How can we read, write, and critically think (imagine) about African politics and society? The course presents contemporary ethnography on African politics and society during the postcolonial era, emphasizing the multiplicity, complexities, and diversity of African ideas, imaginations, practices, and experiences, in along with the variety of national and international factors that either influence or are impacted by them. Upon completing the course, students will have the essential critical thinking abilities and analytical tools required to recognize and challenge reductionist and biased narratives concerning Africa.

Democracy requires a proper understanding of the values and forms of social cooperation, we ought to honor. But it also requires practices that make it more likely that those values will be honored. This course will (1) examine institutional practices & political choices required to support a range of values we associate with democracy (2) examine the ways in which these values can be realized in the light of new challenges (3) use both philosophical texts and empirical material to understand the ways in which democracy can be better realized.

This is mainly a seminar in normative political theory insofar as it intersects with legal philosophy: its aim is to study, discuss and challenge some main contemporary (and occasionally, classical) legal conceptions of fundamental values posited in liberal and political theory. Of course, law is not the only, perhaps not even the most important, instrument for giving effect to liberal-democratic values, but it is certainly an indispensable guarantee of those ideals. Liberty under law, equality, justice and legitimacy: these will be four central themes of the seminar. Taken together, they cohere into an attractive vision of the rule of law.

This course studies artistic and cultural practices that created different aesthetics and politics of memory that have become essential to respond, denounce, and creatively resist to different forms of violence and human rights violations. Looking at essays, literature, visual arts, and sites of memory, the course will analyze how cultural works on memory and human rights have helped to create connections between past and present histories of both violence and resistance. Although the course focuses on Latin America, it will also look at forms of cultural transfer among memory practices from different parts of the world.

"It is the people who compose humankind", says Rousseau in Émile. How is it, then, that most citizens practically have no say in government? "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains": can that be mended? What would a governing people look like? What challenges would it have to face? What do the concepts of "government" and "people" entail? With these questions in mind, this course explores the most significant of Rousseau's political writings, combining political theory and literary analysis. We also explore Rousseau's lasting impact on political thought, from the French Revolution to contemporary politics.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked the greatest crisis since the Cold War and has put Eurasia again at the center of global politics. This course examines the evolution of American foreign policy toward Eurasia from 1991 onward. It seeks to identify the factors that have driven American policy, placing theoretical perspectives that emphasize geopolitical and balance-of-power considerations alongside those that focus on domestic politics and regime type. What are American objectives in Eurasia and how have they evolved? What roles do ideas, institutions, and individuals play in the formulation and execution of foreign policy?

This course introduces major theories of international relations, uses them to explain historical events from 10,000 BC to the present, and investigates contemporary policy issues such as human rights, terrorism, US foreign policy, climate change and global environmental regulation. The course also trains students how to write academic analyses, policy memos and media opinion pieces, thus preparing them for more specialized courses and research in international relations, as well as jobs in foreign policy.

A survey of the foundational texts of modern political theory. Emphasis is placed on close reading and the reconstruction and analysis of theoretical arguments.

An inquiry into the value of liberty and of particular civil rights and liberties. The course considers competing theoretical justifications for rights and liberties generally, as well as particular problems concerning freedom of speech and the press, religion, sexuality, abortion, and discrimination. Supreme Court opinions regarding the constitutionality of legislation in each of these areas will be discussed and criticized.

This course examines the art of statesmanship, the meaning of political greatness, and the proper means of educating aspiring young statesmen and stateswomen. The ambition, moral character, cunning, prudence, and grit required for effective statesmanship are analyzed using books written by past statesmen for future statesmen. The course also explores whether the life of grand politics is a desirable way of life. Differences between classical and modern statesmanship are considered, in addition to the unique political demands that different regimes and natural circumstances place on founders and leaders of nations.

Many of America's problems are economic in nature, yet politics make the solutions elusive. In "The Political Economy of the United States", this conundrum is explored in detail. We seek to explicitly understand the links between economic outcomes and political processes. Among the concepts explored are special interest influence, the role of money in politics, and regulatory capture. These concepts are brought to life in discussions about key issues and debates such as wealth taxation, the monopolization of social media, and the political effects of economic shocks and de-industrialization.

