecture and seminar.
Concepts in Political Economy – Anil Duman (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The aim of the course is to provide a foundation in political economy theory, concepts and their application in different fields of political science and international relations. The course will discuss historical and current debates about the nature of political economy and the pros and cons of different methodological approaches. Themes include: Nature and scope of political economy; Rational choice theory and its critics; Game theory- theory and practice; Cost benefit analysis and political economy; Constructivism and normative political economy, Institutional approaches to political economy.
Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice – Zoltan Miklosi (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The bulk of this course will be dedicated to the discussion of global distributive justice, or the ground and extent of the duties of individuals and political institutions to attend to the facts of global economic inequality. We will first focus on a factual matter: is global inequality caused mostly by local, intra-social factors, or is it engendered and/or reinforced by features of the international political and economic order? Next, we will examine different versions of the thesis that our duties of justice are inherently range-limited and are confined to our co-nationals. This is the ‘priority of compatriots’ thesis. Then we turn to various arguments aiming to demonstrate that the thesis is untenable. Subsequently, we will examine two different approaches to ground global distributive duties: the first approach maintains that our duties of justice towards other individuals globally are grounded in the nature and extent of our institutional interaction with them; to the extent that the interaction is sufficiently dense, such duties obtain. The other approach argues that the simple fact of global inequality, irrespective of what causes it and of the nature of the relationship between different persons, grounds a duty of justice to attend to that inequality.
Introduction to Political Philosophy - Andres Moles (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The study of politics includes not only how the political world operates, but also how it ought to operate. The course focuses on John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice and some of the most important objections it has been presented with in the last thirty years. The course addresses some of these questions: what is a fair redistribution? How can taxation be justified? Is justice about giving people what they deserve? Is equality an important political value? Should people who are reluctant to take up employment be subsidised? How can political institutions be justified? Should politics promote community values? The goal of the course is to provide students with theoretical musculature to think further about politics.
Nationalism and the Media – Lea Sgier (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This course explores the role of the mass media in processes of state- and nation-building and in the construction of national identities and nationalist ideologies. Topics to be covered include: the historical role of the press in the formation of the nation-state and the emergence of modern nationalism; national symbols, myths and rituals and their representation by the media; media constructions of political identities and related processes of “othering”; the new media and their role in contemporary nationalisms. The course will be research based, meaning that the participants will develop a research proposal of their own early on in the seminar and will carry out a small-scale research by the end of the semester. They will also take an active part in the shaping of the seminar contents themselves that will partly depend on the direction their own projects take. This seminar therefore requires a commitment throughout the semester, and a willingness to actively engage in a research process.
Political Dynamics in Central Europe – Andras Bozoki (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This course will focus on political developments in Central Europe in the past decades from dictatorship to multiparty democracy in comparative and historical perspective. Special attention will be paid to the past 20 years from 1989-90 to present. In the first part of the course we discuss the nature of the previous, non-democratic regime in a comparative historical approach, and we also focus on the processes of transitions to democracy and democratic consolidation in Central Europe. In the second part of the semester, some specific features of new democratic politics (institution building, party system, the meanings of left and right, elite change, symbolic politics, joining the European Union, the politics of collective memory, forms of democracy etc.) will be discussed. Special attention is paid to the so-called Visegrád countries, i. e. Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia (formerly known as Czechoslovakia), plus Romania and Bulgaria, their competition and cooperation. Besides the discussion of individual cases, we will also focus on intra-regional (and, sometimes, inter-regional) comparisons, especially with East Germany, and the former Yugoslavia.
Social Movements and Social Contention – Bela Greskovits (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This course introduces participants into the study of contentious politics and social movements. It focuses on contentious civil society and in particular on responses to social and political dislocation in various historical periods and distinct parts of the world. With Barrington Moore we ask: “why people so often put up with being the victims of their societies and why at other times they become very angry and try with passion and forcefulness to do something about their situation.” (Injustice. The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. New York: M. E. Sharpe 1978: xiii.) In the first and second parts of the course we study theories that help to better understand how power relations, political opportunities and risks, availability of allies, calculations of costs of collective action, utilizing inherited and creating new organizational resources, and perceptions of justice shape peoples ’ choices between obedience and revolt. The third and fourth parts focus on how to study discontent and movement dynamics in the context of changing social structure and identity, democratization, and the global political economy. We shall learn about the specific responses of organized labor and other civil society actors in advanced Western states, the developing countries, and Eastern Europe. We shall also investigate the consequences of social contention for the quality and prospects of democracy.
