The course is an introduction to the comparative analysis of political institutions, and to the dynamics of modern democracies. It focuses mainly on electoral systems, party systems, executives, parliaments and other elements of the institutional setup of different countries, as well as the performance of diverse political systems.

Students learn how to apply concepts and methods to the analysis of everyday political problems, in order to critically read articles in leading newspapers, blogs, and weekly journals. They will also use statistical tools and the Stata software to perform simple quantitative analyses on economic and political data.