Courses
2008-2009 Courses
The University uses a five-digit course numbering system. Courses whose first digit is less than "3" are considered College-level courses. Those courses whose first digit is "3" or higher are considered graduate-level. In general, College courses whose first digit is "1" are considered to be introductory or meeting first-year general education requirements.
Boldface letters in parentheses refer to the course distribution areas for political science graduate students. (A) Theory; (B) U.S. Politics; (C) Comparative Politics; (D) International Relations; (E) Methodology.
To find the timeschedule for courses currently being taught, please follow the link on the menu.
Please note: Courses and descriptions subject to change.
20800/32110. Machiavelli's The Prince and Discourses. (=FNDL 29301) This course is a reading and discussion of The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, supplemented by portions of Livy's History of Rome. Themes include the roles of princes, peoples, and elites; the merits of republics and principalities; the political roles of pagan and Christian religion and morality; war and empire; founding and reform; virtue, corruption, and fortune; the relevance of ancient history to modern experience; reading and writing; and theory and practice. N. Tarcov. Winter. (A)
22020. Chinese Foreign Policy. This course examines the rise of China and its global implications from both historical and theoretical perspectives. It reviews China's interactions with the world in the past century and places China's rise in its global context. It engages contending theories about whether China will become a responsible stakeholder or challenge the existing global order. Special attention is given to the relationship between the United States and China. D. Yang. Spring.
22150. Contemporary African American Politics. (=CRPC 22150, LLSO 25902) This course explores the issues, actions, and arguments that comprise black politics today. Our specific task is to explore the question of how do African Americans currently engage in politics and political struggles in the United States. This analysis is rooted in a discussion of contemporary issues, including the 2008 presidential election, the response to Hurricane Katrina, debates surrounding the topic of immigration, the exponential incarceration of black people, and the role of rap music and hip-hop among black youth. We situate the politics of African Americans into the larger design we call American politics. Is there such a thing as black politics? If there is, what does it tell us more generally about American politics? C. Cohen. Spring.
22200. Introduction to Political Economy of Development. PQ: Advanced standing. This course provides an introduction to the political economy of development. The key question of interest is: Why is life in some countries and regions "better" than in others? We explore different approaches to this question using theories from economics and politics. Along the way, we examine a selection of topics of substantive interest that may include poverty, inequality, corruption, gender and development, health, the rule of law, microcredit, and remittances. A. Simpser. Autumn.
22400. Public Opinion. (=LLSO 26802) What is the relationship between the mass citizenry and government in the U.S.? Does the public meet the conditions for a functioning democratic polity? This course considers the origins of mass opinion about politics and public policy, including the role of core values and beliefs, information, expectations about political actors, the mass media, economic self-interest, and racial attitudes. This course also examines problems of political representation, from the level of political elites communicating with constituents, and from the possibility of aggregate representation. J. Brehm. Winter.
22515. The Political Nature of the American Judicial System. This course aims to introduce students to the political nature of the American legal system. In examining foundational parts of the political science literature on courts conceived of as political institutions, we focus on the relationship between the courts and other political institutions. The sorts of questions to be asked include: Are there interests that courts are particularly prone to support? What effect does congressional or executive action have on court decisions? What impact do court decisions have? While the answers are not always clear, our goal is to develop an awareness of and sensitivity to the political nature of the American legal system. G. Rosenberg. Winter.
22710. Electoral Politics in America. This course explores the interactions of voters, candidates, the parties, and the media in American national elections, chiefly in the campaign for the presidency, both in nominating primaries and in the November general election. The course examines how voters learn about candidates, how they perceive candidates, how they come to turn out to vote, and how they decide among the candidates. It examines the strategies and techniques of electoral campaigns, including the choices of campaign themes and the impact of campaign advertising. It considers the role of campaign contributors and volunteers, the party campaign organizations, campaign and media polls, and the press. Finally, it assesses the impact of campaigns and elections on governing and policymaking. M. Hansen. Autumn.