Police are perhaps the most visible face of American government and the decisions they make have life and death consequences. This course explores major questions in the study of the politics of policing, including how controversial police tactics such as stop-and-frisk are deployed, how rules and procedures affect the nature and volume of police-civilian interactions, how police militarization affects perceptions of law enforcement and crime, and the relationship between race and police behavior.

An introduction to the use of formal game-theoretic models in the study of politics. Applications include: voting, bargaining, lobbying, legislative institutions, and strategic information transmission. Familiarity with mathematical reasoning is helpful.

This course will engage broad questions of how racial politics has impacted democratic health in the United States. Students will design and collect data on measures of racial climate and access to democratic institutions. Students will gain direct training in how to collect original data with an opportunity to visit a government archive and compile novel datasets on race and democracy in the United States.

This course will focus on the state's role in promoting economic growth and distribution in the developing world. The core organizing question for the course is: why have some regions of the developing world been more successful at industrialization and/or poverty alleviation than other regions. The students will learn about the patterns of development in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with special attention to such countries as China, India, South Korea, Nigeria and Brazil. General challenges that face all developing countries - globalization, establishing democracy and ethnic fragmentation - will also be analyzed.

This course forms part of the political economy core, and it introduces political economy models in the context of comparative politics. The course will emphasize the interaction between political institutions and economic goals and it will illustrate the application of the analytical and empirical methods developed in the other core courses in political economy. The course will apply the tools of political economy to understand the reasons for the differences among countries' levels of economic and political development, and to explain the interconnectedness of political and economic outcomes.

This course will examine where and why women and men are not treated equally, how gender inequality impacts human welfare and development, and what works to minimize gender inequality in the Global South. This course will introduce students to cutting-edge research on gender inequality in countries as diverse as India, China, South Korea, Brazil, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Mali, as well as the reasons why some government efforts to reduce gender inequality are successful while others fail or even backfire. The course will emphasize the importance of culture and norms.

This course provides an overview of politics in the Middle East. We explore whether and how a variety of factors such as religion, oil, and foreign intervention have contributed to the persistence of authoritarianism in the region. Topics include the politics of redistrbiution, gender, protest, voting, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This course introduces the study of African politics. The lectures briefly review the social and historical context of contemporary political life. They then profile some of the changes of the early post-Independence period, the authoritarian turn of the 1970s and 80s, and the second liberation of the 1990s and 2000s, before turning to some contemporary challenges (e.g., conflict resolution, land tenure, natural resource management, public goods provision, climate resilience, health, urbanization). Each session introduces a major analytical debate, theories, and African views. Broadly comparative; some special attention to selected countries.

This course provides an overview and introduction to the politics of Southeast Asia. We will focus our attention on domestic politics and history of the ten constituent members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), plus East Timor and Papua New Guinea. The material covered in this course will mainly cover topics and events that have occurred since the end of World War II. We will begin with an overview of the region, before turning to a focus on the domestic politics of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. We will end with comparative analysis of thematic areas.

A historical study of the politics of human rights. What are human rights? How have dictatorships been resisted from the inside and outside? What policies have been attempted during major historical cases of genocide and mass atrocity? How do war crimes tribunals function and have they made a difference? Historical cases include the Ottoman Empire, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Imperial Japan, North Korea, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

This course is about international cooperation and sacrifice. We consider global organizations: the United Nations, World Bank, IMF, and WHO; and regional ones: the European Union, Asian Development Bank, and African Development Bank. We also consider China's new institution, the AIIB. We examine their origins and effectiveness, and the interests of powerful members, like the US and China, as well as countries in Latin America and Africa. Taking a political-economy approach, the course pedagogy involves references to films like Wonder Woman, The Dark Knight, and The Godfather, as well as music by Adele, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and Bob Marley.

This course considers how gender enters and shapes politics, primarily in the US context. It addresses a range of questions that center elections: How did women gain the right to vote? Are women voters really different than men voters? Are women politicians really any different than men politicians? Has women's involvement in electoral and institutional politics changed anything? It also considers how the gendered space of the American electoral system has limited its effectiveness in delivering outcomes desired by some groups of women, what their alternatives might be, and how those alternatives have been and continue to be pursued.

This course explores the political relationship of the military to the state and to society. It introduces students to the core concepts of civil-military relations, including civilian control, professionalism, and military intervention. The course engages significant cases from global twentieth-century history and surveys contemporary military politics around the world. Topics include coups d'état, responses to protests, and democratic transitions.

