Spring 2017

This course will be an intensive, research‐based junior proseminar on the politics of Asians in the
United States. The topic of Asian American politics starts with two apparent paradoxes. First, the
term "Asian American" implies an underlying unity and coherence in the beliefs, behaviors, and
identities of the individuals to whom the term is applied. Yet there is a dizzying diversity of
ethnicities, religions, cultures, languages, and immigration histories embodied by these individuals
under the rubric of "Asian American." Second, one of the bedrock findings in political science is
that political engagement increases with high socioeconomic attainment, and Asian Americans as
a group have achieved vaunted levels of socioeconomic success. Yet by most measures of politics,
Asian Americans appear to be the least participatory racial/ethnic group in the American
electorate.

An exploration of these two paradoxes forms the keystone of this course. We will examine,
through selected readings and directed research, the role of interests, identities, institutions,
ideology, and immigrant context in shaping the political incorporation of Asian Americans. Is there
a "group‐ness" or shared political interests for Asian Americans? Are Asian Americans more like
African Americans today or like white ethnic immigrant‐based groups from the late 19th and early
20th centuries, politically? Does the "under‐participation" of Asians in politics reflect individual
preferences, informational gaps, and immigrant habits? Or do Asian Americans face
institutionalized, structural barriers to access and inclusion? What role do institutions like political
parties and civil society organizations play in the political incorporation of Asian Americans?
 

Please see click on the link below for more information regrarding MIRTH

http://polisci.berkeley.edu/research-and-teaching/lectures-colloquia/monday-international-relations-thoughts-series-mirth

This colloquium exposes graduate students and faculty to work by leading scholars of comparative politics working in diverse substantive areas. Graduate students are expected to read circulated papers of visiting speakers ahead of the colloquium and participate actively in raising questions and making comments.  They are encouraged to meet visiting speakers in their areas of interest in group or one-on-one sessions. The schedule and links to available papers may be found at http://polisci.berkeley.edu/research-and-teaching/lectures-colloquia/comparative-politics-colloquium or http://cpd.berkeley.edu/events/comparative-politics-colloquium/"

NOTE: This description is from Spring 2015

Please see click on the link below for more information regrarding RWAP

http://polisci.berkeley.edu/research-and-teaching/lectures-colloquia/research-workshop-american-politics-rwap-colloquium

The goal of this yearlong course is to provide a forum in which students propose, develop, and complete a research project that produces a journal-length paper of publishable quality. It is primarily oriented towards second-year Ph.D. students in any subfield (students in other years may participate with the professors’ consent). The course meets regularly during parts of the fall semester and irregularly during the spring semester. In the first few weeks of the course, we discuss the process of moving from research topic to research question; and we survey published articles by recent Ph.D. students/assistant professors, focusing on the structure and nature of the writing and presentation as well the quality of the argument and evidence. We then move to students’ research proposals for the rest of the fall semester. During the spring semester, students meet individually with the course instructors and their advisors, develop and revise drafts of their papers, and present their work at a department “APSA-style” conference. In order to complete the course and receive credit, students must complete the requirements for both semesters.

NOTE: SPRING 2017 IS THE SECOND COURSE IN THE RESEARCH AND WRITING SEQUENCE.

Dissertation Research Workshop for students in all empirical subfields.   Students working on all phases of their dissertations, from prospectus to post field work writing and post-research article preparation, are welcome.

American federalism allocates authority and organizes representation along territorial lines. Although these institutional arrangements likely have major consequences for American politics, in recent years they have received limited attention from political scientists. This seminar will draw on institutional theory, comparative analysis, and research on American political development  to explore some of the most important political consequences of federal institutions and territorially grounded representation in the United States. We will then explore the subject through focused inquiry on three areas of recent and current politics: the evolution of the American political economy, the dynamics of racial conflict, and the development and institutionalization of partisan polarization.

This doctoral seminar reviews major theoretical and empirical debates in Latin American politics.  The goal is to enhance students’ empirical knowledge of Latin American countries, to explore the central themes and issues that have animated the literature on Latin American politics, and to encourage students to begin to think about how they might design and execute research that would contribute to scholarship on the region.  Major themes include: corporatism and other forms of political incorporation, democratic breakdown and bureaucratic authoritarianism, import substitution, democratization, the politics of economic liberalization, Latin American politics institutions and party politics, business and politics, the rule of law, and subnational institutions.  

This seminar will focus on the postwar relations in East Asia. Myriad sources of geopolitical conflict lead many to describe the region as “ripe for rivalry” and state-to-state tensions remain high, particularly in Northeast Asia. On the other hand, historical relations in East Asia prior to Nineteenth Century colonialism and the coming of the West were largely benign. Moreover, economic links across Asia are high and interdependence is rising rapidly. Importantly, there have been no shooting wars in Northeast Asia since the Korean armistice in 1953 and Southeast Asia saw its last major war end with the pullback of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia in the Third Indochina War. These suggest a penchant for peaceful resolution of competing interests.

Despite the absence of overt warfare, however, East Asia has been grappling with a number of ongoing and emerging security problems—the rise of China; territorial disputes; historical memory and the continuation of identity-based issues; the American repositioning; and the persistence of coercive diplomacy among others.

To date many of the problems of the region have been effectively “managed” but more recently the rise of new regional institutions have helped to alleviate certain ongoing tensions. Nonetheless, hard security and defense collaboration have been far slower to develop and today many ‘hot spots’ and continued national competitions divide the region. Many states, especially in Northeast Asia, have resisted making deep institutional commitments and policy options that might limit their sovereignty or compromise existing unilateral or bilateral flexibility. This seminar will focus on this range of issues with particular attention to the various tensions between establishing closer Asian ties and the preservation of national sovereignty and the institutional efforts to reconcile these tensions.

The course will have an eclectic approach and rely on both qualitative readings and formal models to study themes related to state formation, conflict, the development of state capacity, the role of economic and political elites in weakly institutionalized settings, themes of political persistence, and the formation and control of public bureaucracies.

This course counts toward completion of the course-out option in Models and Politics.

Knowledge of game theory at the level of PS232A will be assumed 

NOTE: This description is from Fall 2013