Political Science

What is a just society? What is a good life? How should we live together when we disagree about justice and the good life? Is government essential to living well? What is the best form of government? What rights do we have? How, if at all, can the coercive power of the state be justified? These are some of the enduring questions we will explore. A major goal of the course is to exercise techniques needed to understand a political thinker’s arguments and to construct one’s own.

Introduction to national political institutions and processes. The presidency, Congress, the courts, political parties and elections, interest groups, and public opinion.

This course provides a broad overview of the comparative politics subfield by focusing on critical substantive questions about the world today. The course is organized around four questions: 1. Why can only some people depend upon the state to enforce order? 2. Why are some countries more democratic than others? 3. What different institutional forms does democratic government take? 4. Are some institutions more likely than others to produce significant social outcomes such as representation, accountability, redistribution, and democratic stability? Because the study of comparative politics requires knowledge of specific cases, we will focus on eight countries: China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, and the United Kingdom. This course will prepare students for higher-level courses in political science in two ways. First, it will teach students to make and evaluate arguments about politics. Second, it will make students aware of to the methods political scientists use in their research.

This is the required discussion section for POLS UN1501.

A survey of major concepts and issues in international relations. Issues include anarchy, power, foreign policy decision-making, domestic politics and foreign policy, theories of cooperation and conflict, international security and arms control, nationalism, international law and organizations, and international economic relations.

This is the required discussion section for POLS UN1601.

The goal of this course is to provide students with an overview of constitutive debates over the theory and practice of democracy along three major lines: democracy as a word (with a time-honored ancestry and a tortuous trajectory across the centuries); democracy as a constellation of principles and values; and democracy as an array of institutions and procedures that instantiate the word and pursue the foundational principles of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule. In doing so, we will read the work of major representatives of historical and contemporary political thought who assessed democracy’s shortcomings and potential, examined the relationship between its theory and its practice, and offered prominent resources for thinking about democracy’s future in our present.   

 

Today, the movement of peoples across the Earth and consistent attempts to control or prevent that movement are ubiquitous global phenomena. There is hardly any land on the planet that is not claimed as the territory of one state or another. Borders have become the most common, although by no means only, site in which states try to assert their power over movement. The causes, impacts, and ethical stakes of border crossings have become fixtures of both national and international political discourse.

This course will examine questions about the politics and ethics of borders and immigration in the modern world. To inform our discussion, we will engage with ideas from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including political theory, history, law, political science, and sociology. While this course will focus on the US context and pay special attention to the history and dynamics of US immigration policy, we will also survey how immigration and borders intersect with global politics.

This course is designed to be a 6-week intensive class. The first two weeks concern foundational questions and key concepts. These include the question of what constitutes membership in a political community (citizenship), what exactly borders are and what functions they serve.  Week 3 turns to the question of why people migrate, what the most prominent migration policy regimes are, and the history and present state of American immigration policy. Week 4 turns to the moral question of whether states should be entitled to their territory and, if so, whether they have a right to control their borders. We will examine debates both for and against open borders. Week 5 examines further questions on who immigration regimes prioritize and who they do not. Week 6 turns to the causes, law, and ethics of refugees and asylum seekers.

This political science course provides an introduction to the politics of judges, courts, and law in the United States.  We will evaluate law and courts as political institutions and judges as political actors and policy-makers.

The topics we will study include what courts do; how different legal systems function; the operation of legal norms; the U.S. judicial system; the power of courts; constraints on judicial power; judicial review; the origin of judicial institutions; how and why Supreme Court justices make the decisions they do; case selection; conflict between the Court and the other branches of government; decision making and conflict within the judicial hierarchy; the place of courts in American political history; and judicial appointments.

We will explore some common but not necessarily true claims about how judges make decisions and the role of courts.  One set of myths sees judges as unbiased appliers of neutral law, finding law and never making it, with ideology, biography, and politics left at the courthouse door. Another set of myths sees the judiciary as the “least dangerous branch,” making law, not policy, without real power or influence.

Our thematic questions will be:  How much power and discretion do judges have in the U.S?  What drives their decision-making? 

Since WWII, in a stunning historical turnaround, much of Europe has gone from centuries of war to an increasingly inclusive project of peaceful and innovative regional cooperation. Yet, despite such apparent success, the EU has recently come to face countless challenges: the European democratic deficit, the Eurozone crisis, Brexit, Euro-skepticism, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some observers have even come to question the limits of European integration.

In this course, we will focus on the contemporary chapter of European politics, asking crucial questions of the integration process. How do national, intergovernmental, and supranational dynamics play out across policy areas? What are the colonial and neocolonial roots of European politics? How have European politics evolved in response to the many recent crises? What further developments should we expect? Will member states follow the path of ever-greater integration and eventually form a federation? Will the European Union fall apart? Will the integration project develop into a multi-speed, modular governance system?

With these questions in mind, this course will explore the politics of the European Union across a diverse array of policy domains. Building on a foundational two sessions on the history and structure of the EU, each week will tackle a core policy realm: the economy, migration, common security, foreign policy, the environment – to name a few. In doing so, the class reviews state-of-the-art political science research with the double objective of understanding the theoretical and empirical substance of academic studies and applying their insights to real-world political issues.

This course examines questions in international political economy, asking what we know and how we know it. It addresses questions such as: Why do some countries promote globalization while others resist it? What do IOs do in international politics? Who runs our system of global governance? We will explore these questions and others by focusing on topics such as international trade, foreign aid, investment, and the environment. For each topic, we will use a variety of theoretical lenses and then investigate the evidence in favor of each. More generally, the course will consider the challenges of drawing casual inferences in the field of international political economy. There are no prerequisites for this course but an introductory economy course would be helpful. Students will write a short reading response each week and produce a research proposal for studying a topic related to international political economy, though they do not need to actually conduct this research. 

This is the required discussion section for POLS S3628.

This class aims to introduce students to the logic of social scientific inquiry and research design. Although it is a course in political science, our emphasis will be on the science part rather than the political part — we’ll be reading about interesting substantive topics, but only insofar as they can teach us something about ways we can do systematic research. This class will introduce students to a medley of different methods to conduct social scientific research.

This is the required discussion section for POLS UN3720.

With the rise of extreme weather events as a consequence of climate change, the demand for “climate justice” has become a popular backdrop for environmental and climate movements to demand more specific political action to address the climate crisis. This course will cover the origins and development of the concept of environmental justice and its relationship to issues of race and power, as well as the transition from environmental justice to climate justice and its political implications today. Establishing the connection of environmental and climate justice principles to existing political institutions, the course will also include a field trip to visit South Bronx Unite and do a walking tour of heavily polluted waterways in the Bronx. Additionally, students will choose an institution or movement of their choice and create a report which analyses what concepts of justice these institutions refer to, what their goals and demands are, and how their strategies relate to these demands and where they might be falling short.

Prerequisites: POLS W4710 or the equivalent. 

This course will intensively examine some of the data analysis methods which deal with problems occurring in the use of multiple regression analysis.  It will stress computer applications and cover, as needed, data coding and data processing. Emphasis will also be placed on research design and writing research reports. 

The course assumes that students are familiar with basic statistics, inference, and multiple regression analysis and have analyzed data using computer software (e.g., any standard statistical programs on micro-computers or larger machines -- Stata, “R”, SPSS, SAS, etc.). Students will be instructed on the use of the microcomputers and the R and Stata statistical software program(s) available as freeware (R) or in the CUIT computer labs (Stata; several campus locations) or through SIPA. The lectures and required discussion section will emphasize the use of “R.” Students may use whatever computer programs they prefer for all data analysis for the course. There may be an additional fee for classroom instructional materials. 

This is the required discussion section for POLS GU4712.

The course focuses on the nexus between energy and security as it reveals in the policies and interaction of leading energy producers and consumers. Topics include: hydrocarbons and search for stability and security in the Persian Gulf, Caspian basin, Eurasia, Africa and Latin America; Russia as a global energy player; role of natural gas in the world energy balance and European energy security; transformation of the global energy governance structure; role and evolution of the OPEC; introduction into energy economics; dynamics and fundamentals of the global energy markets; IOCs vs NOCs; resource nationalism, cartels, sanctions and embargoes; Asia's growing energy needs and its geo-economic and strategic implications; nuclear energy and challenges to non-proliferation regime; alternative and renewable sources of energy; climate change and attempts of environmental regulation; emerging international carbon regimes and search for optimal models of sustainable development. Special focus on implications of the shale revolution and technological innovations on U.S. energy security.

The interaction of intelligence and political decision-making in the U.S. other Western democracies, Russia and China. Peculiarities of intelligence in the Middle East (Israel, Iran, Pakistan). Intelligence analyzed both as a governmental institution and as a form of activity, with an emphasis on complex relations within the triangle of intelligence communities, national security organizations, and high-level political leadership. Stages and disciplines of intelligence process. Intelligence products and political decision-making. The function of intelligence considered against the backdrop of rapid evolution of information technologies, changing meaning of homeland security, and globalization. Particular emphasis on the role of intelligence in the prevention of terrorism and WMD proliferation.