214 courses with the subject GOVT, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
This First-Year Writing Seminar is devoted to the study of political power and the interaction of citizens and governments and provides the opportunity to write extensively about these issues. Topics vary by term.
Disagreement is at the heart of the university, at the heart of democracies, and even at the heart of the founding of the United States. In universities, scholars in every discipline engage in disagreement every day, from the nature of the outer reaches of the galaxy, to the value and meaning of different works of literature, to the ideal forms of government. Similarly, democracies confront disagreement as often as they do agreement: for example, how should wealth be distributed? How do we balance rights with responsibilities? How fast should speed limits be? And the United States was founded in the face of very serious disagreements which persist to this day: how free should speech be? What should be the role of religion in public life? How should the rights of the States be balanced against the national government? Effective scholars and effective citizens alike need to wrestle with how to disagree. This course addresses this challenge head on, using disagreements in the founding of the United States to help us learn how to disagree better. Students will observe and engage with leading academics and public intellectuals exploring the disagreements at the heart of American democracy and society. These conversations are held live on campus, giving students a chance to experience them collectively, and then engaging in a moderated discussion about them afterwards. Second, students will undertake seminar discussions about these topics with other students. This will happen under the supervision of a faculty member, who can engage students in the material from their own disciplinary perspective. Third, students will complete a single assignment with another students, where they learn how to work through an issue on which they disagree.
A policy-centered approach to the study of government in the American experience. Considers the American Founding and how it influenced the structure of government; how national institutions operate in shaping law and public policy; who has a voice in American politics and why some are more influential than others; and how existing public policies themselves influence social, economic, and political power. Students will gain an introductory knowledge of the founding principles and structure of American government, political institutions, political processes, political behavior, and public policy. (GOVT-AM)
This course will introduce students to comparative politics-the study of the political institutions, identities, and organized interests in countries around the world. Emphasis is on how to make meaningful comparisons between systems in different countries. Towards that goal, we will be looking at a dozen countries with different histories, political systems, and from various regions around the world. We will also use a comparative framework to use our knowledge of these (and other) countries to examine questions about democracies and democratization, electoral systems and political parties, authoritarian regimes, political mobilization and change, economic development and globalization, nationalism and identity politics, among other topics. The meta theme of this course is the comparative method as a unique way of leveraging our understanding about social and political phenomena. (GOVT-CP)
At the inception of this department at Cornell University in 1969, the Africana Studies and Research Center became the birthplace of the field Africana studies. Africana studies emphasizes comparative and interdisciplinary studies of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. In this course, we will look at the diverse contours of the discipline. We will explore contexts ranging from modernity and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation complex in the New World to processes of decolonization and globalization in the contemporary digital age. This course offers an introduction to the study of Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and other diasporas. This course will examine, through a range of disciplines, among them literature, history, politics, philosophy, the themes - including race/racism, the Middle Passage, sexuality, colonialism, and culture - that have dominated Africana Studies since its inception in the late-1960s. We will explore these issues in an attempt to understand how black lives have been shaped in a historical sense; and, of course, the effects of these issues in the contemporary moment. This course seeks to introduce these themes, investigate through one or more of the disciplines relevant to the question, and provide a broad understanding of the themes so as to enable the kind of intellectual reflection critical to Africana Studies.
This course introduces students to political theory as a distinctive mode of political inquiry. By surveying the wide range of forms through which political theory has been practiced-such as treatises, dialogues, plays, aphorisms, novels, manifestos, letters, speeches, illustrations, and films-we explore the ways in which political theory reflects upon, criticizes, and reshapes the basic concepts, habits of perception, and modes of feeling through which people make sense of the political world, from big events like wars and revolutions to everyday experiences of felt injustice or alienation. Our approach will be both historical and conceptual, attending to the force of each theoretical intervention in its context, while also drawing out the broader philosophical and political questions it continues to pose to us now. (GOVT-PT)
This course offers a survey of some of Western political philosophy's great canonical theorists: Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx. Our approach will be both historical and conceptual, as we explore the nature of justice, freedom and equality-their presence and absence--in the Western tradition. (GOVT-PT)
In 1868, samurai revolutionaries and their allies seized the reins of power and established a new capital they called Tokyo. Against all odds, this fragile regime survived and made Tokyo a center of power that would transform both Japan and the world. This survey of Japanese history explores the rise and fall of Japan as a modern imperial power; its foreign relations; its economic and scientific development from feudalism to futuristic technologies; and Japan's many modern revolutions, from the rule of the samurai to Westernization and democracy, from democratic collapse to fascism and World War II, and from Japan's postwar rebirth to the present. We will examine not only big events but also everyday life, including gender and sexuality, family and schools, and art and popular culture. (ASIAN-SC, HIST-HAN)
This course is a survey of some of the canonical and some of the most exciting contemporary works in the field of Black political thought. The first half covers foundational texts from Delany, Douglass, Du Bois, and Garvey to Baldwin, King, Malcolm X, and Ellison. It focuses on questions such as: what is the nature of the wrong(s) African Americans have suffered in the United States?; what is a race?; what sustains systems of racist domination and exclusion?; and what is the best way to dismantle them? The second part of the course consists of an examination of contemporary works dealing with questions such as the nature and causes of racism in the 21st century, the future of Black political solidarity, and the claim that Blacks have and will never achieve any sort of emancipation in this world. (GOVT-PT)
An introduction to the basic concepts and practice of international politics with an emphasis on learning critical thinking. The course is divided into two parts. In the first half, we will learn about different explanations. In the second half, we will apply these explanations to a set of international events. (GOVT-IR)
As a country, we are what we remember. But who decides what facts and stories about the past are important enough to memorialize? What does that decision tell us about power and truth? This class will discuss how the attacks of September 11 are remembered in the United States and the rest of the world. (GOVT-AM)
The goal of the course is to introduce students to the study of crime and policing. It is intended to familiarize students with some of the main causes of crime, with an emphasis on violent crime) and different strategies that governments and citizens have relied on to address it. The first part of the course focuses on a conceptual overview of crime, criminal order, the main features of illicit markets, and the dynamics of crime's territorial expansion. The second part focuses on different forms of policing, especially zero tolerance, hot spots, community, and militarized approaches, as well as non-state forms of policing and the opportunities and challenges of police reform. The course will discuss these topics in comparative perspective, with a majority of examples drawn from experiences in the United States and Latin America. (GOVT-CP)
This course centers Black women who have often described their reproductive health experiences as fighting for our lives. While grounded in an exploration of Black women 's experiences in the US, this course also looks across the diaspora to issues of access, rights, and equity in reproductive health. Deeply inspired by the field of Black Feminist Health Science Studies, a field that advocates for the centrality of activism in healthcare and its importance for Black women's overall health and well-being, this course examines how issues of gender, race, class, ability, and power intersect to inform how reproductive health is conceptualized, practiced, and experienced. Ultimately, this course will yield a deeper understanding of how Black women have transformed existential and literal threats on their lives into a robust terrain of community-based activism and a movement for reproductive justice. We will read across a range of texts and genres from the historical and theoretical, to memoir and documentary. With what we learn together, we will craft contributions to public debates around healthcare issues impacting Black women. (HIST-HNA)
This course offers an introduction to Latina/o/x politics in the United States. We examine the political experiences, participation, and representation of Latino/a/x communities, with attention to identity, leadership, media, social movements, and policy preferences. The course emphasizes the historical, cultural, and demographic factors that shape political engagement and influence. Students gain foundational tools for understanding Latino/a/x within the broader U.S. political system. (GOVT-AM)
This course introduces topics in law that vary each semester. Past topics have included: International Law, Due Process Law, and Business Law.TermTopicInstructor(s)FallPrinciples of Constitutional LawM. Huffaker, E. Kim, A. Minott, K.A. OsunsadeFallConstitutional Law & the Executive BranchJ. Canzoneri, S. DiazFallPsychology & LawC. Buxton, B. Dekolf, A. Franz, D. GaravitoFallProperty Theory & the LawG. Chawla, D. KinelSpringWritten & Oral AdvocacyA. Kastner
This course is offers students a platform for critical examination of the political, historical, educational, social and economic conditions of the African continent. Topics will include eradication of poverty, access to nutrition, health care, clean water and energy, education, elimination of inequality with a special emphasis on gender equity, sustainable and environmentally sensitive industrial development, responsible consumption, protection of land and life below water, promotion of sustainable communities and global peace and partnership.
How are migration dynamics produced? How do states and communities respond to and shape complex migration processes? This course will draw on the United States as a case study, focusing on Latino immigrants. Latinos are by far the largest immigrant group in the U.S., representing about 50% of all immigrants. Additionally, the U.S. has historically received the largest number of immigrants in the world. The class will examine the main debates around migration in fields such as Latino studies, migration studies, and political science. We begin with a historical and contemporary survey of global and regional migration trends. Next, we will review theories explaining why people migrate and how countries manage migration processes. We then focus on the U.S. immigration apparatus, examining past and present changes, including migration public policies. Central to this class is the exploration of multiple systems of marginalization that shape the opportunities, material conditions, and lived experiences of immigrants in the U.S. We conclude with an exploration of historical and contemporary migrant-led forms of resistance, such as the Immigrant Rights Movement, and its linkages to other transnational struggles for social justice. (GOVT-AM)
This course provides an overview of public opinion in the United States. We will learn how opinions affect and are affected by politics. This course is divided into two sections where we will answer two questions. First, what is public opinion and how is it reported in the news? Students will learn how the design and implementation of surveys affects survey outcomes, and why this means we sometimes see different statistics about the public's opinion across news sources. Second, what shapes public opinion? In the second half of the course, we will turn to the different political and personal forces that shape how the public thinks about different issues. For example, how do our friends, family, and elected officials change how we think about current events? (GOVT-AM)
This is an introductory course covering the basic elements of American civil procedure. Civil procedure refers to the rules, doctrines, and ongoing issues that order civil litigation in U.S. Courts. This course includes weekly readings of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and at least one or two cases, which will be discussed in class.
This course explores the causes and consequences of modern day civil wars. The first part of the course looks at individual, group, and state level factors that might cause civil wars to break out. The second part of the course looks at the dynamics of civil wars including intensity and types of violence. The third part assesses the consequences of civil war and the last part assesses how civil wars end. (GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
This overview course will take a thematic and interdisciplinary approach to major questions of our time, including health, development, migrations, security, technology, inequality, and innovation. We will explore issues that span international borders, and yet observe variation in unique places, contexts, and time periods. The course endeavors to prepare students for the world through cultivating knowledge of different cultures, and deepening understanding of global affairs through innovative research. We will think comparatively across major world regions, and work on issues that integrate specific regions within the larger international community. By applying multi-disciplinary knowledge from the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, students will better understand the character of world regions, their respective trajectories, and the way those trajectories fit within the larger context of globalization. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP)
Even through different countries may adopt similar economic strategies, their industrial relations system are generally quite unique, based on the particular institutional histories in each nation. This course is focused on understanding industrial relations systems around the world. Structured on a regional basis (Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and Asia), students will appreciate the similarities and differences in industrial relations within each region, and in particular the impact of the design of each national industrial relations system on outcomes for workers, employers, and national governments.
An introduction to the use of quantitative data and quantitative methodology for political science and political scientists. We will cover statistics (data, probability, regression), research design, and computation.
This course explores trends in democracy around the world as both a product of public policy (which policies support and bolster democratic transitions and endurance), and as a factor that shapes representation, public policy and governance outcomes. How citizen interests translate into public policy outcomes is a key question of democratic practice. The course will identify variation across the world and use empirical analysis to identify patterns. It provides an opportunity to investigate the complex ways that regime politics (whether democratic or autocratic), public policies, and social inequalities shape one another.
The course concerns the principles and philosophical arguments underlying conflicts and moral dilemmas of central and ongoing concern to society as they arise within legal contexts. We consider questions such as what justifies using state power to punish people for wrongdoing, what kinds of conduct are rightly criminalized, what justifies the Supreme Court's power to strike down Congressional legislation, what justifies the right to private property and its boundaries, what is the right to privacy and why it is important, what are human rights, and what is the morality and law of war. Throughout we will be reading legal cases and philosophical commentaries that engage with the deep issues that the cases pose.
This course provides an introduction to politics in South Asia, a diverse region that is home to a quarter of the world?s population, by exploring select topics: modern political institutions, colonial legacies, gender, religion and caste politics, and subnational conflicts. It primarily draws on evidence from Pakistan and India, and secondarily from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. This is not a history course or a complete survey of politics across South Asia. Rather, by the end of the course, students will be able to identify empirical patterns of politics in modern South Asia and interpret current events within broader political science frameworks. Students will also have unique opportunities to engage with policymakers based in South Asia. (GOVT-CP)
What is Central Asia? How have religion and culture shaped the region?s modern identity? What are the lasting impacts of colonialism and empire on contemporary Central Asian politics? How is climate change influencing migration patterns? And how have energy resources shaped the economies of Central Asian countries and their roles in international politics? This course invites students to explore these critical questions through an examination of Central Asia?s history, society, politics, and international relations. (GOVT-CP)
This course examines the history of Zionism as an idea and as a political movement in all its various forms, currents, and transformations from its origins in mid-nineteenth century Europe to the present. Despite its success in establishing the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism, which also sought to normalize Jewish collective life and provide a safe haven from persecution for the Jews, has encountered multiple challenges from within and without. Some continue to think of it as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people while others regard it is a Western inspired colonial project. Originating largely as a radical rejection of both traditional Jewish religious life and the Jews' diaspora in favor of modern nationalism, since 1967 Zionism has witnessed religious-nationalist fervor and a Jewish diaspora increasingly interested in or disinterested with the state of Israel. The course also considers the phenomenon of post-Zionism in Israeli historiography as well as Zionism's difficulty in coming to terms with the idea and reality that two peoples rather than one live in the land west of the Jordan. We'll also consider the Palestinian response framed as Zionism from the standpoint of its victims.
