Undergraduate Seminars
Students majoring in political science must take two 4-point 3000-level seminars. At least one of the seminars taken must be in the student’s primary subfield.
Registration
Students may not pre-register for political science seminars. To register, students must join the seminar's wait list in SSOL. Students on the wait list will receive further instructions from the instructor or the department.
Instructors' preferred methods for admitting students to seminars vary. Some will correspond with students via the wait list function in SSOL. Some will give instructions in the course notes section of the Directory of Classes. Others may communicate with students individually. Still others may ask all interested students to come to the first class meeting for instructions.
The Academic Affairs Coordinator can answer questions about seminar registration.
Seminars must be taken for a letter grade.
Fulfilling the seminar requirement
The following courses fulfill the seminar requirement. All seminars are offered for 4 points of credit.
- POLS UN3911x and UN3912y — Seminar in Political Theory
- POLS UN3921x and UN3922y — Seminar in American Politics
- POLS UN3951x and UN3952y — Seminar in Comparative Politics
- POLS UN3961x and UN3962y — Seminar in International Relations
Other seminars, including Barnard colloquia, may count for seminar credit only with the written permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies or the Undergraduate Advisers.
Spring 2021 Seminars
Section
Section 001
Tocqueville in America
This class will be organized as a close reading of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. We shall use the Library of America edition. DO NOT BUY OR USE ANY OTHER EDITION, AS WE SHALL HAVE TO BE ON THE SAME PAGE. In addition, Daniel Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848, is required reading. These have been ordered to Book Culture. George Pierson, Tocqueville in America is also required, but as it is out of print, Book Culture could not order it. There are many cheap copies available from third-party sellers.Instructor
- Elster
Section
Section 002
Populism, Democracy and Rights
The course will concentrate on the contemporary challenge of populism(s) to constitutional democracy appearing in a wide variety of political environments. We will examine the foundations of the phenomenon in concepts of popular sovereignty and the people emerging or re-interpreted in the democratic revolutions, along with later debates around these concepts. We analyze the concept of representation as it pertains to democracy, and then discuss the concept of populism generally and it’s left and right versions. Once this theoretical work is done we will discuss social movements and populism, and then populism and political parties. The idea is to ask whether populism involves a distinctive party/movement relation and what role digital media play in it. We then turn to the history and present of populism, examining the birth of modern populism in the United States and in Latin America comparing the relevant movements, parties and regimes in the latter region, to their fascist contemporaries. With respect to the present, we will distinguish between left and right variants, and the various “host ideologies” to which populist movements and leaders have attached themselves: nationalism, socialism, and even liberal democracy. Concentrating on European case, primarily we will distinguish populism as party-movement, as government and as regime. In the U.S., we will analyze how populist social movements and savvy political entrepreneurs capture existing political parties to come to power. In each version, we will focus on the relationship to democracy and civil society. Finally, we will consider the international conditions that make populism a worldwide challenge to political democracy.Instructor
- Cohen
- Section
Section 001
Contemporary Electoral Politics
This seminar looks both backward and forward in terms of US electoral politics. How was Donald Trump able to upset conventional wisdom at every juncture and actually win the presidency? What is behind the Democrats’ strong showing in the 2018 midterm election, and what are the implications for the future? What can we say at this stage about US elections in 2020 and beyond? For answers, students will examine relevant literature from Political Science on US electoral politics. Students will also write individual research papers to answer relevant questions about contemporary US electoral politics.- Instructor
- Erikson
- Section
Section 002
Terrorism and Counterterrorism
The seminar is designed to illuminate students’ understanding of the most important aspects of domestic and transnational terrorism and counterterrorism today and in the past through assigned readings, class discussions, and research for a required term paper. While the major focus is on the United States as target of and responder to this sort of political violence, we will also touch upon terrorist threats/attacks and countermeasures around the globe that do not involve the U.S.- Instructor
- Nacos
- Section
Section 003
Equality and the Law
This seminar will explore the meaning of equality in the United States, through a close reading of Supreme Court decisions involving race, gender, sexual orientation, and wealth. The central question for the course will be: what does it mean to receive 'the equal protection of laws'?- Instructor
- Amdur
- Section
Section 004
Policymaking This seminar directs readings and research on public policymaking in the American federal government. It is designed to help students think analytically about the ways in which the politics, structures, processes, and actors at the heart of public policymaking interact. It examines how political institutions--the executive and legislative branches--are organized and motivated to produce policy, the politics of government organization, bureaucratic operation and survival, how the budget process drives policymaking processes, policy structures and relationships that have emerged out of custom and practice, theories and models of decision-making, concepts of rationality and choice, agenda-setting, political innovation, and judicial and interest group roles in policy formation. Specific policy areas we will engage as case studies are: the economy and employment, trade, financial reform, campaign finance reform, and policy responses to terrorism, war, and disaster.- Instructor
- Russell
- Section
Section 005
Politics and Policy: States, Local Governments, and Finance, Bushell
State and local governments across the U.S. intersect with markets in a myriad of ways. The power to govern is the ability to mobilize resources and organize public and private interests in local governing arrangements. State and city governments are both borrowers and investors promoting fiscal, human capital, and economic development policies. The municipal debt market is over $4 trillion in bonds outstanding. The scale of this market is supported through an assemblage of intergovernmental actors, private interests, issuers, and investors operating at both a local and global scale. This course examines the role of state and local governments, and the ways they access capital markets to promote a range of policy objectives. Considerable attention is given to fiscal crisis and intervention strategies state policy-makers impose on cities as well as the turnaround strategies executed by decision-makers in cities.- Instructor
