2017/2018

2017/2018

DM270

SPS/09 (SOCIOLOGY OF ECONOMICS AND LABOUR)

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

WORLD POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

PERCORSO COMUNE

1°

2nd semester (26/02/2018 - 30/05/2018)

6

40 lesson hours

English

ORAL TEST

PARRI LEONARDO (titolare) - 6 ECTS

Attendance to lectures and seminars is compulsory.

The goal of the course is to make the student familiar with the use of social scientific explanatory models, in order to account for concrete dilemmatic situation in international relations.

International relations is a full member of the family of social sciences and aims at discovering the “what?”, “why?” and “how?” of the various phenomena emerging from interactions among states.
The first part of the course provides the students with the basic conceptual tools of the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences: laws and causality; explanatory mechanisms; the importance of laws and models in social explanation; the place of the beliefs and goals underpinning actions and interactions; the instrumental and value rationality of human actions; the relations between micro and macro aspects of social phenomena.
The second part of the course is devoted to explanatory models in IR, which are theoretically examined and then empirically applied. In particular, the models of the security dilemma and of the outbreak of war are considered. The issue of security and war is then analyzed in the framework of the game theoretical approach, both in its standard version and in the more recent variant of the theory of moves, which will be applied to three case studies taken from world politics (the Cuban missile crisis, the crisis between the US and the Soviet Union in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war, the conflict between Solidarity and the Soviet-backed Polish government).
The third part of the course is devoted to seminar discussions of two game theoretical case studies of international crises, which are explained by means of the theory of moves. The Northern Ireland conflict and peace agreement and the Iran-US hostage crisis will be considered.

Classes with frontal lectures and seminars

Teaching material will be distributed or indicated by the teacher during the classes

Written examination.
Two small bonuses of a maximum of 1 point each are added to the exam mark. The bonuses are proportional to the level of attendance and to the level of active participation.

In order to check attendance a roll call is done at every lecture and seminar.