This course will cover current events in Europe as they unfold during the semester. Each week the two meetings will features a topic day in which students learn about a current issue of importance for Europe and a analytical day in which we see how social science tools and methods can help us better understand that issue. Faculty from across the university will be invited to deepen students' understanding of elections, European Union actions and debates, refugee issues, security issues, and other relevant political and social events occurring in Europe. The course will respond flexibly to unforeseen events, teach students to become intelligent consumer of high quality news sources on Europe, expose students to different points of view on these issues, and introduce them to relevant social science theories and methods. (GOVT-CP)
This course will examine key issues in social and political philosophy. Topics may include the legitimacy of the state, political obligation, the nature and demands of justice, equality, liberty, and autonomy. Selected readings may be drawn from historical as well as contemporary sources.
In this course, we'll consider how some influential political thinkers of the twentieth century made sense of, responded to, and sometimes participated in key events and developments of their era-wars, revolutions, anticolonial struggles, new social movements, transformations in culture, the changing face of capitalism, reconfigurations of state power and international organization, and more. How did these political theorists take up and, under the pressure of new circumstances, adapt or alter the ideas of their predecessors? How did their work shape the terms within which political theory still operates today? (GOVT-PT)
What does it mean to live and act politically in “dark times”? This class considers this question via the work of Hannah Arendt, one of the most brilliant, maddening, controversial, and unclassifiable political thinkers of the twentieth century, offering students a sampling of her writings from the 1940s into the 1970s paired with writings on related themes by some of her contemporaries. Topics and pairings will change from year to year but may include the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government, ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and politics, the intersections between capitalism, bureaucracy, and technology, the meanings of fundamental ideas like “freedom” and “power,” the political significance of modern art, literature and culture, revolutionary politics in Europe and North America, racism and antisemitism, violence, war, and civil disobedience, among others. (GOVT-PT)
This course offers a survey of American political thought from the colonial period to the present. We will read Puritan sermons, revolutionary pamphlets, philosophical treatises, presidential orations, slave narratives, prison writings, and other classic texts, in order to understand the ideas and debates that have shaped American politics. Topics to be discussed will include the meaning of freedom, the relationship between natural rights and constitutional authority, the idea of popular sovereignty, theories of representation and state power, race and national identity, problems of inequality, and the place of religion in public life. Lectures will be organized around both historical context and close reading of primary texts. (GOVT-PT, HIST-HNA)
This lecture class will explore the socio-cultural history of modern Egypt from the late 18th century to the 21st century Arab Spring. We will explore Egyptian history under the Ottomans and the Mamluks, the unsuccessful French attempts to colonize Egypt, and the successful British occupation of the country. We will then examine the development of Egyptian nationalism from the end of the 19th century through Nasser's pan-Arabism to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. We will accomplish this with the aid of a variety of texts and media, including novels and films. (HIST-HGS)
This course examines major trends in the evolution of the Middle East in the modern era. Focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries and ending with the Arab Spring, we will consider Middle East history with an emphasis on five themes: imperialism, nationalism, modernization, Islam, and revolution. Readings will be supplemented with translated primary sources, which will form the backbone of class discussions. (HIST-HGS)
These seminars offer an introduction to the humanities by exploring historical, cultural, social, and political themes. Students will explore themes in critical dialogue with a range of texts and media drawn from the arts, humanities, and/or humanistic social sciences. Guest speakers, including Cornell faculty and Society for the Humanities Fellows, will present from different disciplines and points of view. Students will make field trips to relevant local sites and visit Cornell special collections and archives. Students enrolled in these seminars will have the opportunity to participate in additional programming related to the annual focus theme of Cornell's Society for the Humanities and the Humanities Scholars Program for undergraduate humanities research. (ARKEO-COS)
This course examines controversies in the theory and history of civil disobedience. Do citizens have obligations to obey unjust laws? Can law breaking ever be civil rather than criminal? Do disruptive protests endanger democracy or strengthen the rule of law? How do acts of protest influence public opinion and policy? How is the distinction between violence and nonviolence politically constructed and contested? We will study classical writings and contemporary scholarship in pursuit of answers to these questions and related debates concerning the rule of law, conscientious objection, the uses of civility and incivility, punishment and responsibility, as well as whistleblowing, direct action, strikes, sabotage, hacktivism, and rioting. (GOVT-PT)
The course is an introduction to game theory, for students from different disciplinary backgrounds and interests. Game theory, as a discipline, is barely one hundred years old. From its origins in the analysis of parlor games, it has now become part of real life, including diplomacy and corporate strategy. Its rapid rise to prominence, with implications for various disciplines, from economics and computer science, to politics, philosophy and evolutionary biology has few parallels. This course is designed as a primer for students who have no background in game theory but have an interest in deductive reasoning.
This course presents a cultural and historical perspective on ideas of agency, responsibility, and punishment through foundational texts of western law. We will primarily focus on three main areas of law: (1) slavery and (2) family (both governed by the Roman law of persons), and (3) civil wrongs (the law of delict or culpable harm). Through an examination of the legal sources (in translation) and the study of the reasoning of the Roman jurists, this course will examine the evolution of jurisprudence: the development of the laws concerning power over slaves and women, and changes in the laws concerning penalties for crimes. No specific prior knowledge needed.
Donald Trump and Biden give us two visions of America and of the world: xenophobic nationalism and pragmatic cosmopolitanism. America and the world are thus constituted by great diversity. The first half of the course seeks to understand that diversity in American politics and foreign policy viewed through the prisms of region, ideology, region, race, class and religion. The second half inquires into the U.S. and American engagement of different world regions and civilizations: Europe, Russia, North America, Latin America, China, Japan, India and the Middle East. U.S. hard power and American soft power find expression in far-reaching processes of American-infused globalization and U.S.-centered anti-Americanism reverberating around the world. Advocates of one-size-fits-all solutions to America's and the world's variegated politics are in for great disappointments. (GOVT-IR)
Is Afghanistan part of Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East? Is it truly the 'graveyard of empires'? Why are great powers so interested in intervening in this country? Why did Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States fail to maintain their presence there? How does Afghan society and politics function? In this course, students will have the opportunity to explore answers to these and other questions. (GOVT-IR)
This course provides an overview of the evolving architecture, processes, and outcomes in global governance. It examines the ways in which global governance does (or does not) work in practice as well as possible ways of improving the capacity of the international community to deal with global challenges. We will explore these issues through case studies of today’s most pressing issues, such as climate change, wars of aggression, accountability for mass atrocity, global public health crises, cybersecurity, business and human rights, and refugee flows.
This lecture course is an introduction to the systematic study of international security, asking and critically analyzing a series of major puzzles in the field. Why do arms races and wars repeatedly occur, and why is there no world government to resolve these disputes? Why is war between states more common today than at any point since 1945? Why do so many modern wars seem like they have no end in sight? What motivates security competition among major powers, such as the United States, Russia, and China, today? Students will learn about the causes of war, nuclear deterrence, alliances, covert action, and asymmetric warfare, among other topics.
This course examines the history of the conflict between two peoples with claims to the same land (Palestine/Israel), from the rise of their national movements at the turn of the 20th century and their eventual clash down to the present crisis. We will investigate the various stable and shifting elements in the evolution of the conflict including conflicting Israeli and Palestinian narratives and mythologies about the nature of the conflict. Among many issues to be addressed are: the relationship of this conflict to the history of European colonialism in the Middle East, the emergence of Pan-Arabism and Islamism, the various currents in Zionism and its relationship to Judaism, the implication of great power rivalry in the Middle East, the different causes and political repercussions of the four Arab-Israeli wars, efforts at peacemaking including Oslo and Camp David, and the significance of the two Palestinian uprisings.
This seminar, using faculty-directed research projects, is intended to survey China's transformation through revolution and reform since 1949, and to examine major issues under the themes of modernity and sustainability in the reform era.
This course, offered by faculty members of Peking University's School of International Studies, provides Chinese perspectives on contemporary China's international relations.
Public policies are political outcomes determined by processes that are complex, convoluted and often controversial. The aim of this course is to equip students with the conceptual tools necessary to understand these processes. We will begin with a review of popular approaches to studying policy and then move on to explore the various stages of policy development: agenda-setting, policy design, policy implementation, policy feedback and policy change. We will consider the roles played by both institutions (congress, the bureaucracy and interests groups) and everyday people. Finally, we will closely study several specific policy arenas (a few likely candidates include: education policy, health policy, social welfare policy and housing policy). As we engage all of these ideas, students will be consistently challenged to grapple with the paradoxes of policy making in a democratic polity and to envision pathways for substantive political change. (GOVT-AM)
This course will examine the politics of technology, with an emphasis on dual use technologies such as social media, artificial intelligence, and facial recognition. It will look at political consequences of those technologies, including the way that social media can be manipulated in an electoral context, how AI and automation can affect public policies (e.g., predictive policing) and ways to mitigate algorithmic biases embedded in these technologies, and questions of whether the United States and China are locked in a technology arms race and if global governance proposals can defuse the adverse consequences of great power competition over technology. (GOVT-AM)
This course provides students with an analytical framework to understand China's ongoing economic transformation. The courses goals include: 1) to familiarize students with different perspectives on China's economic development and future prospects; 2) to provide a close working knowledge of the evolving current situation, with a focus on internal variation within China-telling different Chinese stories, not one China story-and particularly emphasizing urbanization and the goal of shifting from manufacturing and export-led to services and domestic-led economy; and 3) to give students hands-on experience using Chinese economic data in the context of a brief research note. Each week will connect to current events and debates, with students writing three blog posts over the course of the semester to bring academic research and social scientific analysis to bear upon policy-relevant questions and developments. (ASIAN-SC)
The course examines the historical political landscape of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States and the interplay between tribal interests, politics, and the federal government. The course also looks at contemporary Native issues, federal policy and programs, tribal governance, relations between Tribal Nations and states and between Tribal Nations and the federal government. Finally, the course will explore Indigenous pop-culture and its influence on federal policy.The majority of classes will have a guest lecturer related to that week's topic. Guest lectures will include, but not limited to, political appointees, congressional staff, political advocates, elected tribal leaders, and more.
Climate policy is one of the most important and contentious areas of politics in the US today. In this course we will consider climate change in the United States, identifying how political institutions, everyday people, and the physical environment come together to affect climate policy. This course will consider climate policy at the local and federal level, as well as examine how the US participates in international climate agreements. Students will critically analyze contemporary US climate policy; develop and addresses pertinent research questions; and learn how to conduct and communicate policy-relevant research. (GOVT-AM)
The US and the global community face a number of complex, interconnected and enduring issues that pose challenges for our political and policy governance institutions and society at large. Exploring how the US and the world conceive of the challenges and take action on them is fundamental to understanding them. This course investigates such issues, especially ones in the critical areas of sustainability, social justice, technology, public health and globalization, security and conflict. Students will engage with these areas and issues and the challenges they pose, using multiple frameworks and approaches, through weekly class discussions and lectures.
Since its ratification the U.S. Federal Constitution has been a fixed element of the American experience. And yet the meaning Americans attribute to the document - from its structural and rights provisions to its basic ethical project - has been subject to intense debate and change. This class takes an historical approach to explore periods of sustained crisis in the constitutional order - from the founding and the Civil War to the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement. In the process, special attention will be paid to the techniques of constitutional interpretation and judicial doctrine as well as to constitutional struggle outside the judiciary. We will also assess broader questions of inclusion, democratic legitimacy, and institutional design. The course will end by engaging with the relationship between the present and those earlier periods of crisis. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-PT)
This course will introduce students to the law and practice of international human rights. Students will think critically about the effectiveness of the international human rights system by examining its successes, failures, and dilemmas in preventing and responding to human rights abuse. Topics covered include the origins of international human rights; the role of international, regional, and domestic institutions and actors in enforcing human rights; critiques of the human rights movement; challenges encountered in human rights advocacy; and the relationship of the United States to the international system for the protection of human rights. The course will also explore issues such as the immigration, the death penalty, gender justice, climate change, global poverty, racism and xenophobia, and responses to mass atrocities. Throughout this interactive course, students will have frequent opportunities to step into the shoes of a human rights advocate and work individually and with their classmates to address simulated human rights problems.
This course reviews the changing relations between science, technology, and the state in America, focusing on the period from 1960 to the present. We will explore science-intensive policy controversies. We will also look at how science and technology are used in different institutional settings, such as Congress, the court system, and regulatory agencies. Among other issues, we will examine the tension between the concept of science as an autonomous system for producing knowledge and the concept of science as entangled with interest groups.
How is public policy really formed in the United States today? Who are the key actors and decision makers who shape the laws and regulations that impact us at the local, state and federal levels of government? Most importantly, how do private individuals (lobbyists, trade associations, media and other influencers) sway how laws, rules and regulations impact our daily lives? The goal of this course is to provide a foundation of how private influence impacts our public policy. Building upon this foundation, students will learn who the key policymakers are in the public sector alongside of those in the private sector who seek to influence them. Students will gain knowledge through academic texts looking at the role of interest group politics in America as well as the instructor's 30 years of experience working as a public policy practitioner working at the highest levels of government on Capitol Hill and the White House as well as being a former lobbyist and licensed attorney at law.
