Session A

Government policy deeply influences every aspect of our lives, including the quality of the universities we attend, how much it costs for a gallon of gas, what training we must obtain to take what jobs, what technologies are available to us to use, who we can marry, whether we can afford critical necessities such as housing, and what medical treatments we are allowed or not allowed to obtain. Why do governments make the policies they do? How can advocates craft effective political strategies to influence government policy? This course focuses on understanding the political forces that shape public policy, including interest groups, public pressure, political parties, and voters. In contrast to a public policy course, this course will not consider what ideal public policies should be, but rather consider why governments make the policies they do. This course is suitable for anyone interested in politics or policy. Students will learn tools that will allow them to think like political strategists and understand how they and others influence government in practice.

Summer 2026 Asynchronous Lecture and Discussions will be offered ONLINE only.

Democracy remains the most legitimate form of government worldwide. At the same time, there is widespread dissatisfaction with democracy even in places where it has long been established. In this course we will learn how democracy is supposed to work, why it usually does not work that way in practice, and various proposals for overcoming the problems. We consider everything from modest tweaks to the status quo to non-democratic alternatives through close examination of an eclectic array of scholarly and non-scholarly materials.

Subfield: Comparative Politics

Government policy deeply influences every aspect of our lives, including the quality of the universities we attend, how much it costs for a gallon of gas, what training we must obtain to take what jobs, what technologies are available to us to use, who we can marry, whether we can afford critical necessities such as housing, and what medical treatments we are allowed or not allowed to obtain. Why do governments make the policies they do? How can advocates craft effective political strategies to influence government policy? This course focuses on understanding the political forces that shape public policy, including interest groups, public pressure, political parties, and voters. In contrast to a public policy course, this course will not consider what ideal public policies should be, but rather consider why governments make the policies they do. This course is suitable for anyone interested in politics or policy. Students will learn tools that will allow them to think like political strategists and understand how they and others influence government in practice.

Summer 2025 Asynchronous Lecture and Discussions will be offered ONLINE only.

The overwhelming majority of governments throughout history have been dictatorial. Even the recent spread of democracy has not extirpated authoritarian rule: as of 2012 roughly one quarter of all countries are considered 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

Note: Course description is from Summer 2014

Government policy deeply influences every aspect of our lives, including the quality of the universities we attend, how much it costs for a gallon of gas, what training we must obtain to take what jobs, what technologies are available to us to use, who we can marry, whether we can afford critical necessities such as housing, and what medical treatments we are allowed or not allowed to obtain. Why do governments make the policies they do? How can advocates craft effective political strategies to influence government policy? This course focuses on understanding the political forces that shape public policy, including interest groups, public pressure, political parties, and voters. In contrast to a public policy course, this course will not consider what ideal public policies should be, but rather consider why governments make the policies they do. This course is suitable for anyone interested in politics or policy. Students will learn tools that will allow them to think like political strategists and understand how they and others influence government in practice.

Summer 2024 Asynchronous Lecture and Discussions will be offered ONLINE only.

The fight for increased inclusion into American society and culture created new opportunities and dynamics for American politics but how might we understand if and how this has translated into material gains for marginalized groups? This course will look at the ways in which representation became a political demand in ways both tied and untied from other goals like anti-poverty and human rights, the economic and judicial processes that shaped the demand for political representation, the ways that representational politics plays out specifically in the realm of Black politics (with a specific focus on the politics of race, representation, and the Congressional Black Caucus), and the dialectical relationship between politics and popular culture in the 21st Century. Can representation save us? Should it? Readings for the course will include selections from authors including (but not limited to): Jane Mansbridge, Hanna Pitkin, Cathy Cohen, Marcia Chatelain, Cristina Mora, Olufemi Taiwo, Claire Jean Kim, and Katherine Tate.

Instructor: Christian Hosam

This course number was originally listed as PS109.

Government policy deeply influences every aspect of our lives, including the quality of the universities we attend, how much it costs for a gallon of gas, what training we must obtain to take what jobs, what technologies are available to us to use, who we can marry, whether we can afford critical necessities such as housing, and what medical treatments we are allowed or not allowed to obtain. Why do governments make the policies they do? How can advocates craft effective political strategies to influence government policy? This course focuses on understanding the political forces that shape public policy, including interest groups, public pressure, political parties, and voters. In contrast to a public policy course, this course will not consider what ideal public policies should be, but rather consider why governments make the policies they do. This course is suitable for anyone interested in politics or policy. Students will learn tools that will allow them to think like political strategists and understand how they and others influence government in practice.

Summer 2023 Asynchronous Lecture and Discussions will be offered ONLINE only.

Government policy deeply influences every aspect of our lives, including the quality of the universities we attend, how much it costs for a gallon of gas, what training we must obtain to take what jobs, what technologies are available to us to use, who we can marry, whether we can afford critical necessities such as housing, and what medical treatments we are allowed or not allowed to obtain. Why do governments make the policies they do? How can advocates craft effective political strategies to influence government policy? This course focuses on understanding the political forces that shape public policy, including interest groups, public pressure, political parties, and voters. In contrast to a public policy course, this course will not consider what ideal public policies should be, but rather consider why governments make the policies they do. This course is suitable for anyone interested in politics or policy. Students will learn tools that will allow them to think like political strategists and understand how they and others influence government in practice.

Summer 2022 Asynchronous Lecture and Discussions will be offered ONLINE only.

If you have completed PS191 with Prof. Trachtman you cannot also enroll in PS109B due to content overlap.

Why are some post-communist countries more politically and economically successful than others? What underlies the many conflicts in this region? What can happen in the future, and what can we learn from the East European experience? This course is designed to help you answer these and similar questions. Topics include state-socialism and its collapse, the emergence of ethnic and religious conflict, the transitions to democracy and market economics, entry into NATO and the European Union, democratic backsliding, and Russia's conflict with Ukraine.

   Women make up around 49.5% of the global population, yet they are strikingly underrepresented when it comes to political office. Looking at the global average, women only hold 24% of seats at the parliamentary level. The percent of women in office varies drastically between countries. For example, quota-based countries like Rwanda have 60% women in parliament, whereas countries with unique electoral systems like Lebanon only have 4.7%. This course looks to explain this variation, and further understand the consequences of it. We will focus on questions such as: How do electoral systems affect women’s access to elected office?  What, if any, are the negative effects of imposing gender quotas? If elected, do women promote greater substantive representation? We will look into the potential for gender-based discrimination among socialized gender roles, voters, political parties, campaign policies, and the media. Please be advised that this is not a course on feminist theory, but rather an investigation of the barriers to women’s representation and political participation.

Instructor: Melanie Phillips