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 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. PS 126A is a prerequisite for PS 126B, which examines foreign economic policy.

Subfield: International Relations

Please note the description is from Spring 2013

Should nations intervene in other countries to prevent human rights abuses or famine? On what principles should immigration be based? Should wealthy states aid poorer states, and if so, how much? Is it ever right to go to war? And if so, when, and with what means? We will examine different traditions in moral thought and use these tools to make reasoned judgments about these and similar difficult moral problems such as these in world politics.

This course falls within the International Relations subfield.

Please note the description is from Spring 2013

The Middle East seems plagued by endless strife:  wars, civil wars, insurgencies, terrorism.  Is that perception true?  If so, why is this region so conflict-prone?   What factors motivate, constrain, and shape these conflicts?  How can policy makers influence war in the Middle East?  This undergraduate lecture class takes on these and other thorny questions.  It is a sequel to PS124A (“War!”) and builds on insights from that class to explore war in a particular part of the world.

This is not a class on Middle East politics.  It is an IR class focused less on the politics of particular states and more on relations between states, especially violent relations.  This is not a class on the Arab-Israeli conflict or on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Both are important cases of war in the Middle East and will be explored alongside other significant conflicts in the region. 

Most importantly:  This is not a class designed to defend a specific claim or theory about conflict in the Middle East.  On the contrary, this is a social science class:   My goal is to teach the importance of exploring pressing policy questions by testing the strengths and weaknesses of competing and often contradictory theories in an even-handed manner.  At the same time, students will be expected to reach their own conclusions and produce pragmatic recommendations in the form of policy memoranda.

This class begins, like its counterpart, with a historical overview of war in the region.  The second part of the class introduces theories that complement and elaborate on theories from PS124A:  arguments about the relationship between war and resources, religion, authoritarianism, civil-military relations, territorial disputes, sovereignty, and power.  In the third part of the course, we will explore current policy concerns related to conflict in the region:  Nuclear proliferation, terrorism, the civil war in Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drone warfare, and the U.S. role in the region.

Are human rights women's rights? Are women's rights human rights? This course examines the international human rights system (treaties, conventions, institutions and case law) through the lens of gender, exploring the ways in which they are organized around gendered assumptions that shape and limit their ability to reach and remedy the reality of women's lives. The course also considers the tension between international human rights law and local gender justice as well as how international human rights have evolved in response to the rise of global feminisms. The course explores these issues through a series of case studies examining such issues as sexual violence, human trafficking, religious freedom and women's access to education, health care and employment.

Subfield: International Relations

Note: This description is from Fall 2013

Billions of dollars have been given to developing countries over the past fifty years, yet critics argue that aid is ineffectual and, worse yet, harmful to recipients. In this course, we will examine the politics surrounding the delivery of international aid, exploring who decides the aid agenda, which countries receive what aid and, once delivered, how aid interacts with the political dynamics of recipient communities. The course begins with a brief history of ‘development’ as a concept, tracing the international aid regime’s evolution over the last century, before turning to current debates over international assistance, highlighting throughout how politics pervades even the most ‘technical’ of aid interventions.

The course combines a traditional lecture format with the Harvard Business School case method. The case method asks students to collectively make a decision on a real-world case involving international aid. The case method highlights to students the strategic and ethical complexities of aid work, encouraging students to develop their ability to articulate clear, persuasive arguments and to engage in complex negotiations with their classmates. Active participation in case discussions is therefore central to the course grading structure.

This course introduces students to modern African politics, focusing on the region’s political trends and trajectories from the colonial era to the present. We begin by studying the region’s political experiences through the turn of the 21^st century before turning to current dilemmas and questions in African politics. Particular attention is paid to the prospects for and constraints on economic development and democratic consolidation and contemporary challenges, such as the rise of new forms of political participation and political challenges to the state. Reoccurring themes include the interaction of formal and informal institutions in African societies, Africa’s position in the global economy and the nature of the state in Africa, highlighting throughout both what is specific to Africa and its sub-regions and where the continent’s politics find broader comparability with other world regions.

Subfield: Comparative Politics

The aim of this course is to introduce students to key texts and topics by some of the most significant and well known thinkers in the history early modern political thought writing roughly between 1500 and 1770. The works we will consider span the periods characterized by European historians as the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

Please note that this course description is from Spring 2014.

Is there a connection between the unprecedented presidential campaign of 2016, the dysfunctional government in Washington, D.C., and in the so called “culture wars” in America?  The sophisticated social science that has analyzed our election choices and identified our political differences has not been able to explain why the world’s most powerful and wealthy society is so deeply divided on so many issues, and in such personal and polemical ways.  Coupled with random mass killings, police involved shootings and the shooting of police, what is behind the violence in our society so different than in other first world democracies.  It may be that social science cannot answer that question on its own.  It may be that a theoretical analysis of our history and culture can offer insight and context that is beyond mere empirical analysis. 

The history of the American political founding generally follows a routine script.  The story goes that Americans fought for self-government from an overbearing political authority wielded by the British Crown and established individual freedom to pursue private prosperity and social emancipation.  Later, fear of the British Crown morphed into fear of any central political authority in general to the point where today Americans mistrust government.  In that script, African slavery and Native American dispossession are viewed as historical exceptions that still require a coherent explanation, but are unrelated to the issues at the core of contemporary American politics.

In this course, the revolution against traditional political authority embodied in Thomas Jefferson's and Thomas Paine's attacks on the British crown, the rise of slavery, and the conflict with Native America will be viewed as co-extensive and coherent elements of our past and our national cultural and social development.  In short, I will argue that America possesses a distinct cultural identity that has shaped our politics, policies, the shape of our national government, and remains at the core of our popular culture. 

I will place these historical elements in context with the theory of cultural trauma that resulted from the 3^rd Estate European poor displaced to North America between the 16^th and 19^th centuries.  I will connect that trauma to our national fear of political authority in America.  I will also suggest that this fear is what binds both the progressives who attack the National Security Administration to the conservatives who stand by gun rights. This cultural and social trauma becomes the catalyst of America’s cultural identity, and that cultural identity may be the basis of our existing political structure, the character of contemporary politics, and our approach to much of our public policy. 

 I will offer a cultural trope; the American Western, that contains all the aspects of a cultural identity built out of trauma and fear.  We will see its imprint in many cultural social and political artifacts.  I will speak to the significance of the “Western”, its frontier setting and its uber-masculine character.  Through this cultural lens, students will be offered a way of understanding contemporary American politics and public policy that was previously unknown to them. Using original materials from the antebellum, including biographies, history, literature, and commentary, as well as contemporary images from American popular culture [such as film clips, news, and documentaries], a connection between the past and present will be presented.  

The American Cultures requirement seeks comparisons and contrasts of at least three cultural entities in its format.  The requirement will be achieved through contrast and comparison of Native American, European American, and African American cultural identities in the ante and post bellum, and their interplay in the story of American political history.  This is a course in political theory that will give context to both culture and politics in America.  Your work will be presented in three separate papers (a 6-page take-home midterm, 12-page term paper, and a 6-page take-home final exam), and discussions of course materials in sections.  Attendance at both lectures and sections are elements of the course grade.  There will be a focus on writing skills and framing expository arguments, as well as discussion and participation in lecture, section and office hours.