The course will be a lecture course on Congress, introducing them to the political science literature on the topic and the major research questions and approaches. We will examine the development of the institution, including formal theories for congressional organization as well as historically and politically oriented accounts of rule changes, committee power, and party influence. We will also look at the determinants of legislative productivity and gridlock, approaches to measuring and analyzing congressional behavior, the changing role of the electoral connection, and the causes and consequences of polarization. (GOVT-AM)
This is a class about the American criminal justice system-from policing to prisons, from arrest to reentry. In many ways, the operation of the modern criminal justice system is taken for granted, which frequently allows it to escape close scrutiny. But we will examine it in great detail, with a focus on how it came about, how it sustains itself, its many roles in society (only some of which involve crime and justice), and how and why it may be changing. In Spring 2027, the class will take a particular look at the use of the criminal justice system by the Trump Administration and reflect on whether, and to what extent, that use has been legitimate. NB: This class is designed to challenge your settled assumptions and dearly held myths about what is right and wrong with the system. Those who have made up their mind about criminal justice in America should not take the course. (GOVT-AM)
The United States has been widely associated with democratic ideals, and yet American democracy has been long in the making, even in recent decades retaining hallmarks of an unfinished work. It has evolved over time through an arduous and halting process, and it has not always moved in the direction of progress. How would we know if American democracy today was truly endangered and subject to backsliding? This course engages this question by grappling with what democracy means, how we can measure its attributes, and how we can assess whether they are robust or deteriorating. We focus on four key threats to democracy: political polarization; conflict over membership and status, particularly around race and gender; economic inequality; and the growth of executive power. We will consider the status of of free and fair elections, the rule of law, the legitimacy of the opposition, and the integrity of rights, including voting rights, civil rights, and civil liberties, studying how these features have developed historically and what happened in periods when they were under threat. We will also evaluate the contemporary political context by applying the same analytical tools. (GOVT-AM)
A general-education course to acquaint students with how our legal system pursues the goals of society. The course introduces students to various perspectives on the nature of law, what functions it ought to serve in society, and what it can and cannot accomplish. The course proceeds in the belief that such matters constitute a valuable and necessary part of a general education, not only for pre-law students but especially for students in other fields. Assigned readings comprise legal materials and also secondary sources on the legal process and the role of law in society. The classes include discussion and debate about current legal and social issues, including equality, safety, the environment, punishment, and autonomy.
This class will examine historical and contemporary developments in the politics of resistance, solidarity, and inclusionary policies around migration. We will place a special focus on North and Central America to understand the emergence and development of both the Old and the New Sanctuary Movements, broadly defined, as a transnational and diverse coalition of religious and political groups such as churches, synagogues, NGOs, educational institutions, and pro-migrant states and cities that offer safe haven or sanctuary to migrants holding various legal statuses. In addition, we will examine the origins, development, and current state of subnational pro-migrant public policies in the region. We will close the class with reflections on what a world without borders could look like. This course draws on a range of interdisciplinary theories and methods from the social sciences and humanities that will allow students to analyze, imagine, and devise creative ways of inclusion toward migrants and marginalized populations. (GOVT-AM)
The United States stands alone among Western, industrialized countries with its persistent, high rates of incarceration, long sentences, and continued use of the death penalty. This American exceptionalism -- the turn to mass incarceration -- has been fostered by the use of sharply-delineated categories that define vast numbers of people as outlaws and others as law-abiding. These categories that are based on ideas of personal responsibility and assumptions about race are modified somewhat by a liberal commitment to human rights. Our purpose in this course is to understand how such ideas have taken root and to locate the consequences of these ideas for policy and practice. (GOVT-AM)
This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the American legal system, its roots in natural and common law, the purposes/values it serves (e.g., resolution of private grievances; punishment of offenses against the polity and individuals; preservation, development, and limitation of individual and group rights; and facilitation of commerce and private agreements), and the roles of the judiciary, legislature, and private parties. The course is taught using the Socratic method employed at most US law schools and introduces students to fundamental concepts and techniques used by attorneys and courts in analyzing cases, interpreting statutes, and determining disputes. As in law school, students are expected to read assigned materials before each class meeting and to participate actively in class discussions. For additional information, see the Summer Session website.
This course will explore and seek explanations for the performance of the 20-21st century presidency, focusing on its institutional and political development, recruitment process (nominations and elections), relationships to social groups, economic forces, and political time. We will also analyze the parameters of foreign & domestic policy making. (GOVT-AM)
Contemporary commentary and scholarship is rife with warnings of Democratic decline in the United States and around the world. This course addresses similar themes through a very different lens by examining the factors that contributed to the collapse of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the principate. Students will engage with primary source material, secondary historical analyses of this period, and political science scholarship on democratic decline and political revolution to better understand this pivotal period in Roman history. (ARKEO-COS, ARKEO-RMNE, GOVT-IR)
This comparative course explores key approaches to understanding nationalism and how it interacts with questions of identity in contemporary societies. We will first consider different theoretical approaches to the historical emergence and contemporary relevance of nationalism and concepts used to analyze its different manifestations. In the second part of the course, we will focus on the Russian Federation and the US as case studies to explore the interplay of nationalism, identity and social change in ethnically and racially diverse contexts. In this part of the course, we will use a wide range of sources to consider the impact of nationalism on politics, media, culture and everyday life.
In this course, students will design, conduct, and analyze a national-level public opinion survey. Students will determine all survey questions based on their research interests. All necessary survey research skills will be learned in the class. (GOVT-AM)
At the conclusion of World War II, the United States ushered in a new international order based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter, which became the basis for the United Nations Charter: including but not limited to the right to self-determination and global economic cooperation. All this changed when Henry Kissinger proclaimed that The whites are (in Africa) to stay and the only way that constructive change can come about is through them. There is no hope for the blacks to gain the political rights they seek through violence, which will only lead to chaos and increased opportunities for the communists. This course examines how US Foreign policy toward Africa has been formulated and executed since the Nixon years.
This course will explore the traditional dynamic and norms of political press coverage in the United States, and the impact of those patterns on both the government and the nation; some of the ways longstanding norms have recently shifted, and continue to shift; the larger historical forces and long-term trends driving those changes; and the theoretical questions, logistical challenges and ethical dilemmas these changes pose for both political journalists and those they cover. The course will equally cover the practice of political reporting, including weekly analysis and discussion of current press coverage, in-class exercises and simulations, readings from academic and journalistic sources, and visits from leading political reporters and former spokespeople able to offer a firsthand perspective on the topics.
The school-to-prison track refers to policies and practices that facilitate the transfer of students out of the school system and into the prison system (including juvenile detention, county jail, immigration detention centers, or adult prison). This course takes a critical analytical look at the intersections of the prisons and schooling, emphasizing pedagogy, history and policy.
COVID-19 did not affect everyone equally. In fact, the opposite is true: the pandemic exposed dramatic health inequities by race, class, gender, and other factors. Not only were some groups more likely to catch and die from the virus than others, these same groups disproportionately suffered from its economic and social fallout, too. In the wake of this devastation, this course examines health (in)equities and what we can do about them. We explore what health equity means and how politics, policy, and power shape it -- both over time and across countries. Students will investigate how a wide range of social determinants (in addition to public health and health care systems) configure differences in health status across demographic groups. Three key touchstones of the class will be (1) a series of deep dives into specific policy areas, such as housing and environmental health, maternal and child health, and mental health and well-being (2) a consistent emphasis on politics, markets, and power (3) substantive opportunities for students to actively engage in health equity efforts beyond the classroom. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP, HCP-EL)
This course examines how media structures political power in the United States and how race/ethnicity shape who is heard, represented, and mobilized. Using a political science lens, we analyze how political actors use media to govern, how media shapes public opinion, and how marginalized communities develop alternative media systems to challenge exclusion. Treating media as a political institution, we explore its interactions with campaigns, movements, parties, and the state. The course concludes by examining ethnic media as a site of political power and community governance. (GOVT-AM)
This course approaches the study of the United States' political institutions and social cleavages from the perspective of comparative politics, historical political economy, and historical institutionalism. It is organized around core themes in each of these literatures, using the theories and concepts developed there to better explain particular features of the United States' politics and historical development. Topics covered include democratization, subnational authoritarianism, ethnic conflict, economic development, welfare and labor regimes, and party systems. The historical periods analyzed under these themes include the Founding, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the New Deal and its legacies, the Civil Rights movement, as well as the contemporary era. (GOVT-AM)
Power and freedom are among the most important elements of the language of politics, and of the scholarly study of politics, but they are notoriously difficult to define. In this class, we'll try to clarify these terms by studying some important past and present debates, both academic and political, about their meaning. We will also consider some more general questions: Why are so many basic political terms so deeply contested? Are the concepts we use to study politics always themselves political-and if so, in what sense? What's the relationship between political words and political concepts, anyway? What can we learn about the theory and practice of politics by paying attention to language and its histories? (GOVT-PT)
In this course, we will examine one of the most important documents in American history - our Constitution. Course topics will include the historical background of the document from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. We will look at the creation of the Constitution, including the conflict between strong supporters of this proposed new Constitution (Federalists) and their opponents (Anti-Federalists). How did the Founders resolve their differences and what led the States to adopt a document limiting and balancing the powers of the President, Congress, and the Judiciary? We shall look at the constant tension (from the beginning to the present) over the balance of power between the three co-equal branches. We shall discuss the role of the Constitution from both empirical and theoretical perspectives and look at how it has evolved from 1788 to the present day. Special attention will be paid to the use of Amendments, particularly the Bill of Rights, to address events/circumstances unforeseen by the drafters. Finally, the course will discuss critical cases where the Supreme Court defined and redefined what the Constitution meant.
This course explores the tensions between political power and economic exchange in contemporary market economies. It provides a conceptual overview of key economic policy problems in contemporary societies, as well as the strategies for responding to them. Selected topics will include risk and insurance, social cost, taxation, welfare, agriculture, global capital flows, and others (GOVT-CP)
This course investigates the United States Supreme Court and its role in politics and government. It traces the development of constitutional doctrine, the growth of the Court's institutional power, and the Court's interaction with Congress, the president, and society. Discussed are major constitutional law decisions, their political contexts, and the social and behavioral factors that affect judges, justices, and federal court jurisprudence.
The advent of computers and the internet have fundamentally changed how most humans conduct their social, political, and everyday lives. Unlike mere decades ago, many of us work, play, learn, communicate with friends and family, and engage in other social, political, and economic behavior online. The digital traces these activities leave behind has created a new world of data for researchers to mine in virtually every field that studies humans and human behavior, from health outcomes to election outcomes. This course is focused on data science applications in political science and public policy research specifically, and in social science research more broadly. It aims to build students' familiarity with the intersection between data science and political/social science. Toward that aim, this course has three main areas of focus:a) Exploring how the digital era has impacted how research in political/social science is conceptualized, designed, and implemented b)Digging into recent political science research that has applied novel data science approaches c)Building important skills in data collection, processing, and analysis from online sources, with a focus on how new sources of data and new techniques can add value to existing research questions in the field. (GOVT-CP)
Following the spread of democracy around much of the world in the late 20th century, patterns of democratic erosion or ?backsliding? have become commonplace since the early 2000s. In most cases, democracy has been threatened not by military coups or revolutionary movements, but rather by elected leaders and parties who have manipulated the law and democratic institutions to introduce some form of authoritarian rule. In some countries, populist leaders who mobilize mass support by challenging the political establishment have concentrated powers in their own hands and weakened democratic checks and balances. This course tries to understand how and why these patterns of democratic backsliding occur, drawing examples from countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America as well as the United States. (GOVT-CP)
This course is designed as an introduction to political, economic, and social issues in 20th century Latin America. Topics are organized chronologically, beginning with the crisis of agro-export economies and oligarchic rule in the 1930s, the onset of state-led development and mass politics in the 1930s and 40s, the military takeovers and revolutionary struggles of the 1960s and 70s, patterns of democratization and market liberalization in the 1980s and 90s, and the recent experience with populist and leftist governments in much of the region. Among the main issues covered are populism and corporatism, dependency theory and import-substitution industrialization, different patterns of authoritarian rule, social movements and revolution, democratic breakdowns and transitions, the debt crisis and market reforms, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Throughout the semester, we will draw on examples from the entire region, but focus on paradigmatic national cases. Knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese is not required. (GOVT-CP)
What explains authoritarian resilience in the Middle East? What are the causes and consequences of Islamist political attitudes and behavior? What is the historical legacy of colonialism and empire in the Middle East? This course will offer students the opportunity to discuss these and other questions related to the political, social, and economic development of the Middle East and North Africa. (GOVT-CP)
This course provides an overview of contemporary Western European politics by focusing on challenges posed to European political systems by the Great Recession and Sovereign Debt Crisis. In the first half of the course, we place a special emphasis on the challenges faced by the Southern European countries that were hardest hit by the economic crisis. We focus specifically on the rise of non-mainstream political parties on both the right and the left. During the second module, we'll pivot from this ongoing challenge to studying Western European political institutions in general, with a focus on the ongoing disruption of long-stable party systems by populist challengers. Throughout the course, we'll take advantage of our location in Turin, Italy to learn more about Italian politics from local scholars, meetings with politicians, and excursions. (GOVT-CP)
Much has been said about the presence of China in Africa, some factual, some conjectural, and some fantastical. In this course, we will explore various approaches and positions with the aim of allowing students deeper comprehension of the subject matter as well as the stakes for Africa, China, and the US and its Western allies. We will ask whether there are causes for worry, caution, and simply for a good reality check on all sides.
