Institutions and Policies

The main educational objective, common to both paths, is to provide a specialized preparation aimed at developing skills that make suitable for research on institutions and policies in an internationalist perspective and that allows to analyze their design both in a normative and in a positive key. The doctoral school, in both its paths, is characterized by a high degree of interdisciplinarity, which does not preclude the development of specialized skills in one of its disciplinary areas: economic-institutional, legal-institutional, political-institutional and historical-institutional.

There are some teaching activities common to both courses and intended for all doctoral students, whatever their subject area of reference. These activities include, for the first year of the course, lectures and seminar activities also structured on the model of reading groups, divided between the four subject areas.

Each doctoral student is then supervised over the course of three years by at least one member of the Academic Board, who guides and directs the research activity and establishes an individual training program, which may include the attendance of training activities, even if not exclusive to the doctorate.

Doctoral students are encouraged to spend the second year abroad, to follow specialized courses or draw on bibliographic sources and archives at universities or international institutions.

For the specialization in Institutions and Organizations , the teaching areas mainly concern, as far as economic aspects are concerned, a basic training in the field of microeconomics and the learning of the quantitative and analytical techniques necessary for both theoretical and empirical and applied analysis, in particular in relation to the economics of national and international institutions; as far as legal aspects are concerned, in addition to the completion of public education, international legal institutions, international law and European Union law.

In the specialization in Politics: institutions and representations , the acquisition by doctoral students of the specific theoretical and methodological tools of political science, the history of political institutions and the different fields of study of international relations is pursued. These tools will have to be applied to the investigation of the most historically relevant political structures and phenomena both within European societies and political regimes, and within the global system. Doctoral students will have to develop the ability to research on the ways of representing the political system and the institutional forms that govern it, in their historical evolution as well as in their most recent changes.