Course Descriptions
Courses Primarily for Graduate Students
POLI_SCI 403 – Introduction to Probability and Statistics
This course provides the opportunity to develop skills to empirically evaluate questions about the world. As social scientists, we seek to understand the world around us and our research often involves the analysis of data. During this quarter, we will work to develop the ability to summarize and analyze this data while exploring the pitfalls that can occur in careless research. Topics include probability theory, experimental and theoretical derivation of sampling distributions, hypothesis testing, and analysis of variance. Some familiarity with algebra and calculus will prove helpful and familiarity with the concepts from the department’s math prefresher course will be presumed. Please have a decent calculator (nothing too fancy but your phone calculator will likely be insufficient) and plan to bring it regularly to class with you. If you’re looking for a specific recommendation, something like the TI-30XS would be helpful (price: $15). We’ll often do calculations in class and on the exams.
POLI_SCI 407 – Experimental Political Science
Experiments are a central methodology in political science. Scholars from every subfield regularly turn to experiments. Practitioners rely on experimental evidence in evaluating social programs, policies, institutions, and information provision. The design, implementation, and analysis of experiments raise a variety of distinct epistemological and methodological challenges. This is particularly true in political science due to the breadth of the discipline, the varying contexts in which experiments are implemented (e.g., laboratory, survey, field), and the distinct methods employed (e.g., psychological or economic approaches to experimentation). This class will review the challenges to experimentation, discuss how to implement experiments, and survey prominent applications. The class also will touch on recent methodological advances in experiments and ongoing debates about the reliability of experimental studies. To do so, we will read parts of a new, yet to be published, volume on experimental methods.
POLI_SCI 410 – American Political Institutions and Behavior
The American Politics Field Seminar will give students exposure to trends in the empirical study of American politics. The course will cover current debates in the fields of political behavior, public opinion, legislative politics, presidential politics, American political development, and race and politics.
POLI_SCI 441 – International Political Economy
This graduate seminar surveys classic and frontier research in Comparative and International Political Economy. Half of the course focuses on the main analytical traditions in IPE (emphasizing interests and material incentives, power, institutions, and ideational factors) and explores the major research topics in the field (international trade, finance, foreign investment and sovereign debt, and immigration). The other half deals with CPE topics, including national varieties of capitalism, redistribution, institutions and economic performance, and development.
The seminar will be of interest to graduate students and advanced undergraduates with interests in International Relations and Comparative Politics, in addition to students from other disciplines (e.g. economic sociology).
POLI_SCI 450 – Contemporary Theory and Research in Comparative Politics
This seminar exposes students to some of the foundational works in Comparative Politics. We will read Karl Marx, Max Weber, Perry Anderson, Karl Polanyi, Joseph Schumpeter, Barrington Moore, Theda Skocpol, Sam Huntington, Jim Scott, and Ben Anderson. The focus is on the generation and architecture of major theories in the field. The concepts and analyses contained in these readings provide essential building blocks for you to pursue further reading on your own and in other courses in comparative politics and political economy.
POLI_SCI 490-0-22 – Special Topic in Political Science: Informal Institutions: Institutionalism for Developing Countries
This course will examine informal institutions - rules and procedures that lack formal codification yet effectively structure political behavior. The first part of the course will provide an overview of institutional analysis. Existing institutionalist approaches focus primarily on formal institutions, yet in many developing and transition countries formal rules and procedures have a marginal influence on actual political practices. We will examine recent efforts to define, conceptualize, and empirically analyze informal institutions and informal politics more broadly. The second part of the course will consider informal institutions in the context of several vigorous recent debates in comparative politics and political economy, including clientelism and informal practices in electoral politics, the causes and consequences of corruption, and the role of institutions in economic growth. The study of informal institutions entails inherent methodological challenges, in that many of the practices we will examine are illicit and/or covert. Throughout the course we will focus on innovative methodological approaches, ranging from interviewing techniques to statistical tools, designed to overcome these challenges.
POLI_SCI 490-0-21 – Special Topic in Political Science: Methods in Analytical Political Theory
This graduate course has two aims. The first is to introduce students to debates on method in contemporary analytical political philosophy. We examine disputes on the degree of idealization and abstraction that is appropriate in political theory, and reflect on how these disputes relate to different conceptions of political philosophy’s practical task. Second, in the process of investigating these meta-theoretical issues, the course also introduces students to substantive theories that have been dominant in contemporary moral and political philosophy.
POLI_SCI 490-0-20 – Special Topic in Political Science: Political Theories of Membership
As nationalist rhetorics, parties, and politicians ascend to positions of authority in regimes worldwide, political theorists are debating the meanings, etiologies, and treatments of nationalism and, relatedly, a resurgent antipathy toward immigrants. This course reviews key political and anthropological theories of membership in political societies since antiquity to address foundational questions about political membership, such as: why do all political societies use birth (jus sanguinis or jus soli) as the paradigmatic decision rule for membership? What are the implications of this decision rule for attachments of nationality, ethnicity, race, and religion? What are the similarities and differences among these groups, heuristically and politically? What is the intellectual history of "the nation" and the claims that it is modern? Is the nation an inherently toxic form of membership that produces unjustified exclusions at best and genocide at worst? Or is there a form of national belonging that cultivates empathy and mutual care among economically and otherwise unequal members, such that the nation may and should be preserved but should be isolated from its adverse effects? The course will review G.W.F Hegel's attack on social contract theories of belonging and war. We will conclude by reading queer and post-colonial criticisms and defenses of native or indigenous nations and communities. Authors we will read to engage questions about the uses and disadvantages of political societies using birthright for membership, with special attention to the implications of the nation for state violence, include: Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Immanual Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Emile Durkheim, Claude Levi-Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Joseph Carens, Bonnie Honig, Paul Gilroy, Yasmin Soysal, Ratna Kapur, Rahman, Momin, Audra Simpson, Bruno Perreau, Engin Isin, and Rebecca Tuvel.