Political Psychology

Instructor: Natalya Ilyna ECTS: 4 Modules: 3,4

Course description:

Political Psychology is one of the leading directions of the general course – Political Science. The aim of the course will be to assess the importance of political culture inside the sphere of politics and most specifically how it influences the functioning of state, creating peculiar and specific State models. The developing process of personalization of the contemporary politics make study the personalities of the main actors, political leaders - it’s important to define what a rational actor is as all the actors inside politics are human beings and all the structures created by them and involving the others are the expression of the culture and values they (and we) were educated in - psychology and culture became much more important in understanding the reasons behind domestic and foreign policies. Using the behaviorist interpretation of political science gives a capacity of considering a Man and human factor at the center of the studies.

The course covers some important themes, including a notion of political psychology with its long and difficult way to the contemporary acknowledgement; psychology of political power in different aspects; its main actors – leaders and elites, psychological peculiarities of their functioning; government (political structure) influence upon the basis of poitical culture – political socialization, displaying of which in different countries and different time is variative; a theme of political professions occupies a special place - student should know their latent peculiarities and claiming. The domestic and international conflicts as a usual thing also have their own psychological characteristics as well. In general the course consists of 10 -12 themes (depending on the available time of declaring). It is added with special tests/

In result the students may learn to understand the hiding mechanisms of making policy, get skill to reveal the true motives of the political leaders’ behavior, define the influence of their psychotypes on their actions, train a competence to deal with future professional partners. As a usial thing beside lectures the work is based on written works and oral discussions in different forms.

Prerequisites: