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This course aims to present some of the major topics of the current debate in the field of comparative politics, illustrate the way in which (mostly) quantitative models help understanding the effects of different institutional setups, and provide an in-depth understanding of how the main political processes operate within democratic countries. 

The course is usually organized around three separate models, focusing around differeent political institutrions and especially electoral and party systems. It fits into the overall organization of the EPS Master programme by familarizing its students with the empirical test of theoretical oriented hypotheses, and with the relationships between political and economic arenas.

The course aims at providing students with the method, tools and categories of comparative law to be applied to understand, from a diachronic and synchronic point of view, the legal traditions and the variety of forms of State, forms of Government and centre-periphery relations (included secession processes) of countries belonging to different geopolitical areas and sharing different concepts of Constitution. Therefore particular attention will also be paid to the crisis of constitutionalism and to new conceptual categories, such as "abusive constitutionalism", "authoritarian constitutionalism", "hybrid constitutionalism" and "unstable constitutionalism", with a view to studying new phenomena regarding the legal transplant of human rights protection and the separation of powers principles only in nominal terms.