70 courses with the subject POLS, 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.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Politics and policy outside the United States; concepts for the comparison of political systems. Democracy, Third World politics, revolution, political stability and change, international effects on political processes. Not open to students who have taken POLS 205.
Offered Both Fall and Spring; Lecture hours:3A critical examination of the principles, structures, and processes that shape American politics. An emphasis on political behavior and institutions with applications to contemporary political issues.
Offered Both Fall and Spring; Lecture hours:3Introduction to major dynamics of international politics; the international system, decision making, perceptions, cooperation, conflict, and policy instruments, such as diplomacy and war. Analysis is linked to specific international events and issues.
Offered Both Fall and Spring; Lecture hours:3Examination of the moral dimensions of politics. Authors include Plato, Aristotle, Milton, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx. Major concepts include justice, freedom, rights, and authority.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course examines the politics of low and middle-income countries in the Global South and their interactions with the rest of the world. It draws principally on the experiences of countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa as it explores such critical topics as democracy, poverty, inequality, social movements, conflict.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course provides an introduction to the major contemporary political issues and trends in the region of India/South Asia. Themes will include colonialism, nationalism, economic growth and development, democracy vs. authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, and ethnic conflict. Crosslisted as IREL 212.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course addresses people's gendered political, social, and economic circumstances in global perspective, with a focus on women as a group. Topics may include: theories of gender, politics, and power; intersectionality; the public / private divide; gendered political interests; gender and political candidacy; gender and leadership; etc.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3The dynamics of politics in Latin American social, economic, and cultural context, with use of general comparative concepts of politics.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Introduction to core issues and theories related to the economic and political processes of European integration. Offered through Bucknell in London. Crosslisted as ECON 226.
Offered Alternating Spring Semester; Lecture hours:3Comparative analysis of institutions and policy-making in European political systems, including the European Union.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course provides students with an understanding of the domestic political systems of the region. More specifically, the course tries to explain the lack of democracies in the region. We examine such topics as state formation, persistence of authoritarianism, economic development, culture, Islamic challenge, and prospects for democratization.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course examines China's rich political history, its dynamic economic and social changes, its lasting political culture, its enduring struggle for modernization, and its evolving relations with the rest of the world. Crosslisted as EAST 269 and IREL 225.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3This course surveys political history, political institutions, economy, and society of major countries in East Asia, with focus on the continuity and changes in politics and policies of China, Japan, and Korea. Crosslisted as EAST 226 and IREL 226.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3Course introduces students to theories of the policy-making process in America, and also provides an overview of the major policy areas in American politics.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3A survey of higher education policy and campus politics in the United States. Ideas to be discussed include: national- and state-level education policy, college affordability and debt, student learning and the purposes of college education, new and non-traditional models of education, and controversies surrounding the political environment on college campuses.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course explores the role of the news media in American politics. Ideas to be discussed include: the relationship between elected officials and the media, campaign advertising and media coverage of elections, and the role of the media in shaping public opinion and public policy.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3; Repeatable This course explains and evaluates the impact of elections on American politics. It is focused on three central objectives: improving students’ understanding of the American electoral process; familiarizing students with the current electoral cycle; and improving students’ ability to analyze the role of elections in American politics.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Examination and evaluation of representative government in America. Detailed investigation of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Prerequisite: POLS 140 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Examination of civil liberties policy in the U.S. through a study of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Origins and development of the presidency and an analysis of the sources and nature of executive power in American national government.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Survey of the process and substance of policymaking in the Federal court system, with an emphasis on Supreme Court decision making and on the policy impact of court decisions.
Lecture hours:3Looks at the connections between race, ethnicity and power through various forms of political behavior including electoral, policymaking, and citizen participation. Explores mutually constitutive relationship between politics and race.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course explores the developing relationship between religion and American constitutional law, focusing on historic documents and Supreme Court decisions relating to the First Amendment. Crosslisted as RELI 280.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Analysis of the ways in which citizens form, update, and act on political preferences. Topics include: political socialization, evolutionary psychology, voting, civic participation, and social movements.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An examination of opposing positions within the primary ethical debates over immigration, including the right to immigrate, a state's right to exclude, the definition of and responsibility for refugees, amnesty and sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, the right to postcolonial immigration, preferences for skilled immigrants, and the brain drain.