23415/32815. Emergence of Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (=HIST 23300/33300). This course investigates the emergence of capitalism in Europe and the world as a whole between the early sixteenth and the late eighteenth centuries. We discuss the political and cultural as well as the economic, sources of capitalism, and explore Marxist, neoclassical, and cultural approaches. W. Sewell. Spring. (C)
23920/33920. The New Institutionalism. The new institutionalism has its intellectual roots in modern microeconomic theories about the ways that rules and norms structure human behavior, with a particular focus on the types of institutions that encourage mutually beneficial cooperation and exchange. This course introduces the core precepts of the new institutional economics and surveys the application of these concepts to politics. The topics that we consider may include constitutional choice, legislative organization, voting and elections, and the problem of collective action. J. Grynaviski. Spring. (B)
24320/34320. Economic Shocks, Institutions, and Growth. This course examines theoretical and empirical discussions on whether and how domestic institutions interact with external shocks in determining economic outcomes. Various claims on the role of social, economic, and political institutions in mediating the effects of external shocks on economic outcomes are reviewed in their internal and external validity. J. Park. Winter. (D)
24520/34500. Arendt's The Human Condition. PQ: By consent only. Enrollment limited to 20. For advanced undergraduates. Undergraduates must have completed their Humanities and Social Sciences sequences, and one more specialized course in a relevant area of political theory or philosophy is strongly recommended. This seminar will be devoted to a close reading of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition, focusing both on its internal conceptual structure and on its intellectual and political contexts. P. Markell. Winter. (A)
25300. American Political Parties. This course introduces the nature and function of American political parties. We concentrate on two main themes. First, we explore the origins of the American party system. Topics include the origin of America's ambivalence toward political parties, the emergence of parties in the United States, and the institutional foundations of America's two-party system. Second, we investigate the role that political parties play as intermediary institutions between the public and their elected officials. Our studies focus on the role of political parties in the organization of elections and the government. More advanced topics include political realignments, divided government, and the decline of parties hypothesis. J. Grynaviski. Winter.
25610/35610. Authority, Obligation, and Dissent. What is the basis of political authority? What, if anything, makes it legitimate? Under what conditions are we obliged to follow the laws and orders of government authorities? Under what conditions can we legitimately disobey such laws or orders, or even engage in violent rebellion? How have some of the most influential political thinkers answered such questions historically and which of their theories are most helpful for illuminating these issues for us today? Readings include classic writings by Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Burke, Paine, Kant, Thoreau, Gandhi, Fanon, and Martin Luther King, Jr. S. Muthu. Spring. (A)
25800. Losers. This is a course that reads and analyzes some of the texts of 19th and 20th century writers who wrote on social, political, and economic problems and were important in their own time and who have had significant influence on their successors but are not included in the canon. Some of the writers we examine are: DeMaistre, LaSalle, Frederick Douglass, Sidgewick, Spencer, William James, Sorel, and Hannah Arendt. B. Silberman. Winter.
25900/35600. Japanese Politics. This course is a survey of the major aspects of Japanese politics: party politics, bureaucracy, the diet, and political behavior in post-World War II Japan. B. Silberman. Autumn. (C)
26000. Race and Politics. (= CRPC 26000, AFAM 26000) Fundamentally, this course is meant to explore how race, both historically and currently, influences politics in the United States. For example, is there something unique about the politics of African Americans? Does the idea and lived experience of whiteness shape one's political behavior? Throughout the quarter, students interrogate the way scholars, primarily in the field of American politics, have ignored, conceptualized, measured, modeled, and sometimes fully engaged the concept of race. We examine the multiple manifestations of race in the political domain, both as it functions alone and as it intersects with other identities such as gender, class, and sexuality. M. Dawson. Winter.
26300/39300. Comparative Politics of the Middle East and North Africa. This course examines major theoretical concerns in comparative politics using cases from the Middle East. It investigates the relationships between political and economic change in the processes of state-building, economic development, and national integration. The course begins by comparing the experience of early and late developing countries to provide students with a broad historical overview of market formation and state-building in Europe and to cover the legacies of the Ottoman empire, European colonialism, and the Mandate period in the Middle East. We then explore topics such as the failure of constitutional regimes and the role of the military, class formation and inequality, the conflict between Pan-Arabism and state-centered nationalisms, the role of political parties, revolutionary and Islamicist movements, labor migration and remittances, and political and economic liberalization in the 1990s. L. Wedeen. Winter. (C)
26610. Political Communication Networks. (=LLSO 20911) The focus of this course is to examine empirical evidence to determine if an individual's social context has the ability to impact her political behavior. We examine two major questions: to what extent do we observe correlation between individuals' actions and those within a social framework and to what extent may we identify a causal relationship between the political behavior of the social group and the individual. Specific readings are drawn from collective action problems, information flow within networks, network formation, and the extent to which we can observe respondents' voting behaviors that are consistent with their discussants' surveys or field experiments. B. Sinclair. Spring.