Analyzing Democracy – Carsten Schneider (elective course, 4 ECTS)
This course focuses on the ways contemporary democracies are scrutinized, analyzed, evaluated, and innovations proposed. We approach this broad themes from five different angles: What is democracy and how to see it when it is there? Where does it come from? What are its qualities? What does it produce? And where should it go? This course aims at providing a broad overview of the literature on democracy, a concept that can be seen as the core of political science. Students will learn about important arguments, theories, and authors. The course does not aim at teaching students knowledge about specific cases beyond what needs to be known to follow particular arguments discussed.
Transitional Justice - Nenad Dimitrijevic (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The course addresses the question of democratic transition in societies whose immediate past has been marked not only by the authoritarian nature of the previous regime, but also by mass, regime-sponsored crimes. The focus is on the question of whether there is a choice between ‘politics of forgetting’ or ‘politics of memory’. It will be argued that democratic stability in such contexts requires a reflective attitude to the past, specific aim of which should be to reaffirm justice. The course will explore different institutional arrangements established to deal with the past (truth commissions, international tribunals, domestic legal proceedings, amnesty, lustration, compensation).
Human Rights and Biopolitics – Judit Sandor (elective course, 8 ECTS)
Throughout history many attempts have been made to control the size and composition of populations. From the sterilization of the mentally ill to the strong social welfare benefits offered to support childrearing, these were based on different ideologies from eugenic thinking through maintaining ethnic or gender balance to economic nationalism. These topics lie at the intersection of political science, international relations, philosophy, and human rights. The course offers a unique cross-disciplinary approach by introducing the human rights framework in the classic and contemporary forms of biopolitics. Authors such as Foucault, Agamben, Rose, Esposito, Kamm, Rothschield, Duster and Habermas will serve as the theoretical basis for the discussions and seminars that will aim to analyze different types of biopolitical endeavors from all parts of the world. Students will be encouraged to bring examples and cases from their own countries or to present on and analyze a selected field within biopolitics.
Political Economy of Policy Reforms (in EE) – Attila Folsz (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The course provides an introduction to an evolving discipline that studies the political problems of launching major economic policy reforms and changes in the institutional system. Apart from the general difficulties of reform policies the course also analyzes in a comparative perspective the experiences of major reforms measures implemented in Central and Eastern Europe in transition.
Politics of European Integration – Attila Folsz (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The course considers the European Union, as an evolving polity. It aims at exploring the logic of policy-making in the EU and the dynamics of the European integration process the by analyzing the history of EC/EU, by studying theories of integration, by surveying the actors and institutions of integration politics and by discussing crucial issues presently on the European agenda. The acquired knowledge will help students pursue individual research on EU-related topics.
Revolutions and Civil Wars: A Comparative Analysis – Julian Casanova (elective course, 4 ECTS)
The comparative historical analysis of revolutions and civil wars calls for interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, political science, and history. Revolutions and civil wars bring radical changes in social structures as well as in states’ functions and political structures that must be studied both internally and internationally. After an introductory overview of the main interpretative frameworks offered by sociology, political science and historiography, the course will turn its focus to a critical review of the most recent socio-historical research and debates concerning revolutions and civil wars in Europe from 1914 to 1945, with special emphasis on the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. Students will be encouraged to develop comparisons with other time periods and other regions of the world.
Media and Globalization – Lina Dencik (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This course provides an introduction into the relationship between media and globalization – the role of the media in globalization processes as well as the globalization of media industries and technologies. It introduces and discusses key theoretical approaches to understanding media and globalization ranging from claims of a ‘global public sphere’ to claims that ‘globalization is a myth’. The course analyzes key developments in media from the perspective of ownership and policy and regulation, as well as changing conditions within media production, distribution and consumption, ultimately discussing the implications of these for global democracy.