While before the 1990s democracies typically died through military coups, since 2000 four out of every five instances of democratic decline is due to democratically elected leaders undermining the very institutions established to ensure their accountability (i.e., "democratic backsliding"). Today, approximately one-third of the global population lives in a country that was once well-functioning democracies but is now experiencing a decline in the fairness of elections, the independence of courts, and the respect of minority rights. This course familiarizes students with the cutting edge of the current democratic backsliding literature.

International order encompasses the governing arrangements that organize relations among states, including the fundamental rules, principles, and institutions of the international system. This course draws on a wide range of readings in International Relations theory as well as diplomatic and global history to consider plausible accounts of the emergence, development, and decline of international orders across human history. The course will review prominent theories of international order, explore crucial junctures of order formation and decline, and consider the sociology and causal mechanics of pivotal institutions of international order.

The objective of this course is to debate several contentious issues surrounding globalization. Does globalization undermine national sovereignty? Cause political instability? Increase poverty and inequality? Harm the environment? By examining these among other issue-areas we will come to have a deeper appreciation of the costs and benefits surrounding globalization policies.

This course examines political thinkers who profoundly shaped normative thinking about politics in Indian, Islamic, African and Chinese contexts. The course will examine non-Western ideas of modernity, and justified forms of moral and political order. It will shed new light on key ideas of modern political thought: rights, justice, nationalism, identity, violence, perfectionism, democracy and power. The thinkers in this course such as Gandhi, Iqbal, Ambedkar, Qutub, Fanon, Cesaire, Mao and others, not only contribute to political theory. Their arguments also define fault lines in contemporary politics.

This seminar explores constitutional and legal issues posed by the attempted secession of eleven states of the Federal Union in 1860-1865 and the civil war this attempt triggered. Issues to be examined include the nature of secession movements (both in terms of the constitutional controversy posed in 1860-1861 and modern secession movements), the development of the "war powers" doctrine of the presidency, the suspension by the writ of habeas corpus, the use of military tribunals, and abuses of civil rights on both sides of the Civil War.

This course provides a broad introduction to qualitative research design and analysis techniques. Topics include small-n comparative case design, comparative-historical analysis, in-depth interviewing and ethnography. The core emphasis of the course is on application of these skills to students' own work, as well as engaging critically with qualitative work across

At the center of political life as we know it is the state's claim to authority and demand for obedience. In this course, we explore philosophical questions relating to authority, obedience, and disobedience. The course is divided into three parts. In part one, we consider what authority is and examine the anarchist challenge to authority. In part two, we explore different theories which seek to justify the state's claim to authority and demand for obedience. In part three, we examine the case for disobedience and consider the relationship between disobedience and other important political concepts.

This course offers a general introduction to the field of comparative politics at the Ph.D. level with an emphasis on principal theoretical approaches to the study of political institutions. Topics include powers of executives and legislatures, origins and behavior of parties and party systems, political participation (voting, collective action, social movements), public goods provision, the welfare state, prosperity, federalism & decentralization, and state capacity.

This class is an entry-level graduate study of US political institutions. As such, the seminar provides an overview of the field and, perhaps more importantly, a foundation upon which students can begin to teach themselves additional works in this literature. In addition, through brief assignments and class presentations, we build students' ability to conduct scholarly research, evaluate others' scholarship, and serve as discussants and reviewers.

This course examines psychological perspectives on politics. Themes include human limitation vs. human capacity, how institutions shape or interact with individual opinion and behavior, discussion and deliberation, and the role of groups. We will also discuss methodological issues.

A systematic study of the salient features of legal systems, standards of legal reasoning, and the relation between law and morals.

A close study of two of the leading figures of nineteenth century German political theory, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx. Themes to be discussed in connection with these thinkers include: history, freedom, recognition, property, civil society, modern state, alienation, political economy, exploitation, capitalism, and communism.

This is the first class of the quantitative methods field in the PhD. in Politics. It is a doctoral-level introduction to foundations of mathematical statistics for Ph.D. students in Politics and other social and behavioral sciences. The class covers rigorous foundations of classical point estimation and statistical inference, as well foundational topics in econometrics. It covers both finite-sample and large-sample theory and relies on linear algebra and multivariate calculus at the level of POL 502. POL 502 or equivalent is a pre-requisite of this class.