27000. Philosophy, Race, and Racism. (=CRPC 27000, LLSO 27701) An intensive examination of some selected philosophical and social theoretical treatments of race and racism. Topics include the history of European racial thinking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the nature and moral significance of racism, social constructionist theories of race (with some attention to related accounts of the social construction of gender), and the bearing of those theories on our understanding of black, Latino, and other racial identities. Readings include classic writings by W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as more recent work by Linda Alcoff, Anthony Appiah, Jorge Garcia, Jorge J.E., Gracia, Sally Haslanger, Tommie Shelby, and Paul Taylor. R. Gooding-Williams. Winter.
27015/37015. Colonialism, Democracy, and Conflict. This course looks at the impact of the colonial experience on post-independence levels of democracy and conflict, both directly and through the long term colonial era legacies on other factors such as economic growth, or ethnic imbalances in the economy, administration, and military. The course covers a wide range of disciplinary approaches, from history and sociology, to anthropology and economics. The common methodological theme is understanding how we might measure the impact of the past, and the benefits and limits of various quantitative approaches to doing so. S. Wilkinson. Winter. (C)
27500/37500. Organizational Decision Making. This course examines the process of decision making in modern, complex organizations (e.g., universities, schools, hospitals, business firms, public bureaucracies). We also consider the impact of information, power, resources, organizational structure, and the environment, as well as alternative models of choice. J. Padgett. Autumn. (B)
27715/37715. Rousseau. Open to advanced undergraduates by consent only. This seminar is a reading of selected theoretical and literary texts by Rousseau. Our discussions center primarily on questions of individualism, self-esteem, and autobiography, and their implications for democratic theory. J. Cooper. Winter. (A)
27815. Politics and Public Policy in China. This course offers a historical and thematic survey of Chinese politics in the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to the formation of the party-state, the imposition of central planning, the Great Leap forward, the Cultural Revolution, reform and liberalization, and China's role in the world in the post-Cold War era. The discussion is framed in terms that allow comparison with other countries. D. Yang. Winter.
27910/37910. Hobbes and Spinoza. (=FNDL 21903) Open to advanced undergraduates by consent only. This seminar undertakes a close reading of Hobbes and Spinoza's central texts of political theory, Leviathan and the Theologico-Political Treatise. As time permits, we situate these texts within the broader contexts of Hobbes and Spinoza's respective bodies of work, as well as the broader contexts of seventeenth-century philosophy, political theory, and theology. J. Cooper. Spring. (A)
28300. Seminar on Realism. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the realist paradigm of international relations. J. Mearsheimer. Spring.
28400/49500. American Grand Strategy. This course examines the evolution of American grand strategy since 1900, when the United States first emerged on the world stage as a great power. The focus is on assessing how its leaders have thought over time about which areas of the world are worth fighting and dying for, when it is necessary to fight in those strategically important areas, and what kinds of military forces are needed for deterrence and war-fighting in those regions. J. Mearsheimer. Winter. (D)
28615. Politics and Human Nature. PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. Class limited to fifteen students. This course explores commonalities among psychoanalytic theory, Buddhism, and studies of emotions and brain physiology, particularly as they relate to questions of the self and political life. In addition to exploring each of these theories, we investigate particular questions (e.g., inevitability of conflict, dynamics of obedience and authority, emotional power of ideology, and non-Western understandings of human consciousness). E. Oliver. Winter.
