Undergraduate

Over half of the world’s population is now urban.   As urban populations swell, metropolitan areas in both the developed and the developing world struggle to provide basic services and address the negative externalities associated with rapid growth.   Sanitation, transportation, pollution, energy services, and public safety typically fall to sub-national governments.   Yet local sub-national institutions face difficulties as they tackle these challenges because development tends to spill over political boundaries and resources are limited.   Such difficulties are particularly acute in the developing world due to tighter resource constraints, weak institutions, and the comparative severity of the underlying problems.   Moreover, democratization and decentralization suggest that urban governance and service delivery may have become more democratic, but present challenges with respect to priority setting, coordination, and corruption.

This course will consider the political and institutional environment in which efforts to address metropolitan problems are developed, the financial and institutional vehicles used to provide services of different types, and the role of political parties and other forms of political organization in the development and allocation of services. Topics will include urban and sub-national institutions and political regime types, decentralization and multi-level governance, the rule of law and urban violence, civil society and popular mobilization, political party organization and mobilization strategies, public policy formulation, urban bureaucracies, corruption, the politics of urbanization, and the metropolitan political economy. Readings will be drawn primarily from Political Science, Sociology, Geography, and Economics.

Subfield:   Comparative Politics

This course examines the interaction between politics and markets, both in theory and in practice, linking classic works on political economy (Smith, Marx, List, Polanyi) with current policy debates.  It emphasizes the ways in which markets are embedded in social and political institutions.  We study how markets are structured in a wide range of different national settings, looking at both history and contemporary issues.  We review some of the most influential works from four disciplines: Economics, Sociology, History, and Political Science.  Topics include: 1) The history of industrialization, 2) The varieties of capitalism in contemporary industrialized countries, 3) The emerging economies of Latin America and East Asia, 4) The problems of development, and 5) The transition from communism to a market economy in Eastern Europe and China.  We conclude the course with a review of current issues in the global economy.  

Subfield:   Comparative Politics

This course focuses on the sensible application of econometric methods to empirical problems in economics and public policy analysis. It provides background on issues that arise when analyzing non-experimental social science data and a guide for tools that are useful for empirical research. By the end of the course, students will have an understanding of the types of research designs that can lead to convincing analysis and be comfortable working with large scale data sets.  

This course is cross-listed with Econ C 142 and Public Policy C 142.

Note: This is an advanced methods course, and NOT a replacement for PS3.

Subfield: Quantitative Methods

Econ Instructor: Stephen Bianchi

A situation involves strategic interaction if the best course of action of one agent depends on what others are going to do and vice-versa. These situations include, for example, the competition among firms in an oligopolistic market, the struggle between candidates in an election campaign, the wage bargaining between a worker and an employer, and the rivalry between states locked in an arms race. Although originally developed and applied in economics, game theory is now commonly used in political science and is beginning to be applied more widely throughout the social sciences to model strategic interaction. This course offers a non-technical introduction to game theory with a special emphasis on examples and applications drawn from economics, political science, and the other social sciences.

Note: Political Science c135 is cross-listed with Economics c110.

While there are no formal prerequisites for this course, some prior coursework in economics   (e.g., Econ 1) is highly recommended. Class requirements include a midterm, final, and problem sets.

Subfield: Empirical Theory and Quantitative Methods

Please note that this course is NOT a substitute for PS3.

Please note that this course description is from Fall 2013

Instructor: Professor Kariv

This course is an introduction to theories and issues in international political economy. Our emphasis will be on understanding bargaining between rich and poor countries. In particular, we will examine the political and economic conditions conducive to the development of cooperative international economic behavior among countries. The first part of the course will consider three analytical approaches to interpret economic interaction among countries - liberalism, dependency, and mercantilism. This part of the course also will consider theories used to explain the evolution of international arrangements - regimes - in the international system. The second part of the course will focus on four issue areas of key significance for North-South relations: trade, money, multinationals, and commodities. Our emphasis will be on the post-World War II transformation of rules and behavior in these issue-areas. The third and concluding part of the course will review the theoretical ideas and examine the prospects of the less-developed countries in the international system and the future of international economic cooperation. 