Lecture hours:3An exploration of American political thought from the colonial era to present. Readings will be drawn from the dominant political ideas of elites and popular political thought from below. Students will engage with canonical texts, as well as equally important, but historically marginalized and excluded voices of American political life.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3Study of the types of arguments and analysis used in social and political ethics, in part through an examination of social issues.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An examination of competing ethical arguments regarding contentious issues in public policy, such as same-sex marriage, abortion, immigration, racial reparations, capital punishment and war.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Critical examination of the nature and meaning of "race" in terms of conceptual analysis, experience, social constructionism, feminism, class, ethnicity, politics, colonialism, violence, and redress. Crosslisted as CBST 229 and POLS 229.
Offered Occasionally,Topics course; Lecture hours:3Subjects will vary, e.g., morality and the legal process; religion and law; contemporary jurisprudence.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An examination of legal theories on race and ethnicity, including race-based citizenship, affirmative action, school desegregation, busing, voting rights, racial gerrymandering, tribal sovereignty and immigration.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Examination of the theory and practice of nationalist movements in Europe, the United States, India and the Middle East.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course examines the ideal of democracy as rule of the people, the constraints facing this ideal in modern mass societies, and the prospects of realizing this ideal through radical institutional and social transformation.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An examination of how various feminist ideas, commitments and critiques alter how we understand fundamental concepts and problems in political theory, such as the nature of justice, the function of political community, the foundation of rights, the definition of freedom and who is deserving of political rule. Crosslisted as WMST 269.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3Analysis of American foreign policy institutions and decision-making processes; examination of the history and of current issues and problems of U.S. foreign policy.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3The evolution of U.S. national security policy since World War II. Topics include defense in the nuclear area, strategic doctrine, arms control, WMDs budgeting, policy making.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3The course helps students understand what human rights are, why they are violated, and what the state system can do to help stop them from being violated. Students will also explore other debates within the field, like issues with universality and the hierarchy of rights.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3This course explores the rationales, processes, and institutions of multilateral governance in a globalized world. We examine the U.N. nongovernmental organizations, conflict resolution, economic development, environment, human rights, and international law. Not open to first-year students. Crosslisted as IREL 275.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course is designed to introduce students to the theories that have been developed to explain foreign policy processes and foreign policy behavior. The course will also examine and discuss the foreign policies of specific international actors. Crosslisted as IREL 276.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course examines the politics of international economic relations including trade, finance, and development. Crosslisted as IREL 277.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3The nature, historical development, and sources of international law; substantive and procedural international law and its role in international relations. Crosslisted as IREL 255.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3A common assumption of any state is that the military is subordinate to civilian control; however, many individuals cannot explain why that is the case. This class helps students better understand the theoretical reasons why it is considered "good" for militaries to be subordinate and what happens when subordination fails.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3This course focuses on the causes of wars. Theories from many disciplines are examined in relation to interstate wars. Applying these theories to different wars, through the use of case studies, will comprise a large part of the course.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course offers an overview of international relations in East Asia, with focus on political, economic, and social interactions among major states in the region. Crosslisted as EAST 248 and IREL 283.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3This course will examine the foreign policies of European countries, individually and collectively through the European Union, toward each other, regional and global intergovernmental organizations and other regions/countries. Crosslisted as IREL 218.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3This course explores the role nonstate actors (such as nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, violent nonstate actors, and individuals) can and do play in various substantive areas of international relations. Crosslisted as IREL 286.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Analysis of French foreign policy, institutions, and decision-making processes in the Fourth and Fifth Republics. Current issues and problems of French foreign policy. Offered through Bucknell in Paris.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableAttention will focus on specific thinkers, problems, concepts, or issues of recurring and continuing significance in political analysis. Topics will vary.