28900/39900. Strategy. This course covers American national security policy in the post-cold war world, especially the principal issues of military strategy that are likely to face the United States in the next decade. The course is structured in five parts: (1) examining the key changes in strategic environment since 1990, (2) looking at the effects of multipolarity on American grand strategy and basic national goals, (3) focusing on nuclear strategy, (4) examining conventional strategy, and (5) discussing the future of war and peace in the Pacific Rim. R. Pape. Spring. (D)
29000/39800. Introduction to International Relations. This course introduces main themes in international relations that include the problems of war and peace, conflict and cooperation. We begin by considering some basic theoretical tools used to study international politics. We then focus on several prominent security issues in modern international relations, such as the cold war and post-cold war world, nuclear weapons, nationalism, and terrorism. We also deal with economic aspects of international relations, such as globalization, world trade, environmental pollution, and European unification. C. Lipson. Autumn. (D)
29120/39120. Big Wars: From Ancient Greece to World War II. This course examines the onset, unfolding, and aftermath of several major wars. Focusing mainly on the largest European wars, it covers the Peloponnesian War (Athens and Sparta), Punic Wars (Rome and Carthage), Wars of Louis XIV, the Seven Years War, Wars of the French Revolution, and Napoleonic Wars, Wars of German Unification, World War I, and World War II. The course concentrates on the origins of each war, but also includes some material on how the wars were fought and how they were concluded. The course blends historical analysis with major questions of international relations theory. This course has no prerequisites, but prior coursework in international politics or European history (ancient or modern) would be useful. C. Lipson. Autumn. (D)
29200. Civil Rights/Civil Liberties. (=LLSO 24000) PQ: PLSC 28800 or equivalent, and consent of instructor. This course examines selected civil rights and civil liberties decisions of U.S. courts, with emphasis on the broader political context. Topics include speech, race, and gender. G. Rosenberg. Spring.
29700. Independent Study. PQ: Consent of faculty supervisor and program chair. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. This is a general reading and research course for independent study not related to the B.A. thesis or B.A. research. Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.
29800. B.A. Colloquium. PQ: Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in political science majors and plan to write a B.A. thesis. Students participate in both Autumn and Winter Quarters but register only once (in either Autumn or Winter Quarter). PLSC 29800 counts as a single course and a single grade is reported in Winter Quarter. The colloquium is designed to help students carry out their B.A. thesis research and offer feedback on their progress. The class meets weekly in Autumn Quarter and every other week in Winter Quarter. Autumn, Winter.
29900. B.A. Thesis Supervision. PQ: Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in political science majors and plan to write a B.A. thesis. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. This is a reading and research course for independent study related to B.A. research and B.A. thesis preparation. Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.
30500. Introduction to Data Analysis. Open to Political Science Ph.D. students only. This course is an introduction to the research methods practiced by quantitative political scientists. The first part lays out the enterprise of empirical research: the structure and content of theories, the formulation of testable hypotheses, the logic of empirical tests, and the consideration of competing hypotheses. The second part considers the implementation of empirical research: the potential barriers to valid inferences, the strengths and limitations of research designs, and empirical representations of theoretical constructs. The final part provides hands-on experience with the two kinds of analyses most frequently performed by quantitative political researchers: contingency tables and regression. M. Dawson. Autumn. (E)
30700. Introduction to Linear Models. This course will provide an introduction to the linear model, the dominant form of statistical inference in the social sciences. The goals of the course are to teach students the statistical methods needed to pursue independent large-n research projects and to develop the skills necessary to pursue further methods training in the social sciences. Part I of the course reviews the simple linear model (as seen in Stat 220 or its equivalent) with attention to the theory of statistical inference and the derivation of estimators. Basic calculus and linear algebra will be introduced. Part II extends the linear model to the multivariate case. Emphasis will be placed on model selection and specification. Part III examines the consequences of data that is "poorly behaved" and how to cope with the problem. Part IV introduces special topics like systems of simultaneous equations, logit and probit models, time-series methods, etc. The breadth of coverage depends on time. Relatively little prior knowledge of math or statistics is expected, but students are expected to work hard to develop the tools introduced in class. J. Grynaviski. Spring. (E)
33300. Interpretative Methods in the Social Sciences. This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to interpretive methods in the social sciences. Students will learn to "read" texts and images while also becoming familiar with contemporary thinking about interpretation, narrative, ethnography, and social construction. Among the methods we shall explore are: semiotics, hermeneutics, ordinary language theory, and discourse analysis. L. Wedeen. Spring. (E)
