UCL - Sociopolitical models of the State

[POLS1222]

[30h] 4 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s): Jacques Herman

Language: French

Level: First

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

The course wish to provide to the student various conceptual tools to apprehend the complex sociopolitical reality of the State in the plurality of its components: philosophical, historical, political, sociological, psychological, economic, geopolitical, legal, managerial.

Main themes

A multi-field approach of the State is thus proposed which explores this complex topic by posing three central questions. How is the State framed through the principal sociopolitical paradigms? How did the States, in particular the modern Western States, change since their emergence? Which are at the present time the challenges related to the problems of the State? Great current trends will be also approached which, like globalization or European construction, question the Nation-State today

Content and teaching methods

Content
A. Birth and evolution of the modern States. Individualism and modernity. Sociopolitical conditions of the genesis of the modern States. Liberal, corporatist, social democrat and socialist States. Social stratification. Cultural legitimacy of power. The universalist legal order. Kinds of bureaucracy. The market. Voluntary associations.
B. Models of the State. The axis of centralization: Empires, Nation-States, globalization. The axis of differentiation: segmentation, hierarchy, elites and polyarchy. The axis of condensation: solidarity, anomie and alienation. Identities and Nations. C. Paradigms and sociopolitical models. Positivism: Comte, from positivism to evolutionism, the republican State. Dialectics: from argumentation to the Science of sciences, the Platonic utopian State, dialectics at the modern age, the Hegelian State, Marxist dialectics and the totalitarian State, organicist, anarchists, actionnalist anti-models. Verstehen: the methods' conflict, the search for invariants, Hermeneutics and the Nation-State. Structuro-functionalism: Systemism, the Parsonian synthesis, Statists' criticisms. The societal-State. Structuralism: code/language/structure, from structuralism to postmodernism, legal codes and political ideologies. Rule-of-Law. Praxiology: anthropological models, action field, ontology of action, the State and the rational actor.

Method
Lectures.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Pre-requisite: Political Science
Evaluation: written (QCM).
Support: syllabus