Political and Administrative Systems

The course aims to provide students with the basic knowledge and conceptual tools necessary to understand the functioning of political and administrative systems. In the first part, the foundations of each political system will be presented by analyzing some concepts and key words of political theory and political science; in the second part, some classical themes of political science will be proposed by analyzing the main institutions of representative democracy and of public policies implementation; the third part deals with the comparative analysis of the public administrations in contemporary democracies and with their relationship with the political class (considering the problems of function, structure and administrative processes) and with the analysis of the general features of the administrative reform that - during the last twenty years - affected the main countries with democratic tradition, with particular reference to Italy.

At the end of the course the student will be able to apply the knowledge related to the functioning of contemporary democracies and he/she will use this knowledge to critically frame the current political facts and phenomena, even when these facts have not been directly addressed during the lectures.