Session D

This class is an introduction to the American political system. The course is designed to make you think about the logic of our government's institutions, and the consequences - both intended and unintended - of these institutions for the political behavior of citizens, legislators, and other political leaders and activists. Topics to be covered include the Constitution, American political culture, civil rights, the presidency, Congress, Supreme Court, political parties, elections, public opinion, and interest groups.

The overwhelming majority of governments throughout history have been dictatorial. Even the recent spread of democracy has not extirpated authoritarian rule: as recently as 2006 only 90 out of 193 countries were considered democracies, and 45 were full-blown autocracies. Whatever the benefits of democracy, it seems dictatorship is here to stay. This course explores the characteristics and dynamics of non-democratic regimes: how and why they come about, what sustains them, why some people resist them and others do not, and how and why they decline and fall. We will explore a variety of examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Using films and novels in addition to political science literature, we will investigate how dictators maintain their power, how ordinary people react to repression, and the links between dictatorship and security and economic development.

Subfield: Comparative Politics

This class is an introduction to the American political system. The course is designed to make you think about the logic of our government's institutions, and the consequences - both intended and unintended - of these institutions for the political behavior of citizens, legislators, and other political leaders and activists. Topics to be covered include the Constitution, American political culture, civil rights, the presidency, Congress, Supreme Court, political parties, elections, public opinion, and interest groups.

Homelessness, global warming, corruption, bankrupt pension systems, educational inequality... This course explores what we can learn in general about the way societies try to address and solve difficult and seemingly intractable public problems. Can we attribute success or failure to institutions and their capacity to solve problems? Are problems difficult to solve because they are so complex and we lack know-how or because of a failure of political will? What are the characteristics of organizations or communities able to solve problems proactively or creatively? How do public problems get politically framed and how are they used to mobilize constituencies? The course draws on literature in public administration, public policy studies, and democratic theory to try to better understand some of the major social, political, environmental, and economic problems of our contemporary world.

The course focuses on legal aspects of public policy, with an emphasis on the relative capacities of, and relationships among, law-making agencies (courts, legislatures, administrative agencies, referenda processes). Students will be exposed to primary legal materials, including judicial decisions, statutes, and regulations, and skills of legal interpretation will be developed. The course will be a mixture of lecture and discussion. Course examines current problems and issues in the field of public policy.

Professor Farhang's 150 "American Legal System" is the same as his Public Policy 190 "Special Topics in Public Policy". This is the exact same course listed under Political Science.

IMPORTANT! Please note you will NOT be able to take Political Science 150 with Professor Farhang, if you have already completed (or plan to take) Political Science 150 with either Kagan or Farhang, or Public Policy 190 with Farhang.

War, revolution, and empire are outliers in political time, but they are exceptions that establish what the ordinary rules mean. They are subject to endless conceptual revisions, which is the analytical focus of this course. They take on different colorations in different historical environments and with different temporal expectations. For instance, assigning a meaning to the American Revolution requires deciding whether it was a modest rip in the fabric of time, securing independence from the British taxing authority, or an open-ended invitation to future democratic transformations. (The Tea Party and Occupy movements may offer contemporary versions of these views.) For Americans, empire is also an issue. Can a republic become an empire? Is this hybrid self-sustaining or unraveling; benign or predatory? Wars, too, have unsettled the nation, in part because they have always debatable rationales, justifications, and strategies, but also because they make and unmake cultures and nations. For Purchase: Sun-Tzu and Karl von Clausewitz, The Book of War: Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” and Clausewitz’ “On War”, Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, Herfried Munkler, The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, plus a course reader.

This course will introduce students to some key concepts used in contemporary comparative political analysis. It will do so through an examination of the reasons for why some modern nation states provide better living conditions for their citizens. Are these differences due to factors such as political institutions, legislative arrangements, parties and party systems, or social forces such as culture and ethnicity? Class lectures will focus on developing an understanding of how political scientists use these terms and whether they provide adequate explanations for why states vary so substantially in their performance. There will be two lectures per week and one required discussion section.

This course can satisfy either the Social & Behaviorial Sciences or International Studies breadth requirement.

 South Asia—which comprises eight different countries (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives)—is home to over one-fifth of the world’s population.  The sociological diversity in South Asia is matched by a variety of political systems ranging from an institutionalized democracy (e.g. India) to semi (or newly-emerging) democracies to systems that often shift between being dictatorial/authoritarian and “democratic.” Yet, the region has consistently been described as “the most dangerous place on earth” because the confluence of nuclear-armed powers, enduring rivalries, potentially “weak states,” and cross-border terrorism. This course seeks to examine the international relations of South Asia (e.g., the politics between South Asian states and other world powers) by focusing on the dynamic interplay between identities, interests, and power in the region. Thus, the primary focus of the class is on the politics between South Asian states, and the role of international actors in the region, not on the domestic politics of South Asian states unless directly relevant to their inter-state relations. The analytical goal of this course is to provide students with a critical understanding of the major issues in the international relations of South Asia.

All revolutions contain a fundamental contradiction.  On the one hand, a
revolution is the outcome of very specific socio-economic and political
conditions in a country.  On the other hand, revolutionaries perceive
their experience as having universal significance.  As a result, they seek
to address and influence foreign populations over the heads of their
respective governments.  This means that a revolutionary state engages in
both government-to-government and government-to-people diplomacy.  The
Iranian case is not different from this general pattern, except that here
the universalistic appeal of the revolution was limited by its sectarian
(Shi’ite) origins.

This course is divided into three parts.  We will first focus on Iran's
political economy during the pre-revolutionary period.  The nature of the
Shah’s regime, the revolution, and Khomeini’s ideology will be examined. 
We will then analyze certain key areas of Iranian foreign policy, such as
the Iran-Iraq War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Lebanon, security in the
Persian Gulf, and Central Asia.  Our primary focus, however, will be on
countries with large Shi’ite populations.  How were these nations affected
by the Iranian revolution?  Can revolutions be “exported”?  Was Iran's
foreign policy motivated by ideological considerations or the economic and
political interests of the regime?  We will then return to Iran's internal
dynamics and political economy during the Rafsanjani, Khatami. and
Ahmadinejad presidencies.  We will conclude by analyzing the causes behind
the failure of the reform movement, the rise of the Revolutionary Guards,
the Green Movement and the prospects for the modification or
transformation of the present system, as well as Iran's quest for nuclear
capability and its domestic and foreign policy ramifications.

This course is an introduction to the methods employed in empirical political science research. We will cover basic topics in research design, statistics, and formal modeling, considering many examples along the way. The two primary goals of the course are: (1) to provide students with analytic tools that will help them to understand how political scientists do empirical research, and (2) to improve students' ability to pose and answer research questions on their own. There are no prerequisites.