33700. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict. A graduate-level introduction to some classic works on ethnicity, nationalism and ethnic conflict (e.g. Max Weber, Barth, Anderson, Eugen Weber, Horowitz, Lijphart), and also a survey of recent social science research on these topics. The course pays special attention to how we ought to test our theories about ethnic identities and especially the conditions under which salient ethnic and national identities might change and ethnic or nationalist violence might take place. Theoretical readings are drawn from all subfields of political science as well as from other social science disciplines, and the course draws on historical examples of ethnic mobilization and conflict from around the world. This course is most appropriate for graduate students but is open by permission to undergraduates with significant exposure to political science courses, or the study of ethnicity. S. Wilkinson. Winter. (C)
34315. Blacks and the Left In U.S. History. M. Dawson. Winter. (B)
34700. Political Economy of China. This course offers a set of tools for analyzing Chinese economic development and reforms. Our focus will be on how economic and political institutions have changed and how those changes affect the behavior of citizens, consumers, and businesses. We seek to understand the patterns of institutional transformation by examining legacies of the past, political and economic campaigns, leadership transitions, as well as China's integration with the world economy. Topics covered include reforms in industrial governance, financial supervision, market regulation, and state-business relations; variations across regions and industrial sectors; the integration of Hong Kong into China; Taiwan and China; and China's international trade strategy. All major topics are examined with a view to their international implications. D. Yang. Winter. (C)
349. American Political Behavior. B. Sinclair. Winter. (B)
35200. Politics, Evolutionary Psychology, and Social Neuroscience. This course utilizes recent advances in evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience to investigate claims by political theorists (both classical and contemporary) about human nature and political organization. Topics include the inter-relationship between affective and cognitive information processes, the physiology of morality and ideology, the meaning of self-governance, inter-group dynamics, political cognition, and the possibility for making essential claims about human nature, particularly as they relate to political organization. E. Oliver. Autumn. (A)
35400. Politics of International Trade. This class explores the politics of international trade from a political economy perspective. The main themes of this course include determinants of trade preferences, distributional effects of international trade, institutional explanations of trade policies, and the effects of international economic institutions on domestic trade politics. J. Park. Winter. (D)
35410. Theories of Domination and Oppression. R. Gooding-Williams. Spring. (A)
35500. Public Opinion. A close examination of techniques employed, categories utilized and assumptions made by contemporary American students of public opinion. Criticism of these approaches from historical, philosophical and comparative perspectives will be encouraged. The course will make little sense to students without at least a background in Data Analysis (PLSC 30500). J. Brehm. Spring. (B)
36720. Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem. Undergraduates by consent. Reading and discussion of some of Strauss's works dealing with what he called the theologico-political problem and some recent secondary work. N. Tarcov. Spring. (A)
36910. Secularism and Its Discontents. The purported "return" of the theologico-political problem has lead many political theorists to question the viability, and the desirability, of modern secularism. In this seminar, we explore the reasons, both historical and theoretical, why the question of secularism has been reopened in the West, and we evaluate competing answers offered by contemporary theorists. The first half of the seminar is devoted to founding texts of Western secularism from the early modern period (Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, etc.), while the second half focuses on contemporary debates (Rawls, Taylor, Connolly, Asad, Habermas, etc.). J. Cooper. Spring. (A)
37000. U.S. Courts as Political Institutions. (=LAWS 51300) PQ: There is a MANDATORY meeting prior to the beginning of the quarter. An examination of the ways in which United States courts interact with the broader political system. Questions include: How do the procedures, structures, and organization of the courts affect judicial outcomes? Are there interests that courts are particularly prone to support? What effect does congressional or executive impact, including judicial selection, have on court decisions? What are the difficulties with implementation of judicial decisions? G. Rosenberg. Winter. (B)
40600. Seminar on International Relations Theory. The end of the Cold War ushered in a new set of debates about how to study international politics. This course is an introduction to some of those important theoretical approaches and is organized around debate among realism, liberalism, and constructivism and their variants. Seminar discussion will identify and criticize the central arguments advanced by different scholars in order to assess the relative merits of different theoretical perspectives. R. Pape. Spring. (D)
