What is governance? How should we explain its emergence? What are its implications for public policy and democracy? This course uses debates about contemporary governance to examine four approaches to political science and political theory. The approaches are rational choice theory, institutionalism, Marxism, and poststructuralism. The course looks at the narrative that each approach provides of the origins and workings of governance since 1979, and at the way these narratives embody theoretical commitments about rationality and power, structure and agency, and democracy. It thus promotes an awareness of the way questions about contemporary governance are inextricably linked to philosophical and normative commitments. This course has a required discussion section.
Please note that this description is from Spring 2013.