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? 

Much of politics is about combining individual preferences or actions into collective choices. We will make use of two theoretical approaches. Our primary approach will be social choice theory, which studies how we aggregate what individuals want into what the collective ;wants.; The second approach, game theory, covers how we aggregate what individuals want into what the group gets, given that social, economic, and political outcomes usually depend on the interaction of individual choices. The aggregation of preferences or choices is usually governed by some set of institutional rules, formal or informal. Our main themes include the rationality of individual and group preferences, the underpinnings and implications of using majority rule, tradeoffs between aggregation methods, the fairness of group choice, the effects of institutional constraints on choice (e.g. agenda control), and the implications for democratic choice. Most of the course material is highly abstract, but these abstract issues turn up in many real-world problems, from bargaining between the branches of government to campus elections to judicial decisions on multi-member courts to the allocation of relief funds among victims of natural disasters to the scoring of Olympic events. The collective choice problem is one faced by society as a whole and by the smallest group alike.

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.

Although the media focuses on national politics, local government, policy, and electoral politics are critically important around the world. Local governments in the U.S., for example, manage the police, determine housing policies, provide basic public services such as garbage collection and water and sanitation; and implement national policies from welfare programs to climate change. Local governments in developing countries like India also have substantial powers including the implementation of large programs for the poor, deciding where a road will be built, and helping citizens access a distant and often unresponsive state. In this class, we will examine local democracies, or elected local governments, in a diverse array of contexts in developed and developing democracies. Unlike a course that examines one city in-depth, this course will identify patterns in local representation and policy across contexts with different institutions, demographics, and levels of development (e.g., US vs India).

This six-week course is also unique in that it has a focus on New York City itself. We will have opportunities to have experiences in NYC related to local democracy. All students will attend a city council or neighborhood council meeting and take notes on what you see and hear. We will meet organizers of local campaigns and/or local activists participating in local issues specific to NYC. And we will have a field assignment where you explore an issue in NYC government. We will explore the following questions:

1. What do local governments do and how does this vary across contexts?
2. “Who governs” at the local level—that is, what types of people run for and hold office, and what types of individuals, social groups, institutions, or interest groups influence local government decisions? 
3. When is local democracy most responsive to poor and marginalized groups? Specifically, in what types of social and political contexts does local democracy work best for the poor? 
4. What explains variation in policy outcomes (housing, policing, public services, climate efforts) across towns in the US and across contexts?

Although the media focuses on national politics, local government, policy, and electoral politics are critically important around the world. Local governments in the U.S., for example, manage the police, determine housing policies, provide basic public services such as garbage collection and water and sanitation; and implement national policies from welfare programs to climate change. Local governments in developing countries like India also have substantial powers including the implementation of large programs for the poor, deciding where a road will be built, and helping citizens access a distant and often unresponsive state. In this class, we will examine local democracies, or elected local governments, in a diverse array of contexts in developed and developing democracies. Unlike a course that examines one city in-depth, this course will identify patterns in local representation and policy across contexts with different institutions, demographics, and levels of development (e.g., US vs India).

This six-week course is also unique in that it has a focus on New York City itself. We will have opportunities to have experiences in NYC related to local democracy. All students will attend a city council or neighborhood council meeting and take notes on what you see and hear. We will meet organizers of local campaigns and/or local activists participating in local issues specific to NYC. And we will have a field assignment where you explore an issue in NYC government. We will explore the following questions:

1. What do local governments do and how does this vary across contexts?
2. “Who governs” at the local level—that is, what types of people run for and hold office, and what types of individuals, social groups, institutions, or interest groups influence local government decisions? 
3. When is local democracy most responsive to poor and marginalized groups? Specifically, in what types of social and political contexts does local democracy work best for the poor? 
4. What explains variation in policy outcomes (housing, policing, public services, climate efforts) across towns in the US and across contexts?

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 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.