Elective Courses in English

Democracy and Dictatorship (equivalent with ALR3413)

Aleksei Pobedonostsev (CEU Global Teaching Fellow, PhD Candidate at the European University Institute Florence )

Short description: The course “Democracy and Dictatorship” addresses the sources of democracy and authoritarianism as well as the stability of authoritarian regimes worldwide. In this course, we will seek to shed light on the fundamental question of political science “Why are some countries democracies while others are not?” Where does democracy come from? Why does democracy emerge and survive in some countries but not in others? What explains the stability of many authoritarian regimes? What is democratic backsliding and why does it happen? The problem of authoritarianism (and democratic deficit) is essential for many developing countries (including Eastern Europe). Moreover, the problem of democratic backsliding (as well as the crisis of liberal democracy) is as crucial for some advanced capitalist countries now as never before. In this course, we will try to identify what is the key challenge to liberal democracy at the beginning of the 21st century.

3 ECTS

Computational social science with R (equivalent with ALR1424)

Olena Puhachova, PhD (National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Ukraine)

Short description: This course is designed to familiarize students with basic computational social science methods. It also aims to gain some practical experience in data analysis with the R programming language. It focuses on visualization data by means of R. This course also includes an introduction to machine learning, text mining, web scraping, and sentiment analysis.

3 ECTS

Explore the list of elective courses for the winter semester of the 2022-2023 academic year:

ALR3302 –  The political economy of development

Aleksei Pobedonostsev (PhD cadidate)

Short description: Why are some nations rich, while others are poor? The course ‘Political Economy of Development’ is dedicated to deal systematically with this oldest question of political economy. The course aims at introducing the academic study of development for general social scientists. The course presents major trends and changes in the development theory and their bearings on development policy and practice, critically discussing concepts of development and the emergence and evolution of paradigms in development thinking.

3 ECTS

ALR3423 –  Agent-based modelling

Olena Puhachova, Associate Professor, National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (NaUKMA), Ukraine

Short description: This course is an introductory course in social modelling. It aims in understanding the complex dynamics of social systems and getting some practical experience in the simulation of social processes. This course helps students to form intuition about the behaviour of social systems in case of complexity and uncertainty.

3 ECTS

ALR3411 –  Contemporary Perspectives on the Commons

Dr. Emrah Irzik

Description: There has been a surge of academic and public interest in varieties of collective management of natural and cultural resources known as “The Commons” in recent years in the face of the crisis-prone market system, tarnished state management models and relentless deterioration of bio-ecological conditions: The commons as the defense of nature, as model of self-management, as sharing of goods, as formation of communities… Was/is the withering of the commons at the hands of early industrial capitalism/contemporary neoliberalism inevitable? Should the commons be defended/regenerated?
There is now a fresh round of fighting taking place upon the digital terrain created by the maturation of “informational capitalism” and the concomitant “network society”: Between the Intellectual Property regime with its patents and copyrights on the one hand and the movements for Free Software, Creative Commons, Open Access and similar on the other. Is the production and distribution of digital artifacts best left to the mechanism of intellectual property, or can commons-based models present a viable alternative? Can unauthorized sharing, also known as “piracy” be defended with a straight face?
We will start by reading the empirical and philosophical debate on the commons as tragedy and as hope through the opening salvo against the commons by Hardin and the response of his opponent, Ostrom. We will then discover what has actually been happening to the commons in the historical perspectives of Marx and Polanyi and extend the analysis to the world of today with Harvey and Federici.

3 ECTS