- Teacher: Emanuela Ceva
Fall 2023 – Coursework in English
Tuesdays 14h15- Uni-Mail, M R030
Prof. Emanuela Ceva
Objective: The course will offer students the theoretical and practical tools to understand what it means to analyze and assess public institutions from a normative perspective. To this end, it will adopt the perspective of public ethics to discuss some central issues in the contemporary political debate: institutional integrity and accountability; political corruption and whistleblowing; the regulation of philanthropy. Part 1 introduces the normative analysis of public instituions through the lens of some of the main normative approaches to political philosophy. Part 2 will develop students' critical and analytical skills by applying the theoretical framework to specific cases of institutional values and wrongs. By the end of the course, students will master the competences for assessing public institutions from a normative perspective.
Description: Besides offering the knowledge base to understand the main normative approaches in political theory (liberalism, republicanism, virtue ethics), the course will engage with such specific questions as:
- What does it mean that a public institution has integrity?
- What makes public institutional accountable and why does it matter?
- Is the corruption of public institutions always morally wrong or may specific instances of corruption be justified if they have positive socio-economic consequences?
- May individual officeholders be considered morally responsible for systemically corrupt institutions?
- Is there a moral duty to report and react to institutional wrongs?
- Is philanthropy compatible with democratic politics?
Course arrangements: The course employs a mixture of lectures, guided discussions, and formal debates (tutorials). The mixture is calibrated to provide the students with the analytical skills necessary for the normative analysis of public institutions and the theoretical competences to develop their critical skills for the assessment of public institutions from an ethical point of view.