Joint master's courses

Instructors: Bruno Palier (Sciences Po) and Anke Hassel (Hertie School) 

The course looks at the transformative changes faced by welfare states in advanced industrial democracies. Through the perspective of political economy, the course will show and analyse how closely the welfare state is intertwined with the economic system of particular countries and how governments have used the potential of the welfare state to reboost growth and job creation.

Instructors: Marton Karsai (CEU) and Jean Philippe Cointet (Sciences Po)

Data built from individual behaviors of users on Twitter, Facebook or Youtube play an increasing role in marketing, political targeting or even epidemic spreading forecasting. The course invites students to collect, model and visualise data from social media platforms. Students learn the basics of data science applied to social media platforms and imagine alternative uses of traditional AI powered data-analysis algorithms. Participants will get their hands on data and code and test existing state-of-the-art data science methods on their own data to investigate a research question related to social and political dynamics at large: linguistic trends, social mobilizations, systematic discriminations, etc.

Instructors: Andrea Pető (Central European University) and Alina Dragolea (SNSPA) 

The course aims to discuss the buzzword of illiberalism and critically investigate the loopholes in the literature, while drawing from and directly engaging with recent illiberal developments in Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Romania, etc. The course focuses on the concepts used to analyse the recent developments and looks at the reasons and the consequences of the missing gender analysis. The course will take a global approach by asking what is contributing to the apparent transition from liberal to illiberal democracy worldwide, while also framing illiberalism in the larger context of global democratic erosion and backsliding. Students enrolled will have the chance to meet on zoom the leading scholars of the field, such as Marlene Laruelle, Matthijs Bogaards, Zuzana Madarova, Heidemarie Winkel and Oana Baluta, getting a unique insight into the state-of-the-art research.

Students are expected to do a small research project covering one gendered aspect of the illiberal turn in a global context. 

Instructors: Chloé Le Coq & Jesper Roine (Stockholm School of Economics) and Johanna Mair & Alexandra Ioan (Hertie School)

Social innovation – the process of developing and deploying new solutions involving non-profit, public, and private sectors - emerges as a novel tool to tackle these complex and interrelated social challenges. This course offers students an understanding of the field of social innovation and social entrepreneurship and how these contribute to solving societal problems.

Instructors: Florence Faucher (Sciences Po) and Christian Freudlsperger (Hertie School) 

The course reflects on how liberal representative regimes are facing challenges that question their foundations, their legitimacy and their institutions - not least the current Corona crisis. Against this backdrop, the course aims to provide students with the tools to analyse the transformations of contemporary democratic institutions and forms of political participation.

Instructors: Andrea Colli (Bocconi) and Mario Del Pero (Sciences Po)

The course will examine 19th-21st century world history by looking at the processes of global integration/disintegration that have marked the last two centuries. It will outline and discuss the fundamental drivers and consequences of various waves of ‘globalisation’ - from the early 1800 to today - as well as the resistances they generated, their unintended effects, and the backlashes that often ensued, with globalization and integration being followed by deglobalization and fragmentation.

Instructors: Thilo Bodenstein (CEU), Diane Stone and Gaia Taffoni (EUI) and Ann Revillard (Sciences Po). 

This course develops an original perspective on policy evaluation by combining a presentation of the key methods and required skills needed to be a good evaluator with a reflection on the politics and institutional organisation of evaluation. Practicing policy evaluation requires a certain set of skills, which are not only methodological, but also include the capacity to reflect on values, to identify stakeholders and organize their participation to favour evaluation use. But the practice of evaluation can also be enriched by reflexivity on its political and institutional dimensions: who conducts evaluations? What are the political stakes underpinning evaluation practices? How is evaluation institutionalised in different contexts? Combining inputs from policy evaluation and policy analysis, this course thus reflects both on the practice and politics of evaluation.