Globalization and Contentious Politics – Sidney Tarrow (elective course, 0 credits)
Professor Sidney Tarrow will teach a two week module on social movement theory and transnational contention in connection with Professor Greskovits’s course on Social Movements and Social Contention, from Monday, November 28 to Friday, December 9. The course will begin with a review and synthesis of social movement theory (Monday, Nov. 28), continue with four sessions on transnational contention (Wednesday, Nov. 30-Wednesday Dec. 7), and conclude with a final session on war, rights and domestic contention. Students will write short position papers connecting transnational contention to theories of social movements. The list of readings and further details are included in Professor Greskovits’s Social Movements and Social Contention course syllabus.
Introduction to Game Theory in Political Science – Tamas Meszerics (elective course, 4 ECTS)
The course outlines the basic concepts and building blocs of game theoretic analysis. It introduces students to the uses and limitations of this particular analytic approach, which concentrates on the problems of interrelated human decisions. The focus of the course is on the basic elements of non-cooperative game theory applied to various phenomena in the broad realm of politics, but issues of social choice and public choice will also be discussed.
Crosslisted Courses:
DPP: Fundamentals of media and communications policy - Paolo Cavaliere (8 ECTS)
PHIL: Killing – Andres Moles (8 ECTS)
IRES: Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance Civil Resistance - Maciej Bartkowski (0 ECTS)
Thesis Writing - Various Faculty (mandatory course for second year students, 2 ECTS)
TBA
Thesis Writing Workshops - Various Faculty (mandatory course for first year students, 1 ECTS)
TBA
Constitutionalism and Democracy – Nenad Dimitrijevic (mandatory course, 8 ECTS)
The course explores the meaning of constitutionalism, its basic features, and its relationship to democracy. It is assumed that the central categories of constitutionalism – the rule of law, limited government, basic rights, constitutional judiciary, the constitution – are relevant for political science and political theory. Thus, the aim of the course is to introduce students of politics to theoretical concepts, institutional arrangements and practices of constitutional democracy, in a manner that would enable them to use this knowledge in pursuing their more specific academic interests.
Multivariate Statistics - Tamas Rudas (placement exam based mandatory course, 8 ECTS)
The class will discuss multivariate statistical methods that are often applied in political science. These methods seek to understand the nature of the relationships between variables. We will start with a review of multivariate regression analysis and then discuss variants of it that are able to handle categorical responses. Then we shall discuss factor analysis and variants of it and methods that can handle mixed discrete and continuous data. Coverage will be completed by considering methods for the analysis of categorical data.
Political Economy II – Attila Folsz (mandatory elective course, 8 ECTS)
The course is an introduction to contemporary political economy, both as an application of economic paradigms for explaining political phenomena and as a discipline focusing on the links between politics and economics. To put it differently, in one way or another the entire course will concentrate on two fundamental issues from various aspects: - how and to what extent societal agents act rationally and what are the consequences of such behaviour? - how and to what extent (political) institutions affect behaviour and thus economic performance? During the course students will acquaint with different alternative theories, concepts, and methodological approaches concentrating on these questions. The acquired knowledge will enable them to pursue individual research on various topics of political economic nature and choose the appropriate ones among various alternative analytical approaches.
Topics and Methods in Comparative Politics – Andras Bozoki (mandatory elective course, 8 ECTS)
The aims of this course are the following: making students familiar with the basic rules of doing comparative research: introducing the most influential approaches salient topics in comparative political science. The course, thus, will help students to evaluate the methodological merits of those political science publications that use a comparative approach, to recognize which intellectual tradition they belong to, and to design their own comparative research strategy. During the course work, students are asked to write small position papers and a longer final paper, to actively participate during in-class discussions, and to prepare in-class presentations. The position papers are expected to help develop the ability to synthesize the information gathered from the mandatory readings, determine a focus point, and discern the main line of argumentation. The final paper is expected to improve the ability to generate logical, plausible, and persuasive arguments, to compare and contrast, and to derive theoretical conclusions from comparative empirical observations. The emphasis on in-class participation and in-class presentations is meant to foster the skills of expressing informative reflections 'on the spot' and to decrease potential fears of speaking in front of others.
