Introduction to Political Science IPSAMOOC

This course is part of the IPSAMOOC project, a joint venture Federica Weblearning - IPSA, the International Political Science Association

Political science discourse brings us face to face with many important concepts like authority, democracy, and power. However, all of them are used differently in different contexts, and their specific meaning depends on the theory they relate to.

There is no way around such puzzling diversity. Students of political science simply have to accept this challenge. Yet, the diversity of political science concepts can be used as a powerful resource for learning, through intellectual techniques for stirring personal creativity.

This MOOC teaches conceptual thinking and elementary theory-building through Hyperpolitics, an interactive dictionary for understanding and working with the most central concepts in political science. Its aim is to provide students with fresh critical insights about key political concepts by offering a methodology that enables users to unpack and reconstruct them on their own.

Its companion open-access website serves as a powerful tool for students to practice forging their own vocabulary while learning how to make professional use of authoritative PS internet resources. Through ten lessons, this MOOC comprises lecture sections based on visualizations of the arguments presented, reading assignments, and practical exercises.

This course is part of the IPSAMOOC project, a joint venture Federica Weblearning - IPSA, the International Political Science Association

Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of modern empirical social science, once stated that the comparative method is the only one that suits the social sciences. But Descartes hadposited that "comparaison n'est pas raison," which means that comparison is not reason (or theory) by itself. So what's the right answer?

This course provides an introduction and overview of systematic comparative analysis in the social sciences, and shows you how to use this method for constructive explanation and theory building.

A major portion of the course is devoted to new approaches and software that have been developed in recent yearsto handle highly complex cases. Such cases includecomparisons of EU member states, Latin American political systems,and particular policy areas. Procedures such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and related methods are able to reduce complexity and to arrive at "configurational" solutions based on set theory and Boolean algebra. These are more meaningful in this context thancommonly used, broad-based statistical methods.

Inthe last section, these methods are contrasted with more common statistical comparative methods at the macro-level. We'll discuss various states or societies and their respective strengths and weaknesses.

This course is part of the IPSAMOOC project, a joint venture Federica Weblearning - IPSA, the International Political Science Association

Withthe demise of the Soviet Unionand the end of the Cold War, the World Order that had been established after the Second World War began to undergo significant transformation. After a short period of euphoria during which Eastern Europe was incorporated into NATO and the European Union, and a slightly longer-lived period of American predominance in the international system, a multi-polar system set in. Developments at both the regional and global levels have emerged to challenge world peace and order.

This course reviews the driving forces of International Politics. It first describes the post-World War II international order before moving on to look at its breakdown and resultant transformation.

The course explores thorny issues in contemporary World Politics, including disorders in the Balkansthat resulted from the collapse of Yugoslavia; the rise of China and the return of Russia as major actors on the world stage; and the humanitariancrises in Bosnia and Kosovo where the West intervened, as well as Rwanda and others, where it did not.

We'll then conduct an analysis of the Arab Spring, where democratic aspirations mainly failed and the resulting dislocations fanned the expansion of radical Islam and the associated wave of global terrorism. The course will also examine frozen conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, and conclude by looking at the problems of the global commons; such as climate change, pollution, pandemics, and growing refugeechallenges.