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 UN3911 — Seminar in Political Theory
- POLS UN3921 — Seminar in American Politics
- POLS UN3951 — Seminar in Comparative Politics
- POLS UN3961 — Seminar in International Relations
Barnard colloquia may not be used to fulfill the seminar requirement, though they may be used to fulfill subfield or elective requirements.
Spring 2022 Seminars
Section
Section 001
Theorizing the Crisis of Weimar Democracy
What is sovereignty? What role do basic rights play in modern democracy? Should democracy be based in commonly shared values? Is there an essential difference between liberalism and democratic politics? And if so, how can modern liberal democracies function?
The Weimar period gave rise to some of the most important and consequential debates in political theory and constitutional thought since the eighteenth century. Lawyers and political theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, Hermann Heller, Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer tackled in particular the challenges that democracies face in an age of mass society, of unbounded capitalist dynamics, and of rising anti-democratic forces.
This course introduces students to key debates in political and constitutional theory of the Weimar period. It contextualises them in the social and political world of Germany’s first, failed, democratic state by looking at cultural and economic theory as well as political thought. Many of the texts discussed in this class have only recently become available in the English language. As such, they offer fresh perspectives on concrete political theoretical problems such as the function and legitimation of modern constitutional courts, of basic rights and the role of the party. At the same time this course offers a deep insight into the vagaries and complexities of European constitutionalism in the first half of the twentieth century, and the consequences of its failure for the political world which came after it.Instructor
- Maier
Section
Section 002
Citizenship and Exclusion
What kind of ‘good’ is citizenship, and who gets to have it? What does it impart on, and demand from, its bearers? Citizenship has always been a battleground in struggles for inclusion and exclusion, but are there more and less defensible ways of drawing its contours? This course aims to familiarize students with contemporary theories of citizenship from the lens of boundaries. How do politically, socially, or culturally marginalized groups use the discourse of citizenship to claim equal participation and recognition? Are there limits to what marginalized groups can achieve using this discourse? How should access to citizenship be regulated in contemporary democracies? Is it possible to imagine citizenship without exclusion? Could recent global trends (such as global economic interdependence, migratory movements, diversifying political communities, or the tech revolution) transform or even obviate citizenship?
This is a political theory seminar, but citizenship itself is inseparable from political practice. For this reason, the assigned reading is drawn from a wide range of materials: philosophical and normative accounts, historical studies, social science research, judicial decisions, legal materials, political speeches, etc.Instructor
- Isiksel
Section
Section 003
What is Fascism?
Is fascism a threat today in the West, as it was between the two world wars? What is distinctive about fascist movements or movement parties, when and why do they succeed in entering and then controlling government? What are the tensions and dynamics of fascism in power as distinct from other authoritarian governments and regimes? Is there a specific trajectory to fascist regimes and if so, how does it relate to empire or imperialist expansion? The first part of this course will develop a working definition or ideal type of fascism as a movement, as a party in government, and as a distinct regime type, through a comparative analysis of the relevant cases in Italy, Germany, and the United States. The second part of the course will focus on conceptual and analytic issues: the political structure of fascist regimes and the totalitarianism debate; the relationship of fascism to capitalism; fascist legality; fascist ideology; the relationship of fascism to imperialism and empire and finally the comparison of fascism to populism. Throughout our interest will be the distinctiveness of Fascism, its contemporary relevance and the similarities and differences (and possible convergences) with contemporary populism.Instructor
- Cohen
- Section
Section 001
Topics in American Democracy
This seminar will explore questions of American democracy from various perspectives and be an advanced seminar in American politics. The major theme of the course will be the evolution and challenges of American democracy. Topics will include historical events such as the founding and crafting of the constitution or the Civil War, institutional questions issues like elections, legislatures and federalism, as well as thematic questions such as the interaction of democracy with race and identity or other divisions within the polity.- Instructor
- Mitchell
- 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
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 004
The First Amendment
The First Amendment has probably generated a larger scholarly literature, a larger popular literature, and more discussion at all levels of society than any other part of the Constitution. In this seminar, we will examine the philosophy underlying the First Amendment, along with selected Supreme Court decisions cases involving the speech and religion clauses. We will ask how the Court has balanced (and how it should balance) the rights protected by the First Amendment against values such as public safety, national security, dignity, and equality.- Instructor
- Amdur
- Section
Section 006
Politics and Policy: States, Local Governments and Finance
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 007
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 008
Topics and Debates in Judicial Politics
This course explores judging and courts... and an assortment of controversies surrounding them, such as: Why do we have courts and judges? What does it mean for a judge to be impartial? Does electing state court judges distort their impartiality? Are Supreme Court justices’ decisions political? Do judges’ biographical characteristics affect their decisions? At stake is the handling of important substantive political controversies such as voting rights, discrimination in criminal law, and the regulation of police. We will think not just about how courts engage in politics and policymaking, but what drives this engagement. In so doing, we will be evaluating the state of the American judiciary and justice system. (For the most part we will study American courts, but occasionally we might delve into other countries’ judiciaries as well.)- Instructor
- Lax
- Section
Section 001
Voters without Borders: Diasporas and Emigrants Electoral Participation in Comparative Perspective
In the last ten years a new mass of voters without borders was born. Hundreds of millions of individuals live outside their country of origin (or home country), in a host country where they work, pay taxes, build families, and socialize. At the same time, institutional changes in the home country, like enfranchisement of emigrants, have turned these same individuals into active political participants back home. Moreover, recent technological advancement in travelling and communication (e.g., the use of internet and social media) has changed the pace of and accessibility to transnational politics: more emigrants can be in touch with peers in the home countries, follow the news of their country in real time, and get involved directly in political campaigns on social media. The amount of information flowing from the home country to its diaspora and then back has increased exponentially, as well as the economic and political influence of diasporas on internal politics of the home and host country.