Political Theory – Cognitive Science and Policy Making: Nudging - Andres Moles and Christophe Heintz (mandatory elective course, 8 ECTS)
To what extent can policies foster human cooperation? What tools do recent developments in the cognitive and behavioural sciences provide to improve human sociality? Why is social cooperation difficult to secure? We will investigate the ways in which a deeper understanding of the cognitive foundations of social cooperation could inform policy-making.
Voting Behavior – Gabor Toka (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This is a four-credit MA-level course that is open to students with an interest in anyone of the following fields: political communication; comparative politics; voting behavior and public opinion; empirical democratic theory; and the methodology of quantitative research. It introduces students to the study of attitude formation and political behavior in general and voting behavior in particular. It examines in detail the impact of social cleavages, economic conditions, ideology, political issues, party identification, factual information, campaigns and various other factors on how voters decide. We will explore how institutional contexts have an influence on whether elections hold policy-makers accountable to citizens and responsive to popular preferences and what evidence empirical political science offers on this question. Our central substantive question will be how much constraint mass democracy can establish for policy choices, given the limits both to the information and other political resources possessed by individual citizens and to the clarity of their preferences. While exploring this we will examine the difficult communication and cognitive processing problems that all political actors encounter in the political process, and highlight their relevance for democratic preference aggregation processes. The implications of different models of representation for political theory and public policy primarily are explored from this angle, while also giving some attention to the practical lessons that can be drawn for party strategists and political information campaigns.
Qualitative Research Methods – Lea Sgier (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This course aims at introducing the participants to some of the most important data analysis and generation methods for qualitative research, to sensitise them to the underlying epistemological issues as well as to the practical and ethical problems that qualitative researchers typically face, and to enable them to critically assess qualitative research in terms of its substance, design, validity and claims to generalisability (or absence thereof). The main emphasis will be on qualitative interviewing and on thematic analysis, but other topics will be considered more briefly as well (ethnographic methods, narrative analysis, possibly focus group interviewing). The course draws mostly on interpretive and interactionist strands of social research.
The Welfare State in a Comparative Perspective – Julia Szalai (elective course, 4 ECTS)
The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to the conceptualization of the modern welfare state from the three distinct perspectives of citizenship, historicity, and institutional structure. Departure will be taken from the founding values of equality, social justice, freedom and solidarity, and the embodiment of these values will be investigated through dilemmas of defining citizenship within the varying arrangements in the core institution of 20-ieth century welfare states: social security. The outlining of the historical landscape of diverse contents of citizenship will lead us to understand the evolvement of the three major types of the liberal, the conservative-corporatist and the social democratic welfare regimes. Combating poverty as one of the fundamental missions of the welfare state will be looked at through the lens of regime typology, and this way the distinctive institutional structures characteristic for the three ideal-type regimes will be scrutinized. Dilemmas of universalism, targeting, subsidiarity, cross-class solidarity, and certain issues of labor market participation will be discussed in this context. A different angle of comparison will be provided by looking at the performance of the three distinguished types of welfare regimes from the perspectives of gender and race/ethnicity. In the last part of the course, the post-communist welfare states will be looked at from the above trinity of perspectives: citizenship, historicity, and institutional structure. Besides demonstrating some consequences of the conflicts of class, gender, and ethnicity on shaping the welfare states of the CEE region, certain challenges of globalization and the issue of convergence vs. divergence toward/from the three classical welfare state formations will be brought up for discussion.
Introduction to Contemporary Political Philosophy – Zoltan Miklosi (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This course is designed to introduce students into some of the central themes in contemporary political philosophy. The discussion and readings will be structured thematically, with very little focus on the history of political thought. Rather than offering a survey of a wide array of subjects, the course is intended to provide a more in-depth analysis of a few selected issues of primary importance about the ground and scope of the authority of the state. These issues are the following: First, what, if any, are the moral grounds of our obligation to obey the state? In this context, we will take a look into various contemporary theories of political obligation, such as consent theories, natural duty theories, and associative theories. Second, we take up the issue of distributive justice. After taking a look at the once dominant theory of utilitarianism, we discuss several questions related to liberal egalitarianism: when, and to what extent, is inequality between individuals unjust? When does the state treat its citizens as equals? What is the “metric” of egalitarian justice? We will examine Rawls’ Difference Principle and some libertarian and egalitarian challenges to it. Third, we discuss some issues related to the “neutrality” of the state: is it morally permissible for the state to endorse, encourage, or enforce any particular conception of the good life, or some other ideal? Is it permissible for it to enforce the conventional morality and traditions of the community when doing so would infringe the rights of individuals?
