Formation/Cours

This is an introductory course and there are not specific requirements prior to the course. However, throghout the term, following national and international news, keeping up-to date with current affairs and following the assigned bibliography are necessary éléments for the successful completion.

The course provides a framework for thinking about politics and the institutions of governance. It discusses and analyses some of the vocabulary necessary for political analysis.

It focuses mainly on the politics within the state by starting with the very essentials of the state operation and moves towards challenging the very principles of state. As an introductory course it provides a firm grounding in the basics. It considers questions such as:

• What is politics.


• Why government exists.


• What is the meaning of the state in the 21st century.


• How the state is challenged by forces of globalisation

The course introduces the students to the key structures, institutions and processes in political life. It examines different political ideologies, various political systems, contemporary institutional arrangements, their impact on the decision-making process, the structure of the contemporary state, the role of the political parties nowadays and the new challenges in contemporary politics.

This course also prepares the students for the course to be taught in the winter term on International Relations in which the students will be called to focus on the politics beyond and across the states.

• The creation of polis and the meaning of the political animal


• The creation of the state and its main principles


• The notion of sovereignty and the main challenges nowadays


• Main political ideologies and their representatives


• The dominant political ideologies in the 21st centrury


• The notion of the ‘liberal democracy’ and its critics


• Classfification of political systems and regimes


• The relation between forms of governments and electoral systems


• The evolution of the political parties and party politics


• The essence of Constitution and constitutional forms and variations


• The challenge of globalisation for the state and state politics