I. POLITICS AND POWER
1. What is politics?
2. What is power and what is political power?
3. The components of political power: coaction, persuasion and authority
4. The concept of legitimacy
5. Legitimacy and legality
6. Politics, polity and policies
7. The concept of political system
8. The scientific knowledge about politics
8.1. Origins and evolution of Political Science
8.2. Thematic fields and subdisciplines
8.3. The main approaches in Political Science
II. POLITY (I): HISTORICAL MODES OF STATE
1. The pre-state political organizations
2. Nation-state as a political organization
3. Historical evolution of state
4. The Liberal Democratic States
5. The Welfare state, its crises and the Post-welfare state
6. Dictatorships
7. The exhaustion of nation-state
III. POLITY (II)
1. The three components of the nation-state: population, territory and sovereignty
2. The political rules in the nation-state: institutions and constitutions
3. The territorial distribution of power: unitary and federal states and the state of autonomous communities
4. The executive branch of power: the head of state, the head of the government and public administration
5. The legislative branch of power: the parliament
6. The judicial branch of power
IV. POLITICS (I): THE CULTURAL FRAMEWORK FOR POLITICAL ACTION
1. The political culture
2. Political ideologies
3. Political socialization
4. Politics and communication
IV. POLITICS (II): THE ACTORS
1. The concept of actor. Individual actors and political participation
2. Political parties as collective actors. Political parties and party systems
3. Social movements, interest groups and lobbies.
4. Political elites
5. Mass media and public opinion
V. PUBLIC POLICIES
1. Politics, polity and policies
2. The policy cycle. Public policy evaluation
3. Actors and public policies
4. Policy styles
5. Governance and governability
FINAL REMARKS: NEW CHALLENGES FOR POLITICS IN EARLY XXI CENTURY