Subfield: International Relations

Please note the description is from Spring 2013

Civil conflicts—civil wars and terrorist campaigns—are among the major threats to peace in the current system. This course addresses explores why, and to what end, civil conflicts fought. It then focuses in on the question of when, why, and how international actors intervene in civil conflicts—especially to end them. Students will have the opportunity to better understand what we know about civil conflict termination and international intervention in that process. These questions also produce answers about the processes by which peace agreements are signed; why peace sometimes lasts and what can be done to make peace more durable; as well as the longer-term prospects for rebuilding after war. This course draws on different theoretical and empirical approaches to actively ask and answer these questions. It is designed to help you: (1) actively engage with the existing research to begin to understand the causes, strategies, and consequences of civil conflict and international intervention, (2) broaden your theoretical framework in international relations generally, (3) develop your critical thinking and writing on these topics through in-class exercises, assignments, and discussion in sections.

Recommended:   Familiarity with social science methodology at the level of PS 3 is needed for this course.

The goal of this course is to explore the conditions that lead to the initiation, escalation, and termination of international conflict as well as the factors that encourage peace between states. The course does not focus on historical description of particular wars but rather provides a broad theoretical treatment of the causes of war and peace. We will first familiarize ourselves with the principles of the scientific study of international conflict. Then we will spend the semester examining various factors that scholars have identified as potentially leading to conflict, such as the distribution of power, arms races, alliances, territory, rivalry, trade interdependence, and domestic politics.

Subfield:   International Relations

Students who took PS 191 "Junior Seminar: Scientific Study of International Conflict" with Professor Mattes cannot take this course due to the substantial similarity in course content.

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Is this necessarily true? Wars are brutal and horrific events, but are they all necessarily the result of miscalculation, accident or fanaticism? Can war serve a rational purpose? Are wars governed by rules and do states care about these rules? Are some periods in history, particular parts of the world or certain types of states, more war prone than others? What are tribal, ethnic, religious or national groups actually fighting over? Can their conflicts be prevented, moderated or halted? Are democracies more peaceful than dictatorships? Are Protestants more peaceful than Catholics? Are women more peaceful than men? Is terrorism on the rise and why has it developed a unique relationship with religious fundamentalism? Have nuclear weapons changed the face of modern war? How do nuclear weapons work anyway?

This course seeks to answer these and other questions surrounding the phenomenon of war. We begin with a four-week survey of the history of war in the Western Hemisphere to examine the relationship between societies, the manner in which they fought and the weapons they used. We will then seek answers to riddle of war from a variety of disciplines: What can soldiers, philosophers, economists, psychologists and sociologists teach us about war?

The core of the course seeks to introduce students to theories of war from within International Relations theory. We will utilize in-class exercises, movies and discussion sections to get at some of the most challenging questions surrounding war. Finally, we will examine several pressing issues relating to modern warfare: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, civil wars, genocide, religiously motivated violence, nonviolence, terrorism, and the future of war.

Subfield: International Relations

Please note the description is from Spring 2012

This class will introduce students to the complex phenomenon of human trafficking (also referred to as a form of modern day slavery) as defined in the United Nations Anti-Trafficking Protocol as well as the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) and its subsequent reauthorizations. In this class, we will discuss trafficking in human beings in its historical, legal, economic, political and social contexts, identifying the scope of the global problem, different forms of human trafficking, regional trends and practices, including trafficking in the United States, and the different actors involved at all levels.  We will discuss the complexity of human trafficking in order to understand root causes in a globalized world, as well as the relationship between supply and demand in diverse forms of trafficking.  We will examine the roles of government, the international community, civil society and individual actors in addressing the problem and will conclude with strategies that have proven effective in different parts of the world as well as in the United States.

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Define human trafficking;
2. Identify the components of a comprehensive anti-trafficking framework; and
3. Assess critical challenges in eradicating human trafficking in a global society.

This course aims to study sovereignty, widely regarded the core concept constitutive of modern state-centric politics and international law.  The first part of the course will study the origins of the concept in medieval legal and political thought and its later development in major texts by Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Rousseau, Schmitt, Arendt.  The second part of the course will then focus on major interpretive themes associated with the politics of sovereignty, such as territoriality, constitutionalism, and sovereignty in international law.  Readings may include studies by Agamben, Grimm, Kantorowicz, Krasner, Kalyvas, Loughlin, Skinner, Stilz, and Tierney. 

This is an upper-level undergraduate Theory course. 

It is highly recommended that students will have already completed EITHER PS 112a or 112b or an equivalent course in the history of political thought.