Courses

Course Description
When is violence used against noncombatants for political purposes and what is the impact of
such violence? This course focuses on political violence by individuals and groups, whether or
not is sanctioned by a state. We will examine a variety of explanations for such violence,
including rationalist, psychological/emotion-based, and organizational approaches. We will also
discuss the impact of political violence: Does it get the job done, so to speak? Does violence
move terrorist groups closer to their goals? Does indiscriminate violence by the state spur
rebellion or suppress insurgencies? Does insurgent violence against civilians make them more or
less effective?
Our focus on just two questions—why does this violence happen and what is its impact?—allows
us to explore how social scientists explore such questions. Students will learn how to approach
academic journal articles and book chapters—identifying the authors’ purposes and the different
sections, and figuring out what they may gain from their reading. They will distinguish between
critiques of a theoretical claim based on its logic and premises and critiques based on empirical
evidence. They will understand what it means to evaluate theoretical tools on the basis of their
usefulness for understanding how things work. They will practice explaining new cases (and
predicting their outcomes) using these theoretical tools.

Course Description
When is violence used against noncombatants for political purposes and what is the impact of
such violence? This course focuses on political violence by individuals and groups, whether or
not is sanctioned by a state. We will examine a variety of explanations for such violence,
including rationalist, psychological/emotion-based, and organizational approaches. We will also
discuss the impact of political violence: Does it get the job done, so to speak? Does violence
move terrorist groups closer to their goals? Does indiscriminate violence by the state spur
rebellion or suppress insurgencies? Does insurgent violence against civilians make them more or
less effective?
Our focus on just two questions—why does this violence happen and what is its impact?—allows
us to explore how social scientists explore such questions. Students will learn how to approach
academic journal articles and book chapters—identifying the authors’ purposes and the different
sections, and figuring out what they may gain from their reading. They will distinguish between
critiques of a theoretical claim based on its logic and premises and critiques based on empirical
evidence. They will understand what it means to evaluate theoretical tools on the basis of their
usefulness for understanding how things work. They will practice explaining new cases (and
predicting their outcomes) using these theoretical tools.

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.   

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? 

This course explores causes and effects of political behavior in the United States. “Political behavior” is a broad concept, and can include many areas of engagement with civic life. As we consider “behavior,” we must also take on its foundations: Public opinion, ideology, and partisanship. We will focus primarily on mass politics—beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of ordinary citizens rather than of activists or elites—in the United States. However, we will also explore some effects of elite behavior on mass behavior. We will also focus on the interconnections between social structure, culture, and politics. In short, this course will focus on developing an understanding of the mechanisms that drive voting and other political behaviors in the United States.

This course provides an introduction to the politics of war termination and peace consolidation. The course examines the challenges posed by ending wars and the process by which parties to a conflict arrive at victory, ceasefires, and peace negotiations. It explores how peace is sustained, why peace lasts in some cases and breaks down in others and what can be done to make peace more stable, focusing on the role of international interventions, power-sharing arrangements, reconciliation between adversaries, and reconstruction.

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 course explores techniques to harness the power of ``big data'' to answer questions related to political science and/or American politics. Students will learn how to use R---a popular open-source programming language---to obtain, clean, analyze, and visualize data. No previous knowledge of R is required.

We will focus on applied problems using real data wherever possible, using R's ``Tidyverse.'' In total, in this course we will cover concepts such as reading data in various formats (including ``cracking'' atypical government data sources and pdf documents); web scraping; data joins; data manipulation and cleaning (including string variables and regular expressions); data mining; making effective data visualizations; using data to make informed prediction, and basic text analysis. We will also cover programming basics including writing functions and loops in R. Finally, we will discuss how to use R Markdown to communicate our results effectively to outside audiences. Class sessions are applied in nature, and our exercises are designed around practical problems: Predicting election outcomes, determining the author of anonymous texts, and cleaning up messy government data so we can use it. 

This course explores techniques to harness the power of ``big data'' to answer questions related to political science and/or American politics. Students will learn how to use R---a popular open-source programming language---to obtain, clean, analyze, and visualize data. No previous knowledge of R is required.

We will focus on applied problems using real data wherever possible, using R's ``Tidyverse.'' In total, in this course we will cover concepts such as reading data in various formats (including ``cracking'' atypical government data sources and pdf documents); web scraping; data joins; data manipulation and cleaning (including string variables and regular expressions); data mining; making effective data visualizations; using data to make informed prediction, and basic text analysis. We will also cover programming basics including writing functions and loops in R. Finally, we will discuss how to use R Markdown to communicate our results effectively to outside audiences. Class sessions are applied in nature, and our exercises are designed around practical problems: Predicting election outcomes, determining the author of anonymous texts, and cleaning up messy government data so we can use it. 

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; Analysis of the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on energy markets, global security, and the future of the energy transition; 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 as one of the central challenges of the 21st century; Analysis of the policies, technologies, financial systems and markets needed to achieve climate goals. Climate change and attempts of environmental regulation; Decarbonization trends, 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.

Introduction to the science of human behavior. Topics include history of psychology, brain function and development, sleep and dreams, sensation and perception, learning and memory, theories of development, language and cognition, research methods, emotion, mental illness, and therapy.