Teaching Local Government and Politics to an international and multi-background audience

Teaching Local Government and Politics in Social Sciences allows for very fruitful learning strategies. Approached from a comparative perspective, it presents a privileged observatory from which to analyse key notions of our democracies (institutions, leadership, elections, policies, etc.) and students are confronted in practice to the motto of comparative politics - "who knows only one country, knows no country". But teaching to international and multi-background (political science, law, economics, sociology, etc.) audiences implies several challenges as well. Working with data for law students or understanding the implications of regulations for sociology students are only some of them. Drawing on the experience of teaching courses on this topic for a decade, this contribution aims at presenting the goals, achievements and limitations of teaching Local Government and Politics.