This is an introductory course on the politics of Sub-Saharan Africa. The goal is to provide students with historical background and theoretical tools to understand present-day politics on the continent. The first part of the course will survey African political history, touching on: pre-colonial political structures, colonial experiences and legacies, nationalism and independence movements, post-independence optimism and state-building, the authoritarian turn, economic crises, and recent political and economic liberalizations. The second part of the course will examine some contemporary political and economic issues. These include: the effects of political and social identities in Africa (ethnicity, social ties, class, citizenship); the politics of poverty, war, and dysfunction; Africa in the international system; and current attempts to strengthen democracy and rule of law on the continent. (GOVT-CP)
The course will be thoroughly comparative in order to highlight both the specificity of each country as well as more generalizable dynamics of 21st century development. It will be divided into a number of inter-related modules. After a framing lecture, we will briefly cover the two countries' distinct experiences with colonialism and centralized planning. Then we will move on to dynamics of growth, which will seek to explain the relative success of China in the era of market reforms. In analyzing political consequences, we will assess how new forms of cooperation and conflict have emerged. This will involve attention to both internal dynamics as well as how rapid development has seen an increasing accumulation of political power in the East. It goes without saying that accelerating growth has led to huge social change, resulting in profound reorganizations of Chinese and Indian society. Finally, the course will conclude by returning to our original question - is this indeed The Asian Century? What does the rise of China and India mean for the rest of the world, and how are these two giant nations likely to develop in the future? (ASIAN-SC)
This course takes place in Lusaka, Zambia, and focuses on introducing students to the history and politics of Zambia and more broadly southern Africa. After having introduced students to some basic political and economic analysis of contemporary Africa, it will examine the history of European settlement in southern Africa, the liberation wars and the independence process, Apartheid in South Africa, and post-Apartheid democracy in South Africa. (GOVT-CP)
Social Justice: Special Topics explores feminist, anthropological, and interdisciplinary perspectives on social justice. It connects domestic and international concerns and fosters active and engaged learning, research, and discovery.
This course will give students the historical background and theoretical tools to understand the politics of Southeast Asia, one of the world's most diverse and fascinating regions. The first part of the course traces Southeast Asia's political development from the colonial period to the present day, examining common themes such as decolonization, state building, war and insurgency, ethnic relations, democratization, economic development, and nationalism. The second part of the course focuses on key issues in contemporary Southeast Asian politics, including political culture, representation and mass politics, globalization, regional politics, and civil violence. Our course will concentrate primarily but not exclusively on the six largest countries in the region-Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam-using the comparative method to understand variation across time, across countries, and within countries. (ASIAN-SC, GOVT-CP)
Survey of European social theory from Hegel to Foucault (via Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, and the Frankfurt School).
This course addresses pertinent issues relative to the subject of regional development and globalization. Topics vary each semester.
When did bipartisan become a bad word? Should we unfriend and unfollow people who have different opinions than our own? How did we become a country that grows more polarized and divided every year? Most importantly, can we change, or are we destined to continue down this path?
Do you want to learn the discussion-based case method as taught at the Harvard Business School? Do you want to learn how to write a long research paper? Do you not want to take a final examination? If you answer these questions affirmatively, this course may be for you. We are told often that American primacy is in decline and that other powers are rising. What does this mean when we examine the experience of Government and Business in different countries around the world? Is the international political economy a hydraulic system in which some units rise and others fall? Are the dynamics of the international political economy all pointing in one direction? Or are they marked by cross-currents? This course seeks answers to these questions by teaching the basics of macro-economics, examining a range of powerful states (among others China, India, Russia and Japan) and persisting issues (financial globalization and foreign investment; oil and OPEC; trade and aid) as they play themselves out in different countries (such as Malaysia, Korea; Saudi Arabia, Nigeria; Mexico, Brazil, Uganda, Indonesia). (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
Do you want to learn the discussion-based case method as taught at the Harvard Business School? Do you want to learn how to write a long research paper? Do you not want to take a final examination? If so this course may be for you. Since the beginning of the republic, American intellectuals, politicians and businessmen have extolled the exceptionalism of America. In a world of diverse forms of capitalism, can this view be sustained? Is America a shining city on the hill or a darkened city in the valley? Comparison is an effective way to discern and assess what is unique and what is general in the distinctive form of America's capitalist democracy. In this course the liberal market economy of the United States with its distinctive strengths and weaknesses is put side-by-side with different forms of liberal, corporatist and statist market economies that characterize different European countries in the emerging European polity. The diversity of capitalism points to one overarching conclusion: all of these countries are arguably capitalist, democratic market economies belonging to the West; and each of them has distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Like all other countries, America is ordinary in mobilizing its formidable capacities and displaying its glaring weaknesses as it copes with change. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
Why do some countries offer universal health care coverage, free higher education, or personal financial security, while others do not? What explains the alternative national approaches to similar global challenges, such as those posed by climate change, the gig economy, or migration? This course explores how the public policy strategies adopted in the United States compare to those adopted in other affluent democracies - through the lens of socio-economic inequality. Examining how different countries confront the same issue allows us to identify the policies that redress it, how their content can vary, and why so. The course therefore underscores the reason for these differences: politics and government. Together, we will examine the multiple political pathways to creating public policy across these societies, as well as their effects on the people that live in them. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP)
This courses re-traces modern political thought through four concepts that characterize its emergence: nature, freedom, rights, and revolution. This course engages these concepts through texts across several genres, primarily those produced in the Italian city-states, Britain, France, and Germany. Beginning with Niccol?chiavelli, we will first consider what exactly participants in modernity understood themselves to be doing. Next, alongside the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we will explore how these ideas about modernity inflect their understanding of nature and ground their understandings of political freedom. Then, we will engage with these insights in tandem with conflicts over notions of the citizen as a rights-bearing figure in the years of the American and French Revolutions through the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and Edmund Burke. We will conclude by examining the legacy of revolution in modern political thinking in the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. (GOVT-PT)
This course examines the stories, literary examples, and metaphors at work in elaborating capitalist society and its ?hero,? the modern economic subject: the so-called ?homo oeconomicus.? We will examine the classic liberal tradition (e.g., Locke, Smith, Mill) alongside its later critiques (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Brecht) as well as more recent feminist, Black, and indigenous interventions (e.g., Federici, Davis, ?land-grab university? research). Throughout we will create a dialogue between texts, both across centuries (e.g., Locke on Property with Indigenous Dispossession; Balzac?s Pere Goriot with Piketty?s Capital in the 21st Century) as well as across genres (e.g., Nomadland with Geissler?s Seasonal Associate). At stake are the narrative and figurative moments in theoretical texts as well as crucial literary sources (novels, novellas, and plays) as they collectively develop the modern economic paradigms of industry, exchange, credit-debt, and interest ? as well as the people they often leave out: women, people of color, the working class. The seminar will include working with an archive, collection, or museum at Cornell. Taught in English. (ENGL-PST)
In recent decades the Andean region of Latin America has become a focal point of international debate over alternative models of economic development and their environmental consequences. Windfall revenues from oil, gas, and mineral extraction have stimulated economic growth in the region, but they have also sparked opposition from environmental organizations and indigenous communities concerned about the effects on land and water resources and community livelihoods. This engaged learning course explores the political ecology of development in Ecuador, focusing on the tensions between extractive models of development and more environmentally-sustainable alternatives. The course will count for four credit hours spread across three modules in the fall, January, and spring semesters. The fall module provides an introduction to Ecuador's political and economic development as well as its racial and ethnic cultural diversity. It will also include background material on theoretical debates over sustainable development and the methods and purpose of community-based engaged learning. This will be followed by an intensive, two-week field trip to Ecuador in January to work on group projects with community partners, and a wrap-up module in the spring semester to complete and present final group projects. (GOVT-CP)
In recent decades the Andean region of Latin America has become a focal point of international debate over alternative models of economic development and their environmental consequences. Windfall revenues from oil, gas, and mineral extraction have stimulated economic growth in the region, but they have also sparked opposition from environmental organizations and indigenous communities concerned about the effects on land and water resources and community livelihoods. This engaged learning course explores the political ecology of development in Ecuador, focusing on the tensions between extractive models of development and more environmentally-sustainable alternatives. The course will count for four credit hours spread across three modules in the fall, January, and spring semesters. The fall module provides an introduction to Ecuador's political and economic development, its cultural diversity, theories of sustainable development, and community-based engaged learning. This will be followed by an intensive, two-week field trip to Ecuador in January to work on group projects with community partners, and a wrap-up module in the spring semester to complete final group projects. While in Ecuador in January, students will meet with local scholars, government officials, and representatives from civic and community organizations engaged in efforts to promote environmentally-sustainable forms of economic development, and they will divide into small groups to work on projects with community partners. Initiatives related to sustainable agro-forestry, food security, the protection of biodiversity, land and water conservation, and community-based participatory planning will be highlighted in group meetings and engaged learning projects. (GOVT-CP)
This course examines how domestic political institutions, interests, and decision-making processes shape states? behavior in the international arena, and how international forces feed back into domestic politics. It focuses on the areas where this interaction is most consequential: international political economy, security and foreign policy, and international organizations. (GOVT-IR)
In recent decades the Andean region of Latin America has become a focal point of international debate over alternative models of economic development and their environmental consequences. Windfall revenues from oil, gas, and mineral extraction have stimulated economic growth in the region, but they have also sparked opposition from environmental organizations and indigenous communities concerned about the effects on land and water resources and community livelihoods. This engaged learning course explores the political ecology of development in Ecuador, focusing on the tensions between extractive models of development and more environmentally-sustainable alternatives. The course will count for four credit hours spread across three modules in the fall, January, and spring semesters. The fall module provides an introduction to Ecuador's political and economic development, its cultural diversity, theories of sustainable development, and community-based engaged learning. This will be followed by an intensive, two-week field trip to Ecuador in January to work on group projects with community partners. The wrap-up module in the spring semester will give students an opportunity to write their final research papers and complete their group projects based on engaged learning experiences with community partners. (GOVT-CP)
This course will primarily focus on studying and scrutinizing general conceptions of justice. Topics explored typically include liberty,economic equality, democracy, community, the general welfare, and toleration. We will also look at implications for particular political controversies such as abortion, welfare programs and pornography.
Shortly after the 2016 election, The New Yorker published an article entitled ?The Frankfurt School Knew Trump was Coming.? This course examines what the Frankfurt School knew by introducing students to Critical Theory, juxtaposing its roots in the 19th century (i.e., Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Freud) with its most prominent manifestation in the 20th century, the Frankfurt School (e.g., Kracauer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse) alongside disparate voices (Arendt) and radical continuations (Davis, Zuboff, Weeks) as they engage with politics, society, culture, and literature (e.g. Brecht and Kafka). Established in 1920s and continued in exile in the US during WWII, the interdisciplinary circle of scholars comprising the Frankfurt School played a pivotal role in the intellectual developments of post-war American and European social, political, and aesthetic theory: from analyses of authoritarianism and democracy to critiques of capitalism, the entertainment industry, commodity fetishism, and mass society. This introduction to Critical Theory explores both the prescience of these diverse thinkers for today?s world (?what they knew?) as well as what they perhaps could not anticipate in the 21st century (e.g., developments in technology, economy, political orders), and thus how to critically address these changes today. Taught in English. (ENGL-PST)
Climate change, pandemics, wars and warlike politics, polarization, tribalism, raging anxieties, AI advancement - these are just some of the many existential troubles and challenges we all, and our very human nature, now face. This is our time to realize our humanity: find out what sets us apart as humans, and live up to it. This course invites you to an existential odyssey into the human condition and politics. Are we truly different from animals and machines? What does it mean to be yourself? What's the difference between freedom and liberty? Should we pursue happiness? Why do we yield to fear and anxiety? Is the search for meaning meaningless? Do we live in a post-truth era? What are the roles of morality in our society and politics? Why is God dead, but religion alive? Can we defeat alienation? Is love all we need? How much can, and should, we hope for? In this course, utilizing the award-winning edX HOPE (see https://bit.ly/Human44), we will address these questions, and then some more. We shall examine a dozen themes, entwining each with critical reflections, both personal and political, amidst the current crisis: Human/nature, identity & authenticity, freedom, reflection, happiness, death & dread, meaning, morality, truth & trust, God & religion, alienation & love, and finally - hope. (GOVT-PT)
This seminar overviews political theories of colonialism and empire, and in doing so, allows us to pose questions about the constitutive elements of our modernity, such as slavery, racism, dependency, and dispossession. Throughout the semester, we will examine the relationship between former colonies and political and economic configurations (nationalism, internationalism, capitalism, socialism), as well as philosophical and epistemological questions about the relationship between the universal and the particular, and the imperatives of history-writing. The course material will give us an opportunity to conclude with questions about whether or not the process of decolonizing our world and our study of it is complete or an ongoing project. (GOVT-PT)
In 1989, following the anti-Communist revolutions in the Eastern Bloc countries, Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed the end of history and predicted the final global victory of economic and political liberalism. Marxism had been definitely defeated and the era of revolutions was over. Yet, in the last two decades, revolutions have been spreading across the globe with remarkable speed: from the color revolutions in the former Soviet Union and Balkan states, to the Arab Spring and the widespread anti-globalization and anti-austerity protests around the world. This course will offer a comparative study of the history and theory of modern revolutions-from the American and French revolutions of the 18th century to the anti-colonial independence struggles of the postwar world-with the goal of attaining a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of the revolutions of our time. We will explore the causes and motivations of diverse revolutionary movements, placing particular emphasis on the political ideas that inspired them. We will read works by Paine, Rousseau, Robespierre, Sieyes, L'Ouverture, Marx, Tocqueville, Lenin, Luxembourg, Mao, Fanon, and others. The course is designed as an introductory class and no previous knowledge of the history or political theory we will be covering is required. (GOVT-PT, HIST-HTR)
Ancient political debates about democracy, empire, and justice appear in late fifth-century BCE Athenian dramatic, historical, and philosophical literatures composed against the backdrop of the 27-year Peloponnesian War over the control of Greece (which Athens lost). Reading selected tragedies of Euripides, comedies of Aristophanes, and philosophical dialogues of Plato, in combination with the history of Thucydides, this course retraces, explores, and interrogates these texts' complex, provocative, and surprisingly relevant arguments for and against the pursuit of equality (democracy), security (war and imperialism), goodness (aret?rom excellence to virtue), and fairness (justice), and their often unexpected results in practice. All the readings for this course are in English. (GOVT-PT)
This course introduces students to the latest empirical research on the applications of novel, large-scale, and unstructured data in political science and public policy. Themes include causality and credibility; administrative and open data; geographic and geospatial data; social media and digital trace data; text, image, audio, and video data; and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). For each type of data, students learn the set of questions it can help answer, along with appropriate methods for analysis. The course situates the rise of data-intensive social science within the broader context of political science and policy research and examines the promises and pitfalls of computational innovations and new data science methods, including their implications for ethics, transparency, and privacy.
