NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The course aims to examine, by making use of the Energy Politics prism, the contemporary history and the international relations of the Near and Middle East – i.e. the area between the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf. The course is integral part of the training offer of the Master's Degree Programme in “Languages, Economics and Institutions of Asia and North Africa”, aimed at providing students with flexible yet solid tools useful for interpreting the social, political and economic phenomena unfolding in the contemporary Near and Middle East.

The course aims primarily to provide students with the essential parameters of the Energy Politics discipline. In particular, it aims to provide key tools for understanding the political theories that detail the relationship between energy and domestic and foreign policy of state actors, as well as the relationship that binds the politics of energy to hydrocarbon market dynamics.
Secondly, by linking the Near and Middle East history of international relations with the development of the national energy sectors, the course aims to provide students with interpretative tools useful for understanding the dynamics of power cooperation and competition, as they intertwined in the area during the course of the last century. Moreover, building upon case studies from international politics, and against the background of current trends in energy markets, the course aims to provide students with means and knowledge useful for critically assessing the role played by energy policy in the main crisis scenarios of the Near and Middle Eastern area.
Finally, through the introduction to Italy's Energy Diplomacy, the course aims to provide students with the essential parameters for understanding one of the fundamental foreign policy vectors that, since the years of the "neo-Atlanticism", has presided over the Italian projection of influence towards the Near and Middle East area.

Basic knowledge of contemporary history and economics of the Near and Middle Eastern countries.

The course will be structured in four modules:
1) Introduction to the course and to Energy Polics.
2) The historical reference framework, from the oil revolution to the state-building processes in the Near and Middle East.
3) Energy and history of international relations in the Near and Middle East, from the inter-war period to the Cold War.
4) Energy, Security and Diplomacy in the post-bipolar International System.

Teaching material and additional readings will be made available during the course on the Moodle platform.

The verification of learning takes place in two complementary ways.
During the course, consistently with a continuous evaluation method based on participation in the discussion sessions, the student is called to take an active part in the analysis of the materials made available by the teacher, demonstrating its skills in critical processing of the informations and in communication. Moreover, the student will also be involved in team and/or individual works aimed at the writing a short analytical essay on the topics covered by the course.
An oral exam will be given at the end of the course.

Frontal lessons, interactive lessons, team and/or individual exercises.

Italian

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