41500. Seminar on Nationalism in the Age of Globalization. Nationalism has been the most powerful political ideology in the world for the past two centuries. This course examines its future in the age of globalization, focusing in particular on the widespread belief that it is an outmoded ideology. Specific topics covered in the course include: the causes of nationalism, its effects on international stability, nationalism and empires, globalization and the future of the state, globalization and national identities, the clash of civilizations, American nationalism, and the clash between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. J. Mearsheimer. Winter. (D)
41700. Social Movements. This course is an introduction to theoretical and empirical research on social movements. In this course we will take social movements to mean national-level collective mobilizations organized for political change. During the quarter we will examine and debate what a range of scholars across disciplines have written about some of the fundamental questions regarding the emergence, evolution and political impact of social movements. For example, what types of collective action qualify as social movements? What factors lead to or shape the development of social movements? What role do social movements play in the working of American democracy? Finally, why have political scientists largely ignored social movements as a topic for extensive and careful study? C. Cohen. Winter. (B)
41800. Causal Inference. B. Sinclair. Winter. (E)
41900. The Design of International Institutions. D. Snidal. Winter. (D)
42120. Bayesian Inference in Political Science. The goal of this course is to review Bayesian approaches to advanced statistical models in political science. The main focus of the course is to understand foundations of Bayesian inference and learn Bayesian implementations of advanced statistical models in political science such as changepoint models, Markov transition models, item response theory (ideal point estimation) models, panel models, and models for relational (or network) data. Students are expected to have strong knowledge of linear models and generalized linear models. J. Park. Spring. (E)
42210. South Asian Politics, Institutions, and Sources. S. Wilkinson. Spring. (C)
42420. Approaches to the History of Political Thought. J. Pitts. Winter. (A)
42800. Inclusion and Exclusion: Conquest, Slavery, and Empire. Many modern European political thinkers sought to shape and were deeply influenced by political controversies over Europe's relations with the rest of the world. What understandings of freedom, accounts of human nature, and theories of human diversity were more likely to generate support for-or attacks upon-slavery, conquest, trading companies, and empire? What were the range of theoretical arguments about universal morality; the meaning, worth, and location of "civilization"; and the value of cultural diversity that were elaborated by thinkers who sought to emancipate and defend-or to enslave and subject-those who were deemed foreign? We will also examine the legacies of such writings for contemporary thinking about universal moral and political principles, cultural pluralism, and international justice. S. Muthu. Winter. (A)
42900. Kant's Political Thought. An intensive examination of Immanuel Kant's political thought. We will examine his writings about a broad range of topics, including human nature, freedom, social relations, property, government, justice, religion, history and progress, revolution, equality and inequality, and cosmopolitanism. S. Muthu. Spring. (A)
43100. Maximum Likelihood. The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with the estimation and interpretation of maximum likelihood, a statistical method which permits a close linkage of deductive theory and empirical estimation. Among the problems considered in this course include: models of dichotomous choice, such as turnout and vote choice; models of limited categorical data, such as those for multi-party elections and survey responses; models for counts of uncorrelated events, such as executive orders and bookburnings; models for duration, such as the length of parliamentary coalitions or the tenure of bureaucracies; models for compositional data, such as allocation of time by bureaucrats to task and district vote shares; and models for latent variables, such as for predispositions. The emphasis in this course will be on the extraction of information about political and social phenomena, not upon properties of estimators. J. Brehm. Autumn. (E)
43820. Plato's Republic. Undergraduates by consent. Reading and discussion of The Republic and some secondary work with attention to justice in the city and the soul, war and warriors, education, theology, poetry, gender, eros, and actually existing cities. N. Tarcov. Autumn. (A)
44200. Cold War Political Theory. This graduate seminar is an intensive survey of political theory, broadly construed, from the end of World War II into the very early 1960s, centered on though not limited to the United States and Britain, and organized around such themes as: postwar justice and reconstruction; the Cold War and the meanings of freedom; the rise of liberal pluralism; anticommunism and McCarthyism; mass society; decolonization and postcoloniality; the specter of nuclear destruction; racism and civil rights; the American university and the professionalization of political theory. Our readings will include some texts now regarded as classics, a substantial amount of important material that is no longer widely read, secondary works of interpretation and history, and contemporaneous cultural documents. We shall also read some works of twenty-first century political thought in which the legacy of the period survives, implicitly or explicitly. P. Markell. Spring. (A)