Do alliances deter conflict or encourage them? Does nuclear proliferation create instability or paradoxically improve peace between parties? Do international organizations - such as the International Court of Justice - actually prevent human rights abuses? These questions are all subject to some controversy in the field of security studies, with competing theories and evidence on both sides of the equation. This course is dedicated to evaluating both sides of a different critical debate in security studies every week, evaluating the theories and evidence each side brings to the table. In doing so, the class with both survey some of the key areas of active research in the security field, but will also facilitate students argumentative writing, analytical evaluation, and data literacy skills. (GOVT-IR)
Whereas human rights find legal expression in visionary documents like the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the many principles tied to human rights have long been debated by philosophers, artists, theologians, and writers. This course studies the evolution of human rights as cultural artifacts, examining how ideas about rights and humanitarianism were fashioned within literature, philosophy, film, public debate, and various international legal forums over history. Through readings covering large topics like crimes against humanity, immigration, abolitionism, and universal suffrage, we will ask: how did the world assent to a global culture of human rights? What hopes and dreams have human rights embodied? Conversely, what recurring critiques have been raised about the norms informing human rights? (ENGL-GLS, ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)
What does it mean to be free? What does freedom require? How do capitalism and neoliberalism shape the way we think about freedom, and the possibilities for freedom? These are some of the questions we will consider together over the course of this class. We will begin with early modern and influential accounts of government by consent and the relationship between the individual and the state (Hobbes, Locke); we will then reflect upon the origins of inequality and the possibility of self-rule in modern society (Rousseau) and consider whether and how capitalism and neoliberalism threaten or support freedom (Marx, Brown, Tolentino). In the final week of the course, we turn to the American case, and examine the competing visions of freedom that inform the American imaginary. We will study thinkers who attend to the legacies of slavery and to the contradictions at the heart of the American project and interrogate the role of prophetic language and the idea of redemption in American political thought and practice (MLK, Morrison, Baldwin). (GOVT-PT)
We are all the living dead - alive but bound to die, and know it. In this course we will learn how existential fears and anxieties shape our politics, partly through moral meaning-making. While the politics of fear is on the rise worldwide, Israel has seen it long ago. Throughout its existence, Israel has grown strong, but its existential fears have not subsided. Israel, moreover, can teach us about the role of freedom and morality in politics. Israel's existential fears, alongside the realization of choice, has prompted Zionists to seek existential legitimation. In recent years, however, a growing frustration at attainting such legitimacy has fostered bad faith politics, substituting freedom with a sense of no choice. (GOVT-CP, GOVT-PT)
This course is dedicated to surveying and critically evaluating the theoretical models and decisions that seek to explain American foreign policy with an emphasis on the post-WWII period. We will cover the different foreign policy decision-making models and prominent issues in foreign policy such as grand strategy, Congress, the presidency, and public support. (GOVT-IR)
This course is an introduction to the scientific study of international security with a focus on the causes of war between states, the causes of civil wars, and other forms of violence such as terrorism, piracy, and transnational crime. By surveying the theoretical foundations, historical case studies, correlates, and scholarly findings of why various international conflicts exists, we will investigate the central puzzle of war, that it is costly, but nevertheless recurs. The class is divided into three sections: theoretical explanations, conflict processes, and explaining peace. (GOVT-IR)
This course will introduce students to the law, theory, and practice of international human rights. Students will think critically about the effectiveness of the international human rights system by examining its successes, failures, and dilemmas in preventing and responding to human rights abuse. Topics covered will include the origins and foundations of international human rights; the role of international, regional, and domestic institutions and actors in enforcing human rights; critiques of the human rights movement; and the relationship of the United States to the international system for the protection of human rights. The course will also explore issues such as the death penalty, women's human rights, migration, climate change, global poverty, racism and xenophobia, and responses to mass atrocities. During in-class activities, students will have the opportunity to step into the shoes of a human rights advocate and work with their classmates to address simulated human rights problems.
This course introduces students to questions and debates around the role and effects of race and racism in international politics. Scholars of international politics have long neglected such questions in world affairs, even though the origins of international relations - as an academic discipline - can be traced back to the early years of the 20th century, when questions of imperialism and governance over different races necessitated the development of new ways of thinking about inter-state and inter-racial relations. Over the past two decades, however, prompted by insights from post-colonial theory and cultural studies but also by continued Western military engagements in the Middle East and Africa, new scholarly publications have sought to bring back the analysis of the color line into our conversations about global politics. The major themes covered in this course include critical debates around the meanings and salience of race; colonialism; race and IR; decolonization and Third Worldism; race and war on/and terror; and race and international law and climate justice. (GOVT-IR)
China is often thought of as being isolated from the outside world. It is imagined as existing in historic seclusion, and, following the establishment of the People's Republic, as pursuing a path of autarky. Such separation has then only been somewhat modified by the set of economic reforms that Deng Xiaoping first instituted in the late 1970s. In this lecture we will seek to turn such conventional wisdom on its head through examining what China is via a consideration of transnational currents within the country's development. However, the course's primary focus will not be upon the past, but rather the present and attempting to determine just where the point of intersection between China and the rest of the world is. Coming to terms with such an issue will provide those who enroll in the class with a deeper, more nuanced, understanding of China's rise and this trend's implications for the rest of the world. We will accomplish this task through a combination of surveying the existing literature on China and transnational politics, and considering new theoretical perspectives on both. (ASIAN-SC, GOVT-IR)
This course examines the politics of international economic relations. It focuses on the sources of national economic policies affecting trade, exchange rates, and all forms of international investment. Three interrelated facets of politics are emphasized throughout this course: the distributional consequences of international economic policy; political cleavages among both states and domestic interest groups; and the national and international institutions that channel and ameliorate these conflicts. The goal for this course is to understand the debates surrounding each of these topics.
Does allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons reduce violent crime? Do affirmative action policies at law schools cause black students to fail the bar? Do micro-finance policies make the poor better off? Do the militaries of democracies fight better in the field than those of non-democracies? Does the death penalty save lives by deterring murders? Answering questions like these about the effects of public policy implies cause and effect knowledge: if we implement policy X, we will get effect Y. But on what evidence should answers to questions like these rest? How do you know the answer, and under what conditions can you? Providing robust answers to cause-and-effect questions in a (mostly) non-experimental field like political science is devilishly difficult. In this course, we will learn some of the pitfalls that make it so hard to evaluate evidence in the public policy realm, how to judge the quality of evidence cited in the media, and how to ask the right questions to get the best possible evidence. We'll do so by working through the evidence supporting yes or no answers to the questions listed above. (GOVT-AM)
Major seminars in the Government department are small, advanced courses that cover an important theme or topic in contemporary politics in depth. Courses place particular emphasis on careful reading and classroom discussion, and students can expect to write a significant research paper. These courses are open to all Cornell students, but preference in admissions is given to seniors over juniors, and to Government majors over other students. Topics vary by semester and section.
This seminar will explore the relationship between diversity and democracy in American political thought and in the social sciences more broadly. In the US, understandings of what ?diversity? means have fundamentally revolved around ideologies and ideas about ?racial difference,? ie. racism. Diversity has at various points been constructed as a limit to democracy?s extensiveness, as an enriching and even necessary feature of democratic life, or as a source of friction that should be dampened through regulations and management. The course will explore historical and contemporary debates about diversity and democracy, treating as contributors to these debates social scientific studies that have sought to empirically assess the relationship. (GOVT-AM)
The most intense public encounter between Existentialism and Marxism occurred in immediate post-WWII Europe, its structure remaining alive internationally. Existentialist questions have been traced from pre-Socratic thinkers through Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes onward; just as roots of modern materialism extend to Epicurus and Lucretius, or Leopardi. This course will focus on differing theories and concomitant practices concerned with “alienation,” “anxiety,” “crisis,” “death of God,” “nihilism,” “rebellion or revolution.” Crucial are possible relations between fiction and non-fiction; also among philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and political theory. Other authors may include: Althusser, de Beauvoir, Beckett, Büchner, Camus, Che, Dostoevsky, Fanon, Genet, Gide, Gramsci, O. Gross, Hamsun, Heidegger, Husserl, Jaspers, C.L.R. James, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Lagerkvist, Lacan, Lenin, Marx, Merleau-Ponty, Mishima, G. Novack, Nietzsche, Ortega, Pirandello, W. Reich, Sartre, Shestov, Tillich, Unamuno. There is also cinema. Taught in English.
American conservative thought rests on assumptions that are strikingly different from those made by mainstream American liberals. However, conservative thinkers are themselves committed to principles that are both quite varied and sometimes contradictory. This course examines the assumptions upon which rest the libertarian, market/economic, and cultural/traditional strains of American conservatism and asks whether the tensions between them weaken or strengthen conservative thought as an alternative to mainstream liberalism. (GOVT-AM)
This course serves as a survey of major issues within Chinese politics and foreign policy and constitutes the capstone seminar for CAPS students. It is intended to give students an opportunity to explore aspects related to Chinese politics, economics, and society that they may have touched upon in other China-focused courses at Cornell, but have not been able to examine as fully, and with the degree of care, that they would like. In this regard, the substance of the course will be developed through an iterative process between the instructor and the seminar participants. We will spend the first part of the course doing a series of recent influential readings on contemporary China and developing initial research projects. The second half of the class will be organized around student led presentations of research projects (accompanied by relevant academic, media, and policy readings). (ASIAN-SC)
This is an advanced seminar on the political economy of East and Southeast Asia. Our central task is to uncover the political underpinnings of economic performance across countries and over time. Along the way, we will address issues such as corruption and rent-seeking, the developmental state, class conflict, ethnic politics, reform and stagnation, and democracy.
This course will offer students an opportunity to view the process of shaping national debates from the perspective of the United States Senate. The modern Senate will serve as the point of reference for an inquiry into the development of the institution's powers under the Constitution during the past 200 years. Class readings, lectures and discussions will focus on the themes of continuity and change, the role of individual senators, and the institutional evolution of the Senate. In addition to general class reading and written examinations, each student will write a short paper and participate in an oral presentation. (HIST-HNA)
This seminar will explore some of the most important psychoanalytic approaches to politics and collective life. from Sigmund Freud's Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego to works by Le Bon, Reich, Althusser, Fanon, Lacan, Safouan, Zizek and Dolar. Questions explored will include the relationship between mass and individual psychology; the role of unconscious identification (ideal ego, superego) in group formation, nationalism, xenophobia and racism; fantasy and politics; and the people considered as a subject and political actor. Events and contexts discussed will range from the French Revolution to the Nazi Reich to colonialization and contemporary authoritarianisms. Works of political theory by Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Arendt, Balibar and Ranciere will be put in dialogue with psychoanalytic readings.
This seminar examines the emergence of national identities, nationalist movements, and nation-states in the modern Arab world. First, we will examine various approaches to the question of nationalism, using Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities as our basic reference. We will then test the applicability of these general theories to the Arab World through our examination of specific case studies. (HIST-HGS)
As a philosophical approach to culture and society emerging out of European contexts, critical theory has traditionally excluded questions about the history of racial difference. Yet critical theory’s insights into processes of subject formation, social relations, mass culture, and general emancipatory drive continue to inform and be of value to scholars of race concerned with the everyday production and transmission of ideas about normative humanity. At the same time, in their engagement with theory's blindspots, scholars of race demonstrate the racialized histories, contexts, and assumptions that make up that for which "theory" cannot account, as well as that from which it has unquestioningly emerged. This course explores contemporary critical scholarship on race, as defined by its relationship to anti-positivist epistemologies, theories of the subject, critiques of traditional ontology and aesthetics, and engagement with the Black radical tradition, environmental humanities, psychoanalysis, and more. Some familiarity with key figures and ideas in postcolonial theory and Black studies is desirable though not absolutely necessary. Readings may include Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sylvia Wynter, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Rizvana Bradley, David Marriott, Rei Terada, Nahum Dmitri Chandler, Fred Moten, and others.
