History of Political Ideas and Institutions

Recommended Prerequisites

General issues on European and global contemporary history.

Teaching Methods

This unit combines the exposition of some topics of History of Political Ideas with group debates of seminal contributions to the discipline, preparing students to autonomously explore the themes they consider more relevant to their future work. The participation in classes, including an oral presentation and the writing of an essay, composed the two axis of the evaluation model.   

Learning Outcomes

To promote historical knowledge on Contemporary Political History, crossing Political History, Political Science and Political Sociology.

To build up historical definitions on the main political ideas and institutions that were in struggle in the 19th and 20th century. 

To assess a historical understanding on the major “isms” that were in struggle in the 19th and 20th century societies.

To promote critical information on the leading debates of the history of political ideas from the early years of the Nineteenth century to the present days.

To connect the economic and social context of the most influent political ideas and institutions, emphasizing the connection between those ideas, development cycles and social movements.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1. The political thinking of the Liberal revolutions: America and France.

2.  Political Liberalism and economic Liberalism and their institutions.

3. The principle of nationality. The national idea in movement and its institutions.

4. Romanticism, modernity and culture - a revision.

5. Modern liberty and its critics. The conservative and anti-revolutionary political thought varieties.

6. Non-marxian socialism, 1815-1914. Hegelians, Marx and Engels.

7. German socialism and the rise of social democracy.

8. An overview on political ideas and institutions history in the 19th century.

9. The European crisis of the liberal system and the I World War.

10. The Russian revolution and the international communism.

11. The rise of Fascism. Fascism and corporatism.Totalitarianisms.

12. Politics and markets. Keynes and his critics.

13. The coming of the welfare state and the new social democracy.

14.  Epilogue: the political dichotomy of the twentieth century and the future of Democracy.

Head Lecturer(s)

Luís António Pais Bernardo

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Periodic or by final exam as given in the course information: 100.0%

Bibliography

AMARAL, Freitas do, História das Ideias Políticas, 2 vols., Coimbra, Almedina, 1998.

ARENDT, Hannah, Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, 1951.

BALL, Terence; BELLAMY, Richard (eds.), Twentieth-Century Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

HOBSBAWM, Eric, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

JONES, Gareth Stedman; CLAEYS, Gregory (eds.), Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

PAYNE, Stanley, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, New York, UCL Press, 1995.

PINTO, António Costa, Salazar’s Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation, New York, Columbia University Press, 1995.

ROSAS, Fernando,

FRIEDDEN, Jeffrey, Global Capitalism:Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, New York, 2006.