44600. Political Economy of Development. This course is an introduction to recent scholarship on the political economy of development. The course will focus on three questions: What is development? What causes or constrains development? How do we know? The course is structured as follows. In the first part, will review economic theories of development and examine different approaches to the definition of development. In the second part, we will examine different theories about the causes of development, with emphasis on the way in which political and economic processes constrain or reinforce each other. In the third part, we will apply the knowledge from the first two parts to different topics of substantive interest, such as poverty, inequality, the rule of law, corruption, and health, among others. A. Simpser. Autumn. (C)
44700. Research Approaches in Political Science. This course has two goals: (1) To expose graduate students involved in empirical research to a variety of methodological approaches used in contemporary social-science scholarship, with the goal of improving the quality of their inferences; and (2) To provide a forum for students to improve ongoing research projects. In the class component, we will review different empirical methods and related research papers, including experimental and quasi-experimental approaches among others. In addition to the class component, the course is designed as a workshop for student research in progress. Every student will present her/his own research project and will provide feedback to others on the basis of the knowledge developed in class. Students with projects at all stages of development are welcome in the course, subject to instructor approval. The course seeks to develop understanding of the possibilities and limitations of different methods, but it will not provide rigorous mathematical foundations. Familiarity with the basics of statistical inference and regression analysis will be very useful. A. Simpser. Winter. (E)
44810. Hannah Arendt: From Kantian Aesthetics to the Practice of Political Judgment. The third volume of Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind was never written. As her editor, Mary McCarthy, observed: "After her death, a sheet of paper was found in her typewriter, blank except for the heading 'Judging' and two epigraphs. Some time between the Saturday of finishing 'Willing' [the second volume of the aforementioned work] and the Thursday of her death, she must have sat down to confront the final section." Fond of quoting McCarthy, commentators have turned the missing volume on Judging into an enigma of spectral proportions. It is said that Arendt's reflections on the faculty of judging suggest a turn away from the vita activa and toward the life of the mind; in short, judging brought Arendt back home to Western philosophy, especially the philosophy of Kant. Arendt's attempt to develop an account of political judgment based on Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment, say critics like Ronald Beiner and Jürgen Habermas, was deeply mistaken, for his transcendental philosophical approach to judgment leads away from the empirical realm and from anything that could possibly be considered political. Even more problematic, so the accusation goes, Arendt's attempt to model political judgment on a non-cognitive aesthetic judgment, (i.e., on a judgment that cannot be demonstrated by proofs and that is only "an example of a rule that we cannot state," as Kant puts it), bypasses the central problem of political judgment, namely the rational adjudication of competing validity claims. In this course we will consider the possibility that Arendt does in fact address the problem of validity (which, with Kant she calls "subjective validity"), with one important caveat: she does not think that validity in itself is the all-important problem or task for political judgment-the affirmation of political community as the realm of human plurality and freedom is. To develop this reading of Arendt, we will examine those aspects of Kant's Critique of Judgment that she neglected, such as the non-cognitive function of productive imagination and the limits of reproductive imagination in the aesthetic of the sublime. In this way we shall also consider the rather different critical view, advanced by postmodern thinkers like Lyotard, that Arendt does not repudiate but rather shares Habermas' attempt to ground political community on a practice of judgment at whose center stands not the demand to create political community anew, but the idea that radical differences of opinion are in principle resolvable by means of proofs. L. Zerilli. Autumn. (A)
45010. Social Theory and the Economy. This course surveys social theoretic writing on the boundaries and character of economic process. Topics include theories of reflexivity and agency, recombinant organizational forms, and alternative forms of governance G. Herrigel. Winter. (C)
45110. Interdependent Development. This course will survey the impact of global production networks on developing and developed regions. Customer -supplier relations, labor standards, , the politics of regional upgrading, the emergence of new forms of multinational enterprise in both developed and developing countries, trade union efforts to cope will all be topics. Various parts of Asia and Eastern Europe will be used as case studies for developing regions. Japan, Western Europe and the US will serve as developed country cases. G. Herrigel. Spring. (C)
45210. Politics and Identity. R. Gooding-Williams. Winter. (A)
48400. Workshop on International Security Policy. This workshop aims to provide interested members of the Chicago community with an opportunity to meet and discuss a wide range of international security topics. Special emphasis will be placed on looking at important policy issues that lend themselves to social science research. Relevant topics include: 1) NATO expansion, 2) America's grand strategy after the Cold War, 3) the rise of China, 4) nuclear proliferation, 5) the state of Russia's military, and 6) stability in the Persian Gulf. Speakers will include policymakers, as well as scholars and graduate students doing policy-relevant research. C. Glaser, R. Pape.