This is the second class of the quantitative methods field sequence in the PhD. in Politics, which covers foundations in mathematical statistics,applied statistics, and econometrics for Ph.D. students in Politics and other social and behavioral sciences. It is a continuation of POL 572. It reviews the linear model and covers panel data models, generalized method of moments, nonlinear regression, non-parametric methods, and resampling methods, among other topics.

Course introduces students to quantitative analysis of text from a social science perspective. Course is applied in nature, and while we give some theoretical treatment of the topics at hand, the primary aim is to help students understand the types of questions we can ask with text, and how to go about answering them. With that in mind, we first explain how texts may be modeled as quantitative entities and discuss how they might be compared. We then move to both supervised and unsupervised techniques in some detail, before dealing with some `special topics' that arise in particular lines of social science research.

A rigorous introduction to choice theory, social choice theory, and non-cooperative game theory. The course serves as the first formal theory graduate course and draws on mathematics at the level of POL 502.

The purpose of this course is to prepare students to do empirical research in political economy grounded on a theoretical analysis of strategic interactions. The course focuses on the estimation of dynamic and incomplete information games in politics, including models of bargaining, strategic voting, strategic information transmission, political agency, electoral competition, and media.

An introduction to the subfield of international political economy, covering basic topics in the politics of both trade and finance.

Enrolled graduate students in residence will attend one of these seminars each year and present their research. First-year students sign up for 593; second-year students for 594; third-year students for 595; fourth-year students for 596; and fifth-years 597. The seminars are offered in four fields: political philosophy, comparative politics, American politics, and international relations.

Enrolled graduate students in residence attend one of these seminars each year and present their research. First-year students sign up for 593; second-year students for 594; third-year students for 595; fourth-year students for 596; and fifth-years 597. The seminars are offered in four fields: political philosophy, comparative politics, American politics, and international relation.

Enrolled graduate students in residence attends one of these seminars each year and present their research. First-year students sign up for 593; second-year students for 594; third-year students for 595; fourth-year students for 596; and fifth-years 597. The seminars are offered in four fields: political philosophy, comparative politics, American politics, and international relations.

Enrolled graduate students in residence attends one of these seminars each year and present their research. First-year students sign up for 593; second-year students for 594; third-year students for 595; fourth-year students for 596; and fifth-years 597. The seminars are offered in four fields: political philosophy, comparative politics, American politics, and international relations.

Enrolled graduate students in residence attend one of these seminars each year and present their research. First-year students sign up for 593; second-year students for 594; third-year students for 595; fourth-year students for 596; and fifth-year students for 597. The seminars are offered in four fields: political theory, comparative politics, American politics, and international relations.

This two-day workshop is concerned with the professional obligations of political science researchers. This course is designed to raise those concerns and develop in students an appreciation for the issues that they might confront as they do their work. Topics include the relationship of political science as an academic discipline to democratic politics and institutions, advocacy and objectivity in political science, plagiarism and academic misconduct, human subjects and fieldwork, institutional review boards, funding sources and intellectual integrity, collaboration, and mentoring. Required of all first year Politics graduate students.

Grand strategy is the broad and encompassing policies and undertakings that political leaders pursue- financial, economic, military, diplomatic- to achieve their objectives in peacetime and in war. This course will examine the theory and practice of grand strategy both to illuminate how relations among city-states, empires, kingdoms and nation states have evolved over the centuries and also to identify some common challenges that have confronted all who seek to make and execute grand strategy from Pericles to Barack Obama.

Since the end of World War II the developing world has experienced numerous violent conflicts. These conflicts often pit government and allied forces against those of relatively small armed groups, called "insurgents." This course will explore the roots of insurgency, the organization and tactics of insurgent groups (including the use of terrorism), counterinsurgency campaigns, and efforts at conflict resolution. It will focus on the conditions under which insurgents are most likely to prevail in their fight against better-resourced armed forces.

The course examines major moral controversies in public life and competing conceptions of justice and the common good. It seeks to help students develop the skills required for thinking and writing about the ethical considerations that ought to shape public institutions, guide public authorities, and inform citizens' moral judgments in politics. We focus on issues that are particularly challenging for advanced, pluralist democracies such as the USA, including justice in war, terrorism and torture, market freedom and distributive justice, immigration, refugees, and criminal justice in conditions of social injustice.