- Bushell
- Section
Section 006
Political Parties, Voting ad Campaigns in American Politics, Mitchell This course will examine topics around the evolution and development of political parties and electoral systems, the purpose and causes of voting and vote choice as well as the impact and strategies behind political campaigns in the US. The course will seek to look at these topics, which seem to dominate political news, in an academic context so that students can understand these political phenomenon in a more thoughtful and scholarly way. Questions such as why the US has a two party system, how our political debate and parties are influenced by our electoral system and constitution, how changing media over the last sixty years has influenced campaigns and political communication and how vote choice is determined will be addressed throughout the course.- Instructor
- Mitchell
- Section
Section 001
Information, Media, and Political Behavior
How does political information – conveyed through print, broadcast, and social media – shape the behavior of voters and politicians in developed and developing countries? We first ask what voters know about politics, and how the news and political ads influence voter opinions, electoral turnout, vote choices, and the degree to which voters hold governments to account for their performance in office. We then explore the determinants and consequences of media biases, considering the nature and causes of editorial slant, political capture, and government censorship. Finally, we examine how social media and new technologies are changing the nature of modern political participation. This course emphasizes cutting-edge studies seeking to theorize key relationships and identify causal relationships.- Instructor
- Marshall
- Section
Section 001
Topics in International Security
Deterrence and bargaining theories, the balance of power, power transitions, the effect of economic interdependence on war and peace, rising populism and nativism, cyberconflict, gender and armed violence.- Instructor
- Snyder
- Section
Section 002
Foreign Policy Decision-Making
When we talk about the successes and failures of U.S. foreign policy in managing international crises—in the media, in classrooms, in everyday conversations—we inevitably focus on the individuals making decisions in Washington. While the president, the secretary of state, and other top officials are routinely viewed as key shapers of U.S. actions abroad, we rarely take the time to think carefully and analytically about how these actors view the world, how they arrive at their decisions, and how various psychological factors such as identity, belief, emotion, or personality shape the policies they devise to promote U.S. interests abroad.
This class has two main goals. First, to encourage students to think critically about these often-ignored questions: How do the limits of human cognition and rationality impact leadership during international crises? What role do leadership characteristics such as gender, race, prior experience, and even personality play in decisions about war and peace? Do groups make better decisions than individuals alone (or, are democratic leaders more successful than authoritarian ones)? How do constraints such as the need for intelligence collection, secrecy, and maintaining U.S. reputation abroad influence the decision-making process during crises?
A second goal of this course is to enable students to improve their own effectiveness as executive-branch officials in crisis policy making. This course also seeks to improve students’ ability to advise such officials as intelligence officers or other advisers by improving their understanding of other actors' actions, perceptions, and motivations. To practice these skills in the course of this class, students will be asked to apply the theoretical materials we cover to recent case studies.- Instructor
- Yarhi-Milo
- Section
Section 003
International Crises Since the Cold War and the Emergent Post-Post-Cold War Era
This seminar takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying the international relations of the last thirty years. During the first two-thirds of the course we alternate between the successive, often overlapping, and frequently mutually-influencing, crises in international politics, economics, business, and law during the period. The final section concludes with an exploration of emergent features of what could be a new era in international relations distinct from the 'post-Cold War era' of the period since the early 1990s. This approach to the seminar in international relations is motivated by three objectives: first, to emphasize the contemporaneous interrelationships between some of the most important disciplinary and professional perspectives on international affairs; second, to explore the ways in which decisions and developments that occur in one domain and during one period have difficult or impossible to predict repercussions in other domains and periods; and third, to underscore the many different disciplinary and professional paths to involvement in international relations and the practical and intellectual value of some familiarity with as many of them as possible.- Instructor
- Pam
- Section
Section 004
International Law
Since the end of the Cold War, international law has played a greater and greater role in how we think about international relations and the “rule of law” in global affairs. Yet, expectations for a new international order have not always been met by real behavior on behalf of states and non-state actors. Nevertheless, international legal agreements have proliferated even though norms and rules are not always observed or clearly understood. This course will examine the interaction of law and politics at the international level and how each influences the other. We will cover the sources of international law, participants, courts, dispute settlement, jurisdiction, and customary law. We expect law to provide predictability and structure for daily international activities so the international system, however complex, can operate effectively. International organizations like the United Nation are central to the creation of international law and form the nexus where new international organizations like the World Trade Organization and the International Criminal Court are allowed to take shape. These new organizations in turn establish norms, policies, and rules which become part of the international legal world. Enforcement, however, at the international level is significantly different than that which is available to states through police, courts, and penal systems, all lacking in the global environment. International law depends on consent and horizontal pressure applied by other parties to an agreement to extract compliance by violators. Today it is impossible to completely grasp international politics without an understanding of international law. This course is offered in order to bridge that gap.- Instructor
- Krasno