The course focuses on the subject of decisions by which the government influences the material and immaterial substance collective and individual underlying acting within the limits of its jurisdiction. Emphasis is placed on understanding the phenomenon of change in the field of public policy. Issues to be discussed include: Why and under what conditions some issues manage to become priority issues to be addressed and some not? Why are some options for resolving issues preferred by governments than others ignored? What qualifies as a public problem and how the government agenda established? Why the new policies seldom implemented as planned? How assessed objectives and results? How reforms as intentional government action, they have more chances of success? To answer the above questions is examined with the help of tools from the field of the analysis of public policies how interests, options and institutional actors of the political process (politicians, administration) interact and lead to changes in public policy practitioners.

The objective of this course is to examine the presuppositions (ideological, social, and political) that determined the rise of Islam as the dominant religion in the Arab world, the history of the Arabian caliphates during the medieval ages as well as the adoption of Islam on behalf of the Persian and Turkish civilizations. Moreover, the course focuses on questions of development of nationalist movements in the Ottoman Empire insisting on the imperial ideology of Panislamism as common matrix of the emergence of the Turkish (the version of “secular Islam”), as well as the Arab nationalism (the version of “nation-Umma”). Studying the rise of the Pan-arabic movement in the versions of Nasserism and Baathism the analysis includes also the conflicts of the Arab states with Israel focusing on the Palestinian question as well as the progressive shifting of the hegemony in the Arab world from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. Consequently the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism will be examined also as a result of the Saudi Arabian hegemony in the Sunni Islam, as well as of the outbreak and victory of the Islamic revolution in the Shiite Iran.

Ιn the context of this course, students are guided to understand the historical evolution of Eastern Europe countries and ex-USSR since the communist takeover. The main goal fo the course is the presentation and the analysis of the main characteristics of the communist regimes. During the courses there is a special focus on the history, the ideology and the structure of the communist political systems. In the end there is an approach on the period of the fall of communism and the democratic transition.