States, Networks, and Power in post-Soviet Politics – Matteo Fumagalli (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The course examines the path to and main features of post-Soviet statehood. The first part of the course investigates the origins and functioning of the Soviet state. Next the course examines the unraveling of the Soviet Union, paying special attention to the process of nationalist mobilization and the dynamics of conflict and war in some key areas of the post-Soviet space. Here notions of ethnicity, nationalism, clans, regions, and power networks are discussed. The final part of the course looks at the foreign policies of the post-Soviet states and the interplay between the region and some key global actors
Development and Underdevelopment: State, Market, and Communities - Anil Duman (elective course, 8 ECTS)
This course aims to explore the causes of development and underdevelopment across countries and over time. After the conceptual introduction the non-institutional explanations of economic performance will be presented. The impact of geography, history, and culture on development will be discussed. Then a range of specific institutions and policies, and their linkages to economic success will be considered. The regime type, corruption, social capital, and fractionalization will be given emphasis. In the third part, economic policies that can foster growth will be evaluated. The main goal of the course is to examine both how socio-political factors influence economic growth, and how economic factors, in turn, shape the political trajectories of developing nations. More particularly it tries to answer the questions of why certain nations are able to adopt institutions and policies that promote development; under what conditions social and political capital foster development; and what economic policies need to be put in place. These questions are analyzed from a theoretical and empirical perspective.
Crises in Capitalism, Capitalism(s) in Crisis – Dorothee Bohle (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The current global crisis is a powerful reminder that capitalism is a highly unstable order, or, as argued by Wolfgang Streeck, an “institutionalized disorder”. Dominant approaches especially in comparative political economy have in the last decades become too comfortable with the idea that capitalism is successfully domesticated by institutions – be it the regulatory institutions of liberal capitalism, or the more deeply engrained interlocking networks governing coordinated market economies. Change, if it all, was to occur gradually. The aim of this course is to revitalize concepts of capitalism as a highly dynamic system that is reproduced through cycles of destruction and institutional reform. It seeks to provide analytical tools and a long-term perspective on capitalist dynamics which foster an understanding of the destructive forces of capitalism; and the historical conditions under which these forces could be tamed and turned into sources of growth and social progress.
Modern Political Thought - Andres Moles (elective course, 4 ECTS)
What values should our political institutions promote? One way to address this question looks at how our values were defended and articulated in the past. Thinking about the past can provide important insights of how we should live together. This course reviews some of the major figures in modern political thought from Hobbes to J. S. Mill. The course provides 1) an appreciation of how some political concepts and values such as authority, liberty, and equality were shaped during the XVII-XIX centuries, 2) a critical assessment of the arguments provided by these thinkers, 3) and a discussion about the methodological tools developed during the time. Special emphasis will be put on the significance of these ideas for contemporary controversies in political philosophy.
Political Representation - Lea Sgier (elective course, 4 ECTS)
This course explores a key aspect of modern democracy: political representation. It raises questions such as: what does it mean to be represented, and to be a “good representative”? How has the idea of “one man one vote” become central to modern understandings of democracy? What is it exactly that needs to be represented, and how? How can we assess the “quality” of political representation? Through what institutional and non institutional channels and mechanisms can representation be obtained? How legitimate are claims for “better” representation (for instance women or ethnic quotas)? In this course we will discuss key texts on political representation covering three aspects: the historical emergence of the idea of political representation; normative debates over the meaning of representation and criticisms of “unfair” representation (namely feminist, multicultural and postcolonial criticisms); and institutional mechanisms of representation (interest aggregation, accountability, etc.). The main emphasis will be on consolidated democracies. However, the meaning of representation in emergent or fragile democracies, and in ethnically divided societies, will be with us throughout the course.
Federal Systems: The EU, US, and India Compared - Anton Pelinka (elective course, 8 ECTS) [co-offered with Nationalism]
The course is designed to focus on the analysis of federalism using the cases of three rather different systems. Despite the continental dimension, the EU, the US and India have in common, the three systems differ greatly. The United States, together with Switzerland, is considered the most traditional federal system. US federalism is very much the case of a bottom-up development. India is a comparatively new state with a combination of Westminster (British style) democracy and symmetrical federalism. Indian federalism has been established top-down. The EU is not a state, but – perhaps – a federation in the making. European federalism is the perfect case of a long ongoing process based on nation (member) states as driving forces of integration.
Parties and Party Systems - Zsolt Enyedi (elective course, 8 ECTS)
Political parties are central actors in the representative process of modern mass democracies. The course introduces the students to classical and recent theories on the organization, competitionand cooperation of parties, and on their role in expressing socio cultural preferences and in governing complex societies. The course presents cultural, rational choice and institutionalist explanations for the birth and behavior of parties. The empirical reality analyzed in the course is largely based on theexperience of Western developed societies, but newly democratizing political systems will also be discussed.
Political Communication II - Gabor Toka (elective course, 4 ECTS)
This MA-level course explores how political communication and mass media (are believed to) shape the political process and political outcomes: do they contribute – positively or negatively – to the quality of democracy, or they make no difference at all? While Political Communication I (offered in Fall 2011) engaged this question from the perspectives of journalism and news media, here the emphasis falls on the mediated interaction between citizens and politicians and varied third actors in between them. This course puts a particular emphasis on learning about how rigorous scholarly arguments are made about these issues via methodologically sophisticated empirical analysis.
Information, Decision Making and Foreign Policy – Tamas Meszerics (elective course, 8 ECTS)
The course intends to acquaint the students with certain aspects of foreign policy analysis. It will emphasize those approaches that focus on the instrumental rationality or lack of it in decision-making groups. It will enable the participants to identify and evaluate the major concepts and models in foreign policy analysis and to test these abstract and/or formal conceptual tools on the examples provided by cases in diplomatic history.
Questions of Resistance and Collaboration - Tamas Meszerics (elective course, 8 ECTS)
Resistance and collaboration are among the most debated concepts that feature in confrontational political situations. The course will depart from the European experience during the Second World War but will expand the empirical base and investigate how the central problems related to these concepts change in different times and places. The enquiry is organized around three questions: to what extent these concepts are context-dependent, or how well they travel between different historical experiences; what kinds of moral questions they embody; how far they can be explained by institutional analysis and social movement theory. The course requires no special background beyond an interest in these phenomena. Students with interest in comparative politics, history or moral and political philosophy are all welcome.
Crosslisted Courses:
GEND: Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence – Andrea Peto (8 ECTS)
GEND: Body, Gender and Commercialization of the Human Body - Judit Sandor (4 ECTS)
DPP: Civil Society, Governance and Communication - Kate Coyer (4 ECTS)
DPP: The Changing World of International Democracy Support - Tom Carothers (4 ECTS)
IRES: Transnational Corporations and National Governments - Bela Greskovits (8 4 ECTS)
Digital Media Research Workshop – Lina Dencik and Stefania Milani (4 ECTS)
This workshop provides an introduction into research in an age of digital media. It will introduce students to the ways in which we can study digital media as well as the ways in which we can use digital media for other research purposes. Highlighting emerging research problems in light of changing digital media technologies and covering a range of research methods available to us, this workshop will allow students to explore their interactions with traditional and new media technologies.
Network Science and Applications – Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (4 ECTS)
The course introduces network science and the set of tools used to understand complex networks emerging in social and economic systems. Focuses on the empirical study of real networks, with examples from computer science (World Wide Web, Internet), social systems (e-mail, friendship networks), political systems (voting patterns, social networks). Shows the organizing principles that govern the emergence of networks and the set of tools necessary to characterize, model and visualize them.
Crosslisted Courses:
IRES: Is Russia Our Future? Political Order in Changing Societies – Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes (2 ECTS)