50000. Dissertation Proposal Seminar. Staff. Winter.
50101. Constitutional Law I: Governmental Structure. (=LAWS 40101) This course analyzes the structure of American government, as defined through the text of the Constitution and its interpretation. The major subjects covered are the allocation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches; the function of judicial review; and the role of the states and the federal government in the federal structure. The student's grade is based on class participation and a take-home final examination. G. Rosenberg. Spring. (B)
50900. Comparative Case Study Method. This course will examine the core epistemological and methodological issues surrounding the case study method. J. Mearsheimer. Spring. (E)
52000. Political Theory Workshop. (=SCTH 52000) The workshop is a forum for the presentation of new research in all varieties of political theory and political philosophy, including work in the history of political thought; contributions to normative political philosophy; theoretical engagements with problems in contemporary politics and public policy; and theoretical reflection on fundamental political concepts or phenomena. Our weekly seminars include presentations of work in progress by graduate students, as well as University of Chicago faculty, faculty at other Chicago-area institutions, and a small number of invited guests from around the country. Graduate students serve as discussants for all presentations. The Workshop subscribes to no particular methodology or political ideology, and welcomes participants from all departments and disciplines. Staff.
54500. Workshop on American Politics. The workshop is a forum for students and faculty to present and discuss research in all areas of U.S. politics. On a regular basis, the workshop also features speakers from other universities. Through presentations and critical discussion, workshop participants are exposed to emerging work in the field. W. Howell.
54600. Workshop on East Asia. (=ECON 57100) This workshop focuses on current social science research on East Asian societies, including the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. Presentations are by university faculty and advanced graduate students who conduct research on these societies, throughout the social science disciplines. Two to three outside speakers are hosted each quarter. W. Parish, D. Zhao.
55300. Workshop on Political Economy. The Workshop in Political Economy is organized around rational choice and game theoretic approaches to the study of politics and economies, broadly construed. Workshop topics include positive analysis of political, economic and social behavior, as well as normative models of public choice, experimental tests and philosophical critiques. We also expect some of the work presented to focus on empirical and policy applications of political economy models. Thus the workshop is inherently interdisciplinary - combining economic methodology with political science questions, and building political considerations into economic analysis. Workshop sessions will apply these combinations to a broad range of social science issues and substantive topics. S. Gailmard, J. Grynaviski, R. Myerson, D. Snidal.
55500. Workshop on Comparative Politics. This workshop invites scholars whose work is historical, sociological, anthropological, and political to cultivate a forum that is highly interdisciplinary in nature. We have addressed issues such as state building, democratic theory, economic policy, the welfare state, and cultural cleavages in past years. We invite graduate students with area expertise to raise theoretical issues about their data and interpretations that would be of interest to a wider circle of social scientists. As in the past, there will be no particular geographic or temporal focus in the workshop. L Wedeen, S. Wilkinson.
57200. Social Networks. This seminar explores the sociological utility of the network as a unit of analysis. How do the patterns of social ties in which individuals are embedded differentially affect their ability to cope with crises, their decisions to move or change jobs, their eagerness to adopt new attitudes and behaviors? The seminar group will consider (a) how the network differs from other units of analysis, (b) structural properties of networks, consequences of flows (or content) in network ties, and (c) dynamics of those ties. J. Padgett. Autumn. (E)
59500. Workshop on International Relations. Part of the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security (PIPES), this is a yearlong workshop for advanced graduate students engaged in their own research projects in international relations. PIPES meetings provide a forum for advanced graduate students, university faculty, and outside guests to present their research. Topics include the full range of international politics and theory, including political economy, security studies, foreign policy, international law and organizations, international environmental issues, critical international relations theory, and a wide variety of regional issues. This work is methodologically diverse, encompassing historical research, mathematical modeling, quantitative studies, and interpretive approaches. C. Lipson, D. Snidal.
65200. Comparative Bureaucracy. An examination and analysis of the theoretical and empirical literature on national-level public and private bureaucratic organizations in Japan, Great Britain and the U.S. B. Silberman. Autumn. (C)
