John Fitzgerald Kennedy's Murder and Conspiracies
Course material - 2 pages - Political science
On the 22nd of November 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed in Dallas city center while riding in a presidential car to promote his reelection. Shot with several bullets, the youngest president of the United States died a few minutes later. It was an incredible shock for America and the...
Geopolitics of the Iranian Country
Course material - 16 pages - Political science
Islam became more militant after the fall of the caliphate. From the beginning of the 1920s, the Syrian Rashid Rida (1865-1935) was the first to refer to the notion of the Islamic State (al-dawla islamiyya), but without proposing a systematic political program. The return to Islamic Law...
The British Parliament
Course material - 24 pages - Political science
This document is a lesson on the British Parliament, explaining how it is constituted and how it works.
The European Union and its neighbors to the East and South-East of the Continent and to the Middle East
Course material - 11 pages - Political science
The European Union has still very limited means in terms of foreign and security and defense policy, and its members still follow quite different foreign policy agendas. But the EU confronts several and often growing problems and crisis in her immediate vicinity.
The United States and the World: A New World Order?
Course material - 7 pages - Political science
We remember George Bush's optimism in 1990: he had announced "A New World Order", resting on the promotion of liberal democracy and free enterprise everywhere, resting on the UN (at last again effective due to the end of the Cold War) and on American benevolent hegemony. One could have the...
US Foreign Policy since 2001: President Bush's first term
Course material - 11 pages - Political science
The period since 2001 has been a highly active one for the US: they waged a war in Afghanistan, another in Iraq and they may be preparing another one against Iran. The official rational in Washington, at least initially, for that activity, under the motto of "the war against terror", was the...
The United States and the World - Transnational problems today as seen from Washington
Course material - 12 pages - Political science
In the document issued in September 2002, "The National Security Strategy of the USA", two essential goals of US national policy were stressed: the defeat of "Global terrorism" and "to prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends with weapons of mass destruction". Those...
The Possible Geopolitical Consequences of Further Enlargements of the EU
Course material - 6 pages - Political science
The big enlargement of the EU in 2004 and the last one in 2007 to Bulgaria and Romania have been greeted with skepticism or even hostile reactions in large sectors of European public opinion. This situation, which probably contributed to the failure of the Constitutional Treaty in France and the...
The Interplay of National and European Considerations in the Foreign Policy of EU Members - The Countries Other than France and Germany
Course material - 8 pages - Political science
France and Germany alone can no longer call the tune in the EU. They henceforth have to take much more into account the agenda of the other members. We shall see first that agenda, regrouping, of course, the different countries into larger groups along their affinities, and then the possible...
The Interplay of National and European Considerations in the Foreign Policy of EU Members - France and Germany
Course material - 11 pages - Political science
Since the origins of the European project, Europe has depended on close Franco-German cooperation. As we have seen, all the big moves forward were possible because of the basic Franco-German agreement; the last major instance was Maastricht in 1992. The other countries had to follow. Of course,...
The Establishment of the British welfare State
Course material - 1 pages - Political science
The State intervention in the domain of social affairs dates to the early 1830s but the effective welfare State was made official on December 2nd 1942 with the Beveridge Report. Following the Second World War, the term "welfare State" referred to a major expansion of State involvement in the...
The Republic of Germany and the German political system after World War II
Course material - 5 pages - Political science
Our conception of the Federal Republic of Germany is very different from what it was only 15 years ago. Throughout much of its history, Germany was under the leadership of dictators and was never very comfortable with democracy. Germany's first experience with democracy occurred from...