This course focuses on what happens when science meet the policy-making world. We will discuss theoretical and empirical studies in Science & Technology Studies that analyze the interactions between science, society and politics. We will specifically investigate the mechanisms by which science may impact policy-making by focusing on: the rise of science diplomacy, initiatives to use science in order to further development goals, and efforts to produce evidence-based foreign policy. We will also focus on currently hotly debated political issues in government affairs, including the politization and militarization of space, the rise of big data, the politics of climate change, and the construction of border walls. As part of this course we will hear from experts in the federal government on how they attempt to integrate science into the everyday workings of governance.
China's prominence in the news cycle and policy discourse reflects the immense and growing tension in China's relations with the United States and other countries around the world. Substantively, there is hardly a profession or sector where what happens inside China does not touch upon or impact what happens outside China. Throughout this course, we will grapple with ongoing debates over China's rise and whether policies of engagement with China have succeeded or failed. These debates are unfolding in many different communities and idea marketplaces, across many different modes and styles of analysis and writing. Each of the reading and writing assignments are aimed at developing literacy and proficiency in three different modes of analysis and writing about China: academic, policy, and journalistic. While many courses provide introductions to different aspects of China, and many seminars examine more specialized questions at even deeper levels, there are few that directly invite students to examine and explore the different ways in which scholars and professionals have written about and come to understand China.
This seminar will look broadly at challenges to democratic institutions in the United States and Europe. To think about the present, we will delve into historical fascism as well as nationalism and populism. We will (1) respond to contemporary political events in the US and beyond; (2) explore the terms fascism and populism which in the last few years have come to dominate our political vocabulary in the media and the academy; (3) mobilize the instructor's area of academic expertise (fascism and populism) in the service of broad liberal arts concerns. The course focuses upon themes and readings. It is not chronological-rather it looks at different iterations of the same ideas, concepts, and fears as they emerge in different historical contexts. Seminar materials draw upon various sources: scholarly articles, films, and if possible, an occasional guest lecturer.
This course focuses on issues of conflict, peace, and reconciliation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories as well as Sub-Saharan Africa. Both regions exemplify how issues ranging from nationalism and ethnocentrism to land, water and resource management, climate change and migration, as well as socio-psychological dynamics, can exacerbate conflicts. At the same time, these regions also exemplify how trans-border collaboration and regional integration, civilian peace building efforts, strategies for achieving historical justice, as well as science education and science diplomacy can become crucial tools for long-term peace-building, reconciliation and development. In this course we will work with and discuss issues of peace and conflict with policy-makers and local stakeholders involved in peace-building efforts.
This is an introduction to the three 'master thinkers' who have helped determine the discourses of modernity and post-modernity. We consider basic aspects of their work: (a) specific critical and historical analyses; (b) theoretical and methodological writings; (c) programs and manifestos; and (d) styles of argumentation, documentation, and persuasion. This also entails an introduction, for non-specialists, to essential problems of political economy, continental philosophy, psychology, and literary and cultural criticism. Second, we compare the underlying assumptions and the interpretive yields of the various disciplines and practices founded by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud: historical materialism and communism, existentialism and power-knowledge analysis, and psychoanalysis, respectively. We also consider how these three writers have been fused into a single constellation, 'Marx-Nietzsche-Freud,' and how they have been interpreted by others, including L. Althusser, A. Badiou, A. Camus, H. Cixous, G. Deleuze, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, H.-G. Gadamer, M. Heidegger, L. Irigaray, K. Karatani, J. Lacan, P. Ricoeur, L. Strauss, S. Zizek.
Seminar intended to examine the increasingly complex relationship that has evolved between China and the rest of the international system, with particular focus on the rise of Chinese nationalism and the extent to which those in Tibet, Xinjiang, and, to a lesser extent, Taiwan, are contesting such a trend. In so doing, the course emphasizes the interrelated, yet often contradictory, challenges facing Beijing in regards to the task of furthering the cause of national unity while promoting policies of integration with international society and interdependence with the global economy. (ASIAN-SC, GOVT-IR)
This seminar creates a structured environment in which honors students will examine different research approaches and methods and construct a research design for their own theses-a thesis proposal that probes a new or inadequately researched question of importance to the discipline of political science or political theory. Apart from being a thesis writing workshop, the honors research class serves as a capstone course giving an overview of the different topics and methods addressed by students of politics. Members of the class will do extensive reading in published work relevant to their topics, and write a critical summary of that literature. Each member of the class will present their research design and central question(s) to the class for constructive criticism. By the end of the class, each honors student will have written the first chapter of the thesis, including the statement of the question, literature review, key definitions, methodology, and identification of data source(s). They will be working closely with an individual faculty adviser, as well as interacting with the research class. Students are strongly encouraged to examine some past honors theses on reserve at Kroch library in order to get an idea of the standards a government thesis must meet.
GOVT 4959 is the second semester of honors thesis research, limited to students who have completed GOVT 4949 - Honors Seminar: Thesis Clarification and Research. There is no formal class meeting. Instead, students will work on their own, with their advisers and other faculty they may consult. Following the plan developed in the fall semester, they will proceed to gather and analyze data or texts, turning in thesis chapters to the adviser on a regular schedule that the student and adviser develop.
The core course at Cornell in Washington is an engaged learning class that focuses on understanding and analyzing the professional experience of being in DC. Its primary purpose is to give students a chance to sunthesize the lessons of their internship work by examining and reflecting on that work, investigating the context and structures of the policy and political world with which they are engaging, and learning and practicing the professional forms of writing that the community uses. This process occurs through readings, written assignments, guest speakers, and signature events. An internship is required for the class.
One-on-one tutorial arranged by the student with a faculty member of his or her choosing. Open to government majors doing superior work, and it is the responsibility of the student to establish the research proposal and to find a faculty sponsor. Applicants for independent study must present a well-defined program of study that cannot be satisfied by pursuing courses in the regularly scheduled curriculum. No more than 4 credits of independent study may count toward fulfillment of the major. Students who elect to continue taking this course for more than one semester must select a new theme or subject each semester. Credit can be given only for work that results in a satisfactory amount of writing. Emphasis is on the capacity to subject a body of related readings to analysis and criticism. Keep in mind that independent study cannot be used to fulfill the seminar requirement. The application form for independent study must be completed at the beginning of the semester in which the course is being taken.
Contemporary politics raise profound questions about the American past and how aspects of it have traveled across time and into the present, shaping US government and politics. This PhD-level seminar uses historical and institutional lenses to examine analytical questions about the origins and development of the American state as well as processes of political change. In Spring 2021, we will explore American political development with an eye toward understanding how threats to democracy have waxed and waned and combined over time, and the implications for the present. We will focus on topics such as political parties and polarization; conflict over belongs, with respect to race and gender; economic inequality; and executive aggrandizement. We will read some classic texts as well as new and recent ones. (GOVT-AM)
The goal of this course is to introduce probability and statistics as fundamental building blocks for quantitative political analysis, with regression modeling as a focal application. We will begin with a brief survey of probability theory, types of measurements, and descriptive statistics. The bulk of the course then addresses inferential statistics, covering in detail sampling, methods for estimating unknown quantities, and methods for evaluating competing hypotheses. We will see how to formally assess estimators, and some basic principles that help to ensure optimality. Along the way, we will introduce the use of regression models to specify social scientific hypotheses, and employ our expanding repertoire of statistical concepts to understand and interpret estimates based on our data. Weekly lab exercises require students to deploy the methods both 'by hand' so they can grasp the basic mathematics, and by computer to meet the conceptual demands of non-trivial examples and prepare for independent research. Some time will be spent reviewing algebra, calculus, and elementary logic, as well as introducing computer statistical packages. (GOVT-AM)
This course examines racial and ethnic politics in the United States, highlighting its fundamental and constitutive role in shaping American politics more broadly. We will explore the political origins of the American racial order and the ways it has both persisted and changed over time. Focusing on participation, representation and resistance, we will emphasize the political agency of racialized groups while recognizing the power of institutions and policies in shaping their trajectory. This course should provide students with the knowledge and analytical tools necessary to better understand and more effectively study the complexities of race that loom large in a post-Ferguson, post-Obama America. (GOVT-AM)
This course builds upon 6019, covering in detail the interpretation and estimation of multivariate linear regression models. We derive the Ordinary Least Squares estimator and its characteristics using matrix algebra and determine the conditions under which it achieves statistical optimality. We then consider the circumstances in social scientific contexts which commonly lead to assumption violations, and the detection and implications of these problems. This leads to modified regression estimators that can offer limited forms of robustness in some of these cases. Finally, we briefly introduce likelihood-based techniques that incorporate assumptions about the distribution of the response variable, focusing on logistic regression for binary dependent variables. Students are expected to produce a research paper built around a quantitative analysis that is suitable for presentation at a professional conference. Some time will be spent reviewing matrix algebra, and discussing ways to implement computations using statistical software. (GOVT-AM)
The major issues, approaches, and institutions of American government and the various subfields of American politics are introduced. The focus is on both substantive information and theoretical analysis, plus identification of big questions that have animated the field. (GOVT-AM)
This course will explore the role of psychology in politics ? that is, rather than examining what happened in politics (e.g., who won an election) or how it happened (e.g., who voted for whom), we will look at why it happened by looking at the psychology of individuals. We?ll delve into enduring questions such as do the common liberal democratic assumption that citizens are rational and engaged in political affairs hold up to empirical scrutiny? If not, can the public still effectively participate in democracy? When do individuals engage with politics? What motivates them? More generally, what are the implications of psychology for the way politics works, and ought to work? In answering these questions, students will also learn about the variety of methodological tools used to study political psychology including lab experiments, online surveys, and field studies. (GOVT-AM)
An advanced graduate-level methods class that covers a mix of statistical and computational models and methods. These will include an introduction to generalized linear models, machine learning models, and models for non-standard data types (spatial, text, audio-visual). (GOVT-CP)
What can lawyers and judges learn from the study of literature? This course explores the relevance of imaginative literature (novels, drama, poetry, and film) to questions of law and social justice from a range of perspectives. We will consider debates about how literature can help to humanize legal decision-making; how storytelling has helped to give voice to oppressed populations over history; how narratives of suffering cultivate popular support for human rights; the role played by storytelling in a trial; and how literature can shed light on the limits of law and public policy.
The course examines the historical political landscape of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States and the interplay between tribal interests, politics, and the federal government. The course also looks at contemporary Native issues, federal policy and programs, tribal governance, relations between Tribal Nations and states and between Tribal Nations and the federal government. Finally, the course will explore Indigenous pop-culture and its influence on federal policy. Classes will all be in person and will be a mixture of lectures and discussion-based seminars. The majority of classes will have a guest lecturer related to that week's topic. Guest lectures will include, but not limited to, political appointees, congressional staff, political advocates, elected tribal leaders, and more. (MPA-PUBNON, MPA-SOCPOL)
An in-depth, graduate-level introduction to qualitative and comparative methods of political analysis, with special emphasis on the application of these methods in comparative and international politics. Through readings, discussions, and written assignments, students will explore strategies for concept formation, theory construction, and theory testing, using the craft and tools of comparative political analysis. (GOVT-CP, MHA-EL)
General survey of the literature and propositions of the international relations field. Criteria are developed for judging theoretical propositions and are applied to the major findings. Participants are expected to do extensive reading in the literature as well as research. (GOVT-IR)
The seminar will explore readings in the history of political thought from Homer to the Twenty-first century. (GOVT-PT)
This course considers statistical techniques to analyze time series data. We will pay particular attention to common time series methods, assumptions, and examples from political and social science. The course will offer a general introduction to the topic and will cover more advanced topics, such as cointegration, error correction models, vector autoregression, fractional integration, and time-series cross-sectional analysis. (GOVT-AM)
How is public policy really formed in the United States today? Who are the key actors and decision makers who shape the laws and regulations that impact us at the local, state and federal levels of government? Most importantly, how do private individuals (lobbyists, trade associations, media and other influencers) sway how laws, rules and regulations impact our daily lives? The goal of this course is to provide a foundation of how private influence impacts our public policy. Building upon this foundation, students will learn who the key policymakers are in the public sector alongside of those in the private sector who seek to influence them. Students will gain knowledge through academic texts looking at the role of interest group politics in America as well as the Instructor's 30 years of experience working as a public policy practitioner working at the highest levels of government on Capitol Hill and the White House as well as being a former lobbyist and licensed attorney at law.
This graduate seminar introduces students to methods currently used by political scientists to develop and test for observable implications of theoretically-derived arguments using data collected away from their home institutions. Topics covered include the relationships between fieldwork and research design, case and site selection, ethnography and participant observation, interview methods, surveys and experiments in the context of field research, research ethics and human subjects, logistics of field research, grant-writing, safety protocols, and knowing when to come home. The course is designed primarily for students working on dissertation proposals or early stages of dissertation field research, but it may be helpful for students at other stages as well. A goal is to encourage students to specify a field research strategy that links testable hypotheses with methods of data gathering and analysis before commencing field work. Students, therefore, will develop their own research projects as the semester progresses, including writing actual grant proposals, IRB applications, and pre-analysis plans. (GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
Social science research almost always combines empirical observation (data), the construction of concepts (language), and the logical analysis of the relations between observations and concepts (statistics). This course examines the relations between these three dimensions as the analyst moves from one to the other both as practice and in the crafting of a formal summary of findings and argument. We will be particularly interested in the foundational assumptions that underpin the connections between empirical reality, language, and statistical analysis. While these foundational assumptions are often taken for granted by social scientists, they vary dramatically between social science disciplines. The implicit contradiction between that variance and their doxic acceptance within disciplines will be a primary focus of the course. (GOVT-PT)
This course, Analysis of Natural Experiments, will cover topics in the study of observational causal inference. We will focus on quantitative methods for analyzing time-series cross-sectional (?panel?) data to study the effects of political shocks, policy rollouts, institutional changes, and more. Methods studied will include difference-in-differences, event study, and regression discontinuity designs. (GOVT-AM)
Economic inequality has been soaring in the United States since the 1970s, making the nation more unequal than it has been since the Gilded Age, and more unequal than any of the world's other wealthy democracies. How has government, politics, and public policy related to the emergence of such stark inequality? And to what extent has government and public policy managed to mitigate it? We will investigate these questions by examining the processes through which citizens seek to influence politics, the operation of government institutions, and specific policies. We will probe how rising economic inequality interacts with long-standing inequalities of race, ethnicity, and gender. Overall, the course analyzes whether such high rates of inequality can co-exist with democracy. (GOVT-AM)
This course will explore the relationship between popular belief, political action, and the institutional deployment of social power. The class will be roughly divided in three parts, opening with a discussion of how the material world influences the culture of a society. The middle section will connect culture to political ideology, including symbolism and the construction of group identity. The last part of the course will consider ways in which cultural symbols and ideology can be manipulated in order to legitimate government authority. We will then, coming full circle, trace how political regimes can influence the social practices from which culture originates. (GOVT-CP)
This seminar grapples with the idea of Africa as symbol, metaphor, imaginary, and real; received, constructed, and self-enacting; a status, condition, and state of mind; performed, executed, or captured.