This new reality has produced multiple complex political connections across the world both at the individual and institutional levels. It has also spurred a new way of thinking about global politics and political intersections between countries and the need to study complex political identities, the concept of citizenship from abroad, and a new kind of voter and voting behavior. This course shows how the literature in political science has tried to address some of the most important questions arising from this phenomenon: why do country allow their emigrants to vote? Who turnout to vote? What is the impact of this on the host and home country politics? And so on.
The course starts by introducing many of the important debates about voting in general and then, it focuses on the specific kind of voting and political participation: voting across and beyond borders.- Instructor
- Superti
- Section
Section 002
Corruption and the Rule of Law
This seminar will examine debates about the sources and consequences of corruption and the rule of law. We will explore theories of corruption and legal development rooted in politics, culture, institutions, economic endowments, and society, while also considering the strengths and weaknesses of different ways of studying corruption. What do we mean by “corruption” and the “rule of law”? How can we study “illegal” activity? Why is corruption higher in some countries? What is autocratic legality? Does corruption hinder economic growth and democratic practices? If so, how? These questions will be at the center of our attention.- Instructor
- Frye
- Section
Section 003
Electoral Rules and their Consequences
For representative democracy to work, it requires a set of rules to determine who wins elections and gets to govern. However, these rules can vary greatly in terms of how votes are cast, counted, and translated into seats, and differences in the rules can produce significantly different political outcomes, both directly (due to the way in which votes are counted) and indirectly (due to incentives that affect the behavior of political actors, such as voters and candidates). The set of rules that structure the process of voting and election is what we call the electoral system. This seminar will survey and analyze electoral systems from around the world to explore how electoral rules can affect voters, politicians, parties, policymaking, and representation.- Instructor
- Smith
- Section
Section 001
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 002
American Foreign Policy and International Relations Theory
This course will explore American grand strategy in broad theoretical context. After introducing the central challenges of contemporary American foreign policy, the class will examine them through a variety of theoretical lenses from inside and outside political science. The approaches covered will run from realism and liberalism, to constructivism, feminism, and Marxism, to anthropology, sociology, psychology, and biology. Students will write a major paper applying and assessing the insights of a non-mainstream theoretical literature of their choice for American foreign policy toward China or the future of the liberal international order. They will emerge from the course with advanced skills in both foreign policy analysis and international relations theory and a deep understanding of how the two are connected.- Instructor
- Rose
- Section
Section 003
Ethical Dimensions of International Politics
This course examines the intersection of ethics and world politics. World politics covers considerable ground, ranging from theories of state behavior to war and political economy. Standard courses on international relations consider issues of ethics and morality briefly, if at all. This one, by contrast, confronts them head on, and by drawing on works from political science, history, law, economics, philosophy and ethics, and religion studies. It is therefore explicitly interdisciplinary in orientation.- Instructor
- Menon
- Section
Section 004
Advances in International Political Economy
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.- Instructor
- Sahakyan
- Section
Section 005
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
- Section
Section 006
Analysis and History of U.S. Grand Strategy
This seminar examines prominent decisions in U.S. foreign policy through various analytical and historical lenses. In the first half of the course, we begin by defining the term “grand strategy,” discussing how it has been used (and misused) by both academics and decision makers, and evaluating the degree of rationality in the process of constructing grand strategy. We then establish the frames of analysis through which scholars and policymakers understand key decisions of war and peace. In the second half of the course, we apply these theories to major U.S. military operations since the dawn of the 20th century, exploring the extent to which these frameworks can help us understand successes and failures in American grand strategy. We investigate the extent to which scholarship can help us learn from these experiences as well the practical strengths and limitations of grand strategy as both a means and an end of states’ foreign policies.- Instructor
- Casler
- Section
Section 008
National Security Policy
Substance and process of policy on national defense, focusing on the USA: Military programs and other instruments of influence, weapons of mass destruction, intelligence analysis; effects of political culture, constitutional separation of powers, organizational complexity and bureaucratic politics, civil-military relations, experience in crises and wars of the past century; debates about costs and benefits of activism abroad.- Instructor
- Betts
- Section
Section 009
Political Violence
This seminar will address the causes and consequences of political violence. It will examine issues surrounding identity, economic factors, armed and criminal groups, civilian casualties, terrorism and state violence. The course will present debates on international military intervention and counter-terrorism strategy. Empirical material will include case studies on the Islamic State, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Rwanda, Georgia, Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina.- Instructor
- Kirschke