Spring 2017

This course is intended to be a seminar in which we discuss research designs which have succeeded. Few causal inferences in the social sciences are compelling. We carefully examine successful examples to see why they work. The seminar is also a forum for students to discuss the research designs and methods needed in their own work. It should be particularly helpful for students writing their prospectus or designing a major research project. The seminar will be supplemented by lectures to cover the statistical and computational material needed to understand the readings such as matching methods, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and Bayesian, maximum likelihood and robust estimation. Applications are drawn from a variety of elds including political science, statistics, economics, sociology, and public health.

Topics from multi-equation causal modeling and introductory econometrics, with special emphasis on procedures appropriate for political data, including survey data.

The creation, maintenance, transformation and decay of international arrangements designed to manage or regulate interstate activities relating to trade, money, resources use, technology, and physical environment.

Please note that the description is from Fall 2012

This seminar traces the development of the constructivist program in international relations in order to better understand its elements, assumptions and methods and apply those to current issues.  We start by uncovering the roots of constructivism in sociology and philosophy and examine structuation theory, the English School, world systems theory, regime theory, and sociological institutionalism.  The second part of this course focuses on the constructivist agenda in international relations, its boundaries and its critics.  In the last part of the course we examine current research in international relations that draws on sociological methods, including work on the role of norms, epistemic communities, transnational civil society, and the origins of the state. 

A weekly seminar on approaches to the history of political thought.  Theoretical topics, typically including the nature of meaning and textuality, validity and interpretation, and historical explanation.

This course provides a broad survey of some of the major debates in comparative political economy today, focusing especially on the creation, evolution and reform of market institutions. We begin by reading some of the classic works in political economy, including those of Smith, Marx, Polanyi, and Gerschenkron, and reviewing more recent work from institutional economics, economic sociology, and political science. We then proceed with a selective survey of literature on the political economy of Western Europe, Japan, the East Asian and Latin American NIEs, the developing countries, and the post-Communist economies.

Please note that description is Fall 2012.

This graduate seminar is designed to introduce students to the comparative study of political
violence. The course examines two broad themes through a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches. The first theme focuses on why individuals choose to rebel: When does violence become a strategy for resolving conflict? Why do individuals participate in violence? How is violence organized? The second theme focuses on how states choose to repress citizens: When are human rights violations committed? When does a state use violence over other strategies?   What are the effects of state violence?
The course aims to provide students with the background necessary for undertaking original
research on political violence. It should enable them to critically engage recent scholarship,
understanding which theories have yet to be adequately tested and which theoretically interesting questions have yet to be asked. Students should ultimately be able to produce a research paper that serves as the basis for a prospectus, dissertation chapter, or publishable article.

This one-unit course will feature a guest speaker each week discussing an issue currently in the news. The class is open to all students, and there are no prerequisites. The class is offered Pass/Not Pass, based on a final examination. May be repeated for credit.

This course does not count as an upper division Political Science requirement.

The Junior Seminars are intense writing seminars which focus on the research area of the faculty member teaching the course. The seminars provide an opportunity for students to have direct intellectual interactions with faculty members while also giving the students an understanding for faculty research. Junior seminars fulfill upper division requirements for the major.