Political Science
Objectives
CONTEMPORARY STATES, NON-STATE ACTORS, AND THEIR INCREASINGLY COMPLEX POLITICAL DYNAMICS
As is appropriate for an introductory discipline taken at the beginning of a Law degree, our focus will be placed on both themes and concepts developed by contemporary Political Science ¿ namely, ones related to the hybrid national and international conjunctures in which we find ourselves. The general focal themes are the ones given in the title. As your aim is not to become political scientists, but rather jurists, I make no attempt to initiate you into the ¿professional mechanics¿ of the subject-matters touched upon. This does not, however, mean I approach the topics with a lesser ambition; it does mean, however, that more than a mere introduction to methods and notions of Political Science, I shall endeavour to offer you a detailed take on some of the most important political issues around us in the light of the discipline. The points of application of my efforts are the modern States (whether democratic or not) and their many ongoing reconfigurations. The finality I pursue is easy to spell: to offer you a useful set of interpretations of a reality that is of the outmost interest for future jurists. I do so step by step. In every case, I introduce you to a variety of perspectives on the same themes.
General characterization
Code
27104
Credits
4
Responsible teacher
Armando Manuel de Barros Serra Marques Guedes
Hours
Weekly - 3
Total - Available soon
Teaching language
English
Prerequisites
Available soon
Bibliography
Fukuyama, Francis (2011), The Origins of Political Order, Profile Books.
Slaughter, Anne-Marie (2004), A New World Order, Princeton University Press.
Strange, Susan (2000), ¿The declining authority of states¿, in (eds.) D. Held e A. McGrew, The Global Transformations Reader: 148-156, Polity; original 1996, chapter 1, The Retreat of the State. The diffusion of power in the world economy, Cambridge University Press.
Held, David, et al. (1999), ¿The territorial state and global politics¿, in D. Held, A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt, e D. Perraton, Global Transformations. Politics, Economy and Culture: 32-87, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Linklater, Andrew (1998), ¿The changing context of the modern State¿ e ¿Theorising the reconfiguration of political community¿, in The Transformation of Political Community: 27-46, Polity, Cambridge.
Freitas do Amaral, Diogo (1998), História das Ideias Políticas, vol.1: 15-31, Almedina, Lisboa.
Fukuyama, Francis (2014), Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Hansen, Birthe (2002), ¿Globalization and European State Formation 1900-2000¿, Cooperation and Conflict. Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association 37 (3): 303-321, Copenhagen.
Tilly, Charles (1992), ¿Lineages of the national state¿, ¿Six salient questions¿, chapter5 and last section of chapter 6, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992: 127-161 and 187-192, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Snyder, Timothy (2018), ¿Cyberfascism¿; downlodabke at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAObqEu_tbg
Veilleux-Lepage, Yannick (2015), ¿Paradigmatic Shifts in Jihadism in Cyberspace¿, draft, ECPR, retrieved in academia.edu at: chrome-extension://mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden/http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/38556788/Retweeting_the_Caliphate_draft_ECPR_Aug_24.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1441718284&Signature=F9DPVAw7Khk56Z8IH4v%2BYLOBheM%3D
Lino Santos and Armando Marques Guedes (2015), ¿Breves reflexões sobre o poder e o ciberespaço¿, Revista de Direito e Segurança, 6, pp.189-209, Lisboa.
El¿Khalili, Sara (2013), ¿Social media as a government propaganda tool in post¿revolutionary Egypt¿ First Monday, vol 18, no 3, March http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/4620/3423¿doi:10.5210/fm.v18i3.4620
Benkiler, Yochai (2011), ¿A Free Irresponsible Press. Wikileaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate¿, CRCL Working Paper Feb. 8, Harvard Law School (google it, by title).
Morozov, Evgeny (2011), The Net Delusion. The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Public Affairs, New York.
Yardi, Sarita and danah boyd (2010), ¿Tweeting from the Town Square. Measuring Geographic Local Networks¿, (google it, by title).
Shirky, Clay (2009), Here Comes Everybody. The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Allen Lane, Penguin Books.
Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Verso, London e New York.
Malesevic, Sinisa (2017), ¿Do national identities exist?¿, Social Space Journal, in socialspace.eu, also downloadable at academia.edu
Kaplan, Robert D., (2010), Monsoon. The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, Random House, New York.
Marques Guedes, Armando (2002), ¿O funcionamento do Estado em época de globalização: o transbordo e as cascatas do poder¿, Nação e Defesa 101, 2ª série: 99-137, Instituto de Defesa Nacional, Lisboa.
Wolf, Martin (2001), ¿Will the nation-state survive globalization?¿, Foreign Affairs 80, 1: 178-191, New York.
Mann, Michael (1999, original 1997), ¿Has globalization ended the rise and rise of the nation-state?¿, in (ed.) T. V. Paul e J. A Hall, International Order and the Future of World Politics: 237-262, Cambridge University Press.
To have access to the whole program delivered to the students see https://unl-pt.academia.edu/ArmandoMarquesGuedes/curricula-(progr-&-biblio-)-of-disciplines-taught
Teaching method
The program is narrative. It has an introduction in three parts which follow the logic of the title of the program: CONTEMPORARY STATES, NON-STATE ACTORS, AND THEIR INCREASINGLY COMPLEX POLITICAL DYNAMICS. Its teaching methodologies, as befits the facultie´s DNA is interactive theoretical-practical classes which involve student participation. In some cases, students may decide to make presentations on the theme of the session in which case the interaction becomes more thick and multicentric.
Evaluation method
Students will present short written papers on one of the topics of the Program below. A final exam determines the minimal final classification obtained, which the quality of the paper presented may ameliorate.
Note that while the first six sessions of the Program are ¿magisterial lectures¿, the latter ones may include small presentations of the theme by selected groups of students, should they desire to do so, followed by discussions around them. The presentations are optional, and they will potentially add points and value to the final evaluation results of the students who choose to make such presentations. In terms of Faculty rules there is an obligatory final exam. Both for the exam and the short papers that will serve as the bases for discussions in the second part of the Program, evaluation will depend on clarity in the use of Political Science concepts used and discussed (40%), on knowledge of the examples treated (20%), and on the creativity displayed (40%).
Subject matter
We live in a time of change and multi-centered conflicts and accordingly these form the hard core of what follows. The sessions, accordingly, focus a great deal of attention on issues pertaining to identity and its recognition in today´s States, and also on the many tensions and conflicts that beset us all as they try to cope with the very rapid national, sub-national, regional and global transformations which give us no respite. That is not all: the sessions and their ordering also give body to didactic constraints. ¿Narrative¿ in style, the semestral introduction that follows is presented in both a wide-angle lens and an in-depth one ¿ as we shall attempt to cover as many examples as it is possible in a semester of as detailed an analytical fashion as we can. Moreover, particular care is taken with concepts and the methodological specificities of Political Science as a discipline.
A quick map may prove useful at this juncture. The Program is organized into four major sections (I cast them as one Introduction, and three Parts). As noted, these follow a sequence, which is both a narrative one and one of increasing conceptual complexity. The first step, as this is an introductory program designed for future jurists, maps out concepts and crucial notions relevant in Political Theory and Science; it consists of subsets, linked to the chosen topic of the semester. The three following Parts, by far the biggest parcel of this program, includes a series of analyses of some of the most important ¿live fronts¿ of contemporary State political dynamics. The second section, larger than the Introduction but smaller than the third and last, focuses on some of the general traits of the relevant State post-bipolar transitions from the mergence of secessionist infra-state entities to supra-state ones, to different forms of state reactions to their sovereignty and territorial integrity, to the reemergence of religion as a political dimension, to new types of asymmetrical warfare, and the implications of all these factors. The last section is an attempt at pulling together the string woven, and does so by trying out a wider take on the highly complex, thickly intertwined, and often very harsh and violent processes we are living through.