This course provides graduate students in political science with a survey of the major works in the subfield of American Political Development centrally concerned with race, racism, and their institutionalization in American government and society. These works will provide a framework for engaging with major debates in the wider political science field of American Politics. Each week is organized a central text, with ancillary readings intended to situate it within relevant debates. (GOVT-AM)
How a society confronts and shapes socio-economic inequality depends largely on the policy tools at its disposal. A range of remedies - in areas as diverse as employment, education, health care, retirement, disability, housing, and parental leave - are available, yet different countries pursue alternative approaches to these issues. This seminar examines how politics shapes a government's social policy strategies. We will review the classic theories of welfare state variation emerging from Western Europe, how they shed light on the American approach to social policy, and to what extent they apply outside affluent democracies. We also will consider whether existing social policies can adapt to emerging issues, such as those posed by the gig economy and climate change. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP)
This course examines key features of the American political economy in comparative perspective. The increased academic attention to this subject allows us to investigate, moreover, why and how new research areas emerge in the discipline. We will review core literature in comparative political economy, situate the U.S. case within it, and highlight its distinctive aspects. In doing so, we consider a range of topics, such as labor markets, finance, taxation, social policy, and the role of corporate and other affluent interests - and their impact on substantive outcomes like inequality and economic performance. A central goal is to identify promising avenues for further research. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP)
This course explores the concepts of membership, belonging, citizenship and (im)migration with regards to the U.S. Latina-o-x experience. In this course, we will examine how historically, politically, socially and culturally, Latinas-os-xs have been construed as belonging or not belonging members of U.S. society. Given the multifaceted nature of the topics, our investigation of these topics will rely on an interdisciplinary approach. That is, we will draw from materials and knowledge in political science, sociology, history, public policy, and the law. The course will survey materials, concepts, and theories to investigate the ways in which race, immigration, gender, geography, politics and policy have defined how, when and under what circumstances Latinas-os-xs belong or do not belong in America.
In this course, we will examine one of the most important documents in American history - our Constitution. Course topics will include the historical background of the document from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. We will look at the creation of the Constitution, including the conflict between strong supporters of this proposed new Constitution (Federalists) and their opponents (Anti-Federalists). How did the Founders resolve their differences and what led the States to adopt a document limiting and balancing the powers of the President, Congress, and the Judiciary? We shall look at the constant tension (from the beginning to the present) over the balance of power between the three co-equal branches. We shall discuss the role of the Constitution from both empirical and theoretical perspectives and look at how it has evolved from 1788 to the present day. Special attention will be paid to the use of Amendments, particularly the Bill of Rights, to address events/circumstances unforeseen by the drafters. Finally, the course will discuss critical cases where the Supreme Court defined and redefined what the Constitution meant. (MPA-PUBNON, MPA-SOCPOL)
What types of political outcomes can religion and culture help explain? What political and social factors affect religious identity and institutions? This course is designed to provide graduate students with an overview of theoretical approaches to the study of religion and culture in the social sciences. This course has three objectives. First, students will be able to identify traditional ways in which religion and culture have been theorized and operationalized in political science. Second, students will use empirical evidence to evaluate these theories and measurement strategies and assess potential threats to inference. Finally, students will complete their own research project on the relationship between politics and religion. (GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
Political scientists have long studied parties, social movements, and populism, but these topics have generally belonged to separate branches of the discipline, each boasting a specialized body of literature with distinct theoretical cornerstones. In the real world, however, these phenomena interact with each other in complex ways that defy their analytical compartmentalization. Over the past decade, political and economic crises in Latin America, Europe, and the United States have forced scholars to recognize these intersections, as social movements and populist leaders have challenged mainstream parties, founded new ones, and undermined traditional party systems. This course explores these intersections, recognizing that parties, populism, and social movements are all different ways-more or less institutionalized and contentious-by which societal interests get represented in the political arena. (GOVT-CP)
This is a graduate seminar in political science on the application of historical analysis in comparative politics. The goals of the course are for students to understand the contemporary application of historical analysis in comparative politics and to familiarize themselves with current scholarly standards of such research, and then to produce research that meets those standards. Students will read and analyze peer-reviewed research (or near published research) on this topic each week and write a final research paper. (GOVT-CP)
The course examines the political relationship between ethno-racial diversity and economic redistribution. We assess the wide range of literature relevant to this subject, including that on the comparative politics of public goods provision, the political development of the American welfare state, and the political economy of globalization. Emphasis is placed on synthesizing theoretical proposals and integrating methodological approaches. We then explore how to apply these insights to pressing research areas, such as the study of populism, immigration, and economic growth. (GOVT-AM, GOVT-CP)
This seminar is an overview of the field of comparative politics targeting Ph.D. students in the Government department. This course introduces students to classic works as well as recent contributions that build upon those works. Readings draw from leading theoretical approaches-including structural, institutional, rational choice, and cultural perspectives-and cover a broad range of substantive topics, such as regime types, democratization, states and civil society, political economy, violence, mobilization, voting, and representation. (GOVT-CP)
This course investigates variation in the quality of governance and development in developing areas. Rather than providing a survey, the objective of this course is to discuss select open research areas at the intersection of politics and development and the tools necessary to contribute to them. Topics will include institutions and economic growth, colonial legacies, origins of the state, state capacity, social identity, and conflict. Students will complete a final research paper that develops an analytically rigorous argument about governance or development using the tools discussed in class. (GOVT-CP)
As a philosophical approach to culture and society emerging out of European contexts, critical theory has traditionally excluded questions about the history of racial difference. Yet critical theory’s insights into processes of subject formation, social relations, mass culture, and general emancipatory drive continue to inform and be of value to scholars of race concerned with the everyday production and transmission of ideas about normative humanity. At the same time, in their engagement with theory's blindspots, scholars of race demonstrate the racialized histories, contexts, and assumptions that make up that for which "theory" cannot account, as well as that from which it has unquestioningly emerged. This course explores contemporary critical scholarship on race, as defined by its relationship to anti-positivist epistemologies, theories of the subject, critiques of traditional ontology and aesthetics, and engagement with the Black radical tradition, environmental humanities, psychoanalysis, and more. Some familiarity with key figures and ideas in postcolonial theory and Black studies is desirable though not absolutely necessary. Readings may include Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sylvia Wynter, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Rizvana Bradley, David Marriott, Rei Terada, Nahum Dmitri Chandler, Fred Moten, and others.
The course will be thoroughly comparative in order to highlight both the specificity of each country as well as more generalizable dynamics of 21st century development. It will be divided into a number of inter-related modules. After a framing lecture, we will briefly cover the two countries' distinct experiences with colonialism and centralized planning. Then we will move on to dynamics of growth, which will seek to explain the relative success of China in the era of market reforms. In analyzing political consequences, we will assess how new forms of cooperation and conflict have emerged. This will involve attention to both internal dynamics as well as how rapid development has seen an increasing accumulation of political power in the East. It goes without saying that accelerating growth has led to huge social change, resulting in profound reorganizations of Chinese and Indian society. Finally, the course will conclude by returning to our original question-is this indeed The Asian Century? What does the rise of China and India mean for the rest of the world, and how are these two giant nations likely to develop in the future? (ASIAN-SC)
Contemporaries Read Ancients has twin pedagogic goals. The first is to deepen the study of antique thought and build upon prior understandings of ancient canonical texts; the second is to introduce the work of contemporary continental thinkers. In 2023, the seminar will focus on the relations among theory, perception, the productive arts, and politics, and will consider works by Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Arendt, among others. (GOVT-PT)
This course will give students the historical background and theoretical tools to understand the politics of Southeast Asia, one of the world's most diverse and fascinating regions. The first part of the course traces Southeast Asia's political development from the colonial period to the present day, examining common themes such as decolonization, state building, war and insurgency, ethnic relations, democratization, economic development, and nationalism. The second part of the course focuses on key issues in contemporary Southeast Asian politics, including political culture, representation and mass politics, globalization, regional politics, and civil violence. Our course will concentrate primarily but not exclusively on the six largest countries in the region-Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam-using the comparative method to understand variation across time, across countries, and within countries. (ASIAN-SC, GOVT-CP)
This course provides an introduction to the public opinion literature. Special attention will be paid to the determinants of political attitudes and their role in the larger political system. (GOVT-AM)
In this seminar, we will draw connections between radical theories and movements from the nineteenth century to the present. Rather than identifying isolated trajectories of “Marxism” “anarchism” and “feminism,” or distinct national traditions, we will focus on key concepts within internationalist thought: from the commune, the state, and the family to empire, colonization, revolution, and the strike. Focusing on the period before and after the 1917 Russian Revolution, we will witness Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin debate the role of the state, Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg consider the benefits and limitations of reform, Vladimir Lenin and W.E.B. Du Bois address the function of the strike, and Silvia Federici, Cedric Robinson, and Andreas Malm interrogate the racialized, gendered, and extractive foundations of capital. Taught in English.
The course will focus on the following issues. The first is defining democracy, dictatorship, and regimes that straddle the two (hybrids). The second is analyzing transitions to democracy, democratic breakdown and democratic consolidation. The third issue of interest is transitions to authoritarian politics and the resilience of, including challenges to, authoritarian regimes. Finally, we will also look at the relationship between regime type and other issues, such as economic performance, ethnic conflict and war. The geographical focus of the course will be broad, including the former communist world, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
When did bipartisan become a bad word? Should we unfriend and unfollow people who have different opinions than our own? How did we become a country that grows more polarized and divided every year? Most importantly, can we change, or are we destined to continue down this path? (MPA-INTPMN, MPA-PUBNON, MPA-SOCPOL)
After having been reduced to a mere ideological formation of bourgeois origin, aesthetics has recently made a strong comeback in the field of theory. This course probes the reasons for this historical change. From the arguments of the critics we will derive a catalogue of criteria for a viable aesthetics in order to examine how contemporary aesthetic theory relates to cognitive theories, the historicity of art and taste (including specific practices and institutions), and the emancipatory potentials of ethics and politics. Readings may include Adorno, Berger, de Bolla, Bourdieu, Noël Carroll, Cavell, Danto, Derrida, Dickie, Eagleton, Goodman, Guillory, Gumbrecht, Halsall, Luhmann, Lyotard, de Man, Walter Benn Michaels, Obrist, Ohmann, Scarry, Seel, Shustermann, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Williams and others.
This seminar will look broadly at challenges to democratic institutions in the United States and Europe. To think about the present, we will delve into historical fascism as well as nationalism and populism. We will (1) respond to contemporary political events in the US and beyond; (2) explore the terms fascism and populism which in the last few years have come to dominate our political vocabulary in the media and the academy; (3) mobilize the instructor's area of academic expertise (fascism and populism) in the service of broad liberal arts concerns. The course focuses upon themes and readings. It is not chronological-rather it looks at different iterations of the same ideas, concepts, and fears as they emerge in different historical contexts. Seminar materials draw upon various sources: scholarly articles, films, and if possible, an occasional guest lecturer.
This course is a graduate seminar that examines a selection of important texts that have helped shape and contest the political idea-and the political ideals-of America, placing particular emphasis on the dissenting traditions of American political thought. Beginning with a sermon delivered to Puritans on their way to the New World, and ending with a seminal debate between John Dewey and Walter Lippman over the very possibility of democratic self-rule in the modern age, the course will emphasize how intellectual argument in America has shaped-and been shaped by-the larger political culture of which it is a part. We will place particular emphasis on four significant periods in American political history: Puritan New England, the Revolution and Founding, Abolition and Civil War, and the Progressive Era. (GOVT-PT)
This seminar examines public opinion and political behavior from a comparative perspective using primarily the tools of quantitative social science. We will focus on the intellectual evolution of the field, its core theoretical arguments and controversies, as well as emerging research questions. The course proceeds thematically. Topics will include political culture and value change, information processing and opinion formation, both conventional and unconventional forms of political participation, representation, and voter decision-making. Important methodological issues in the cross-national study of public opinion and political behavior are addressed in the context of these substantive questions. (GOVT-CP)
This seminar will survey the field of contemporary political theories of dissent. Beginning with the 'new' civil disobedience debate and the question of whether or not the conceptual framework of civil disobedience can still provide adequate resources for conceptualizing recent protest movements, we will consider alternative theoretical approaches analyzing dissent in terms of repertoires of resistance or practices of refusal. Topics examined will include the relationship of theory and practice, the political functions of dissent, the democracy-inhibiting and democracy-enhancing faces of protest, the politics of in/civility, nonviolence and self-defense, protest policing, freedom and fugitivity, as well as the aesthetic-affective registers of political action. Readings may include recent works by William Scheuerman, Robin Celikates, Candice Delmas, Tommie Shelby, Fred Moten, Audra Simpson, Saidiya Hartman, Bonnie Honig, Banu Bargu, Lida Maxwell, and Judith Butler. (GOVT-PT)
This is a course on networks and text in quantitative social science. The course will cover published research using text and social network data, focusing on health, politics, and everyday life, and it will introduce methods and approaches for incorporating high-dimensional data into familiar research designs. Students will evaluate past studies and propose original research.