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3In this course, we will engage in an introduction to and critical evaluation of how environmental politics function in the U.S. and globally, including the historical development of environmental laws and social movements, as well as the key debates, discourses, and language used in conflicts surrounding environmental issues. Crosslisted as ENST 245.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Introduction to the tools used in basic quantitative political methodology. Students will learn to understand and apply a variety of statistical methods and research design that are essential for political science and public policy research.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Introduction to various qualitative methods of inquiry and research design in Political Science, such as focus groups, case studies, interview techniques, interpretive approaches, and critical argumentation.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3Democracies have to grapple with where they fall on the scale of security and liberty. They deal with a security paradox that nondemocracies do not face. This class will explore the following questions: To what extent do democracies grant rights to people at the cost of reducing their security? What consequences do democracies face when they infringe on citizen liberties?.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableSelected topics. Prerequisite: POLS 120 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3This course critically engages the tools, concepts, and theories that are used to examine the politics of economic development in poorer countries. Prerequisite: POLS 120 or POLS 205 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course examines core topics and theories concerning the relationship between ethnic identity and politics using a comparative lens on cases outside of the United States. Prerequisite: POLS 120.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Course material includes the study of electoral rules worldwide, including social and political consequences of these rules. It examines the role of elections in both democratic and non-democratic systems, and then turns to a series of case studies of contemporary close and contested elections in varying contexts.
Offered Occasionally; Lecture hours:3This course explores the geographies and politics of nationalism, the ways in which nature is nationalized, the construction of nature in environmental contestations and reactions to nationalism, and the intersection of nationalism with other social constructions. Prerequisite: POLS 120 or POLS 205.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course explores the role of nationalism, alongside ideas about energy and nature, in the Russian state’s current & historical colonial relationships with neighboring countries, Central Asia and Indigenous communities of Siberia. Topics include Russian imperial/Soviet state extractivist economics, Russian/regional pipeline and petro politics, social resistance and climate change futures. Crosslisted as ENST 357 and RUSS 357.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableSelected topics. Prerequisite: POLS 210 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An examination of competing theories of justice and the application of these theories to various issues in public policy, such as taxation, welfare, health care, education, immigration, and foreign aid. Prerequisite: POLS 210 or permission of instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3Selected topics. Prerequisite: POLS 140 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Research-centered examination of the causes and consequences of political polarization and its implications for democracy. Prerequisite: POLS 140 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Theoretical and quantitative approaches to the study of public attitudes in the United States. Prerequisite: POLS 140 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An in-depth examination of American legislative politics through empirical social-science research methods. Prerequisite: POLS 140.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableSelected topics. Prerequisite: POLS 170 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3Through tracing the evolution of U.S.-China relations from the 18th century to the present, this course discusses major issues and challenges between the two countries. Future trends of the relationship will also be explored. Prerequisite: POLS 170. Preference given to POLS/IREL/EAST seniors. Crosslisted as EAST 382 and IREL 482.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course helps students understand feminism as a major critical perspective to International Relations. Topics include re-understanding the formation of the state system, conflict and security, and international political economy. Prerequisite: POLS 170 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3The seminar will study human rights, primarily from an international perspective, including self-determination, cultural rights, ethnic and racial rights, women's rights, religious rights, and lesbian and gay rights. Open to seniors majoring in IREL or POLS, others by permission of the instructor. Crosslisted as IREL 415.
Offered Both Fall and Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:Varies,Other:3; RepeatableOpen to qualified students who wish to pursue individual programs of advanced study in political science. Prerequisites: approval of a proposal submitted to the department, normally at least two weeks prior to registration and permission of the instructor.
Offered Both Fall and Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:Varies,Other:3; RepeatableIndependent research on some topic approved as honors work by the department and Honors Council. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.
Source: Bucknell University's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 59