In contemporary political contexts democracy is often invoked as the very ground of political legitimacy. There is very little agreement, however, on what democracy means or how it is best embodied in state institutions and law. This seminar will introduce students to select debates in contemporary democratic theory over the normative meaning of democracy and the limitations of contemporary democratic practice. Beginning with the work of Rousseau and ending with debates over radical democracy, we will explore the following themes: How do democratic theorists and democratic actors negotiate the paradoxes of collective self-rule? What is the relationship between liberalism and democracy? Do rights suspend democracy or establish its preconditions? What are the best procedures for democratic decision-making? How does democracy deal with difference? Is democracy best understood as a form of government or a practice of resistance to domination? (GOVT-PT)
This seminar will offer an advanced survey in the political theories of revolution and counter-revolution from the late 18th century to the present day. Authors read will include Sieyes, Burke, de Maistre, Tocqueville, Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, Mao, Schmitt, James, Fanon, Arendt, Ranciere, Von Redecker, and Vermule, along with supplementary historical and historiographical material. (GOVT-PT)
This course introduces students to the latest empirical research on the applications of novel, large-scale, and unstructured data in political science and public policy. Themes include causality and credibility; administrative and open data; geographic and geospatial data; social media and digital trace data; text, image, audio, and video data; and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). For each type of data, students learn the set of questions it can help answer, along with appropriate methods for analysis. The course situates the rise of data-intensive social science within the broader context of political science and policy research and examines the promises and pitfalls of computational innovations and new data science methods, including their implications for ethics, transparency, and privacy.
How should we understand the relationship between aesthetics and politics, and how has this relationship been conceptualized in seminal works of modern and contemporary political theory? This seminar will explore these questions by emphasizing the contested role of aesthetics in both democratic theory and the modern history of democratic politics. We will read works by Hobbes, Rousseau, Burke, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Schiller, Whitman, Arnold, Nietzsche, Sorel, Schmitt, Ju?nger, Kantorowicz, Benjamin, Arendt, Lefort, Rancie`re, and several other contemporary political theorists. (GOVT-PT)
It is often argued that the Liberal International Order is facing serious challenges ? or even a crisis ? which may likely give rise to a different world order where the US and Western Europe would no longer be the main arbiters of international law, norms, and rules. This new world order, we are told, may be less rules-based, less free, less liberal, and less democratic. This course revisits the history of the Liberal International Order and its current state, while questioning the hegemonic discourses and the values it claims. The themes covered in the course include world orders and order-making; anarchy, hierarchy, and order in international politics; race, empire, and the Liberal International Order; non-western world orders and order-making otherwise; law and international order; and the future of the Liberal International Order. (GOVT-IR)
This seminar is intended to examine the increasingly complex relationship that has evolved between China and the rest of the international system, with particular focus on the rise of Chinese nationalism and the extent to which those in Tibet, Xinjiang, and, to a lesser extent, Taiwan, are contesting such a trend. In so doing, the course emphasizes the interrelated, yet often contradictory, challenges facing Beijing in regards to the task of furthering the cause of national unity while promoting policies of integration with international society and interdependence with the global economy. (GOVT-IR)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is arguably the most consequential anti-imperialist, the most sophisticated advocate of non-violence, and one the shrewdest political tacticians in modern history. He was also an extraordinarily penetrating, complex, and elusive political thinker. In this seminar we will explore the conceptual foundations and theoretical development of Gandhi's politics in the context of Indian discourses of freedom, mass politics, and decolonization. Through an intensive study of Gandhi's writings, of the influences that shaped it, and of the interlocutors and critics in dialogue with whom he developed his ideas, we will explore the philosophical contours and global impacts of Gandhi's political thought. (GOVT-PT)
It is hard to find any domain of international politics untouched by international law, norms, or institutions. Even in what scholars term an "anarchic'' system -- one lacking a central authority over sovereign states -- international politics increasingly occurs in, through, and by international institutions. This advanced research seminar examines the complex politics among states, international organizations, and non governmental actors as they create, enforce, and contest the institutions and rules that govern the international order. Why do states create international institutions? How do these bodies influence state behavior and global outcomes? And through what processes do institutions persist, adapt, stagnate, or die? This course will explore these and other questions through an examination of foundational scholarship in the field of international relations and recent research at the empirical and theoretical frontier of the discipline. The course aims to prepare students to make their own contributions to the field. (GOVT-IR, MHA-EL)
This seminar inquires into the interrelations among three meanings of equality that initially appeared in the ancient world: equality before the law, isonomia; equality of voice or participation, isegoria; and equality of power, isokratia. Tacking back and forth between ancient texts and contemporary materials in law and analytic and continental political philosophy, this course will explore how these different practices of equality circulate and interact in popular and institutional (judicial and legislative) settings marked by historical injustice, scarce resources, and asymmetries of wealth and power. This seminar will include texts by Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Ta-Nehisi Coates, John Rawls, Bernard Williams, Amartya Sen, Danielle Allen, Etienne Balibar, among others, probing the meaning of equality. (GOVT-PT)
This course examines the role that affect plays in politics and, especially, social movements. We will read about various interdisciplinary approaches to affect and public emotions before focusing on particular feelings like love, anger, fear, envy, grief, depression, resentment, hope, melancholia, and optimism. In doing so, we will ask: what does it mean to study, document, and historicize political affects? How can certain moods become resources for political action? Why and when do revolutionary energies increase or deplete? Possible readings include: Raymond Williams, Audre Lorde, Vivian Gornick, Lorraine Hansberry. (GOVT-PT)
Exploration into a range of contemporary theories and research topics in the field of international political economy. The seminar covers different theoretical perspectives and a number of substantive problems. (GOVT-IR, MHA-EL)
This seminar is an intensive study of the political thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. Approaching texts in contexts, we will seek to recover King the political thinker from his mythologization in American political culture by carefully reading his books, speeches, sermons, interviews, notes, and correspondence as illocutionary interventions into the major crises and ideological disputes of twentieth century American politics. Topics we will explore include the politics of dignity, leadership and mass politics, rhetoric and democratic persuasion, law and direct action, nonviolence, loss and mourning, race and political economy, global justice, and the practices of prophetic critique. Along the way, we will study King in dialogue with both his contemporaries as well as more recent interventions in the study of civil disobedience, racial capitalism, and Afro-modern political thought. (GOVT-PT)
This seminar will be devoted to the careful reading of a single significant and challenging work of political theory, accompanied by consideration of the author's reception of the work of their predecessors; the contexts in which the work was written; its relation to other parts of the author's corpus; the way the work has been critically engaged by others; the state of the relevant scholarly literature; and, especially, the continuing impact of the work in twentieth-century and contemporary political theory. In Spring 2023 the course will be centered on Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. (GOVT-PT)
This course focuses primarily on China's evolving role in both Asia and world politics. It does so based on the premise that what China does in Asia may not necessarily be the sole determinant of the type of security order that will prevail there, but, that it does have a profound influence on the region (and, potentially, on the global order as well). In other words, in order to gain an understanding of the state of security issues in Asia today the seminar attempts to come to terms with the evolving nature of China's foreign policy and national security strategies. The course then concentrates on the most influential academic work on China's foreign relations and national security policies that has been published since the end of the Cold War. (GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
This seminar examines how different political theorists, actors, and groups from the Global South responded to systems of empire and global racial hierarchy by proposing alternative projects of worldmaking throughout the 20th century. Their proposals often went beyond the nation-state form and entailed the rethinking of alternative modes of sovereignty and self-determination, as well as the creation of new formations like confederations, overseas departments, and regional economic institutions. Bringing together scholarship from Political Theory and critical International Relations, the seminar engages with the work of a wide array of anticolonial and anti-racist activists and thinkers who aimed to transform the inequalities of the imperial order by imagining alternative social and political worlds, epistemologies, and visions of global justice. (GOVT-IR, GOVT-PT)
This course will examine a variety of international relations theories in studying a broad range of security issues, including the causes of war, alliance formation, balance-of-power politics, security regimes, nuclear and conventional deterrence, the democratic peace, military strategy, international terrorism, and domestic constraints on the use of force. We will use a variety of theoretical perspectives to investigate these and other issues, paying particular attention to evaluating the theoretical arguments with both historical and systematic evidence. (GOVT-IR)
Recent conflicts have brought international law and international courts back to the front stage. This course is an introduction to the history, the processes, the actors, and the institutions of international law. It highlights the various questions and issues at the intersection of international law and international relations. The topics addressed in the course include: the nature and sources of international law; the role of states and international organizations; sovereignty, jurisdiction, and immunities; state responsibility; the use of force; the law of armed conflict; international criminal justice; international law and imperialism; and TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law). (GOVT-IR)
The comparative seminar explores pleasure and its relationship with neoliberalism. We will adopt an interdisciplinary approach and a historical trajectory, starting with the Ancient world through the contemporary. Our investigation of philosophical, literary, and filmic reflections on pleasure and neoliberalism will engage important concepts such as the market, subjectivity, race, gender, and queerness. We highlight and conceptualize how new/old media, literary, and other artistic productions facilitate the expression, the search for, and the achievement of pleasure. Through public speaking and deep attention to writing, you will refine your conceptual accounts of pleasure and neoliberalism and their mutual imbrication.
This course is a theoretical exploration of digital biopolitics, a convergence of how digital technologies mediate, govern, and regulate life, particularly within frameworks of power and control. Extending the concept of biopolitics—the governance of populations through the imbrication of life processes into political calculations to enhance the former—the course foregrounds how computational systems, algorithms, and data practices shape and are shaped by cultural, political, and economic forces. The interdisciplinary course, linking political philosophy, media theory, and race studies, thinks with a wide range of scholars for whom digitality, as it encounters biopolitics, is generative for a deeper understanding of the datafied world. This exploration follows sections, including data as a resource, digital embodiment and corporeality, digital labor and necropolitics, and biopolitical resistance in digital spaces. Foundational to the course are inquiries about posthumanism and ethics, such as: How does the digital reconfigure traditional boundaries between human and non-human, self and other? As technology mediates biopolitical power, who holds systems accountable for harm and injustice?
The core course at Cornell in Washington is an experiential learning class that focuses on engaging with the professional experience of being in DC. Its primary purposes are to give students to build their understanding of their internship work by analyzing and reflecting on that work, understanding the context and structures of the policy and political world with which they are engaging, and learning and practicing the professional forms of writing that that world uses. This process occurs through readings, written assignments, guest speakers, and signature events. (MPA-DATSCI, MPA-ECONPL, MPA-ENPO, MPA-INTPMN, MPA-PUBNON, MPA-SCITEC, MPA-SOCPOL, MPA-TPA)
Game theory provides a scientific approach to the study of social, political, and economic interactions that focuses on the strategic aspects of decision-making between two or more individuals or groups. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of formal theory, as well as how to solve basic games frequently used in political science research. The first part of the course will focus on strategic coordination, games in normal and in extensive form, and Nash Equilibria. The second part of the course will cover repeated games and games where informational uncertainty plays a role. Each week will also focus on applications to political science and economics, which includes topics of legislative bargaining and veto players, elections and candidate selection, clientelism, as well as deterrence and international relations. Students will be expected to complete weekly problem sets, participate in class games and simulations, and complete an independent final paper. (GOVT-CP)
This course provides a survey of classic and contemporary work on civil war by political scientists. It begins by exploring the conceptualization of civil wars, including an assessment of how social scientists study civil war. It then dives into the literature on the causes, dynamics of, and consequences of civil war. The last part of the class looks at conflict management and investigates how civil wars end. (GOVT-CP, GOVT-IR)
This research seminar has two primary objectives. First, to build on GOVT 6897 by deepening expertise in specific areas of the field of international security. Second, to guide students through the process of identifying research questions that build on the research agenda in particular topic areas, and guiding them through the process of beginning a research paper suitable for conference presentation. To accompany these goals, we will study the evolution of research in three growing areas of international research. Although topics may vary from year to year, they will sometimes include: 1) the proliferation of nuclear weapons; 2) the international arms trade; 3) cyber-warfare; 4) environmental crises and conflict. Topics will vary from year to year according to student interest. (GOVT-IR)
The Proseminar in Peace Studies offers a multidisciplinary review of issues related to peace and conflict at the graduate level. The course is led by the director of the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and is based on the Institute's weekly seminar series, featuring outside visitors and Cornell faculty. (GOVT-IR)
Individualized readings and research for graduate students. Topics, readings, and writing requirements are designed through consultation between the student and the instructor. Graduate students in government who are looking to use this as an option to fulfill their course requirements should check with their chairs to be certain that the program of study is acceptable for this purpose. Applications must be completed and signed by the instructor and by the chairs of their special committees. They are available from, and must be returned to, the graduate assistant in 212 White Hall.
Source: Cornell University's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
