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 Undergraduate Program 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 2019 Seminars
- Section
Section 001
Hobbes's Political Philosophy
In this seminar we will conduct a careful reading of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan together with selected short readings by other authors to enhance students' understanding of some of the issues addressed in this classic work in the history of political thought.- Instructor
- Johnston
- Section
Section 002
Just Societies
This seminar will serve as a capstone to the study of justice and social change through the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia College. It will be limited to 18 students who, as a prerequisite to the seminar, will have followed the course offered by the Holder Initiative called "Power, Rights, and Social Change: Achieving Justice." The goal of this seminar is to serve as a bridge from classical theories of justice and social change to contemporary writings on just societies. The seminar will discuss very contemporary texts, mostly published in the law two to three years, on what we should do to make our society more just and how we should engage in social change. By focusing on the most contemporary readings, and discussing current political crises, the seminar will serve as a book end to the students' study of justice from antiquity to modernity in the course "Power, Rights, and Social Change: Achieving Justice." The seminar will serve as an advanced research seminar for the students, who will be using the readings, supplemented by their own research, to construct their own theory of a just society and social change in a 16- to 20-page paper.- Instructor
- Harcourt
- Section
Section 002
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 was 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
U.S. Presidential Power
This course is a comprehensive, diverse, high-level introduction to U.S. presidential power. It examines the sources of power across a broad spectrum encompassing formal and informal foundations, as well as the means presidents use to exercise power. The seminar analyzes a full range of formal power, including building a staff and cabinet, managing agencies, the executive’s unilateral powers, and the power to wage war. It focuses on presidential strategies for using the bully pulpit and discusses the potential effects of public opinion on the White House. The course also allocates significant time to constraints on presidential power from each branch. It covers the legal and political foundations of checks such as independent counsels, whistleblowing, impeachment, budget power and oversight. The seminar further addresses the role of the federal courts and the current state of Chevron deference. It wraps up by analyzing the unique tool box U.S. presidents can utilize to insulate their exercises of power through executive privilege and pardons.- Instructor
- Sivolella
- Section
Section 005
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 006
Executive Leadership in the United States: Public, Private, Non-profit
This seminar is an examination of the nature and practice of executive leadership in public, private (i.e., for profit, business), and non-profit institutions in the United States. The course does not begin with a theory of executive leadership. Rather, the goal of the course is to develop such a theory, a theory that takes into account the similarities and differences among the very different institutional sectors in American life, and a theory that distinguishes authentic leadership from four related matters, the effective exercise of power, effective management, having a “top job,” and celebrity. The first part of the seminar is devoted to: a) discussion of common, required readings, including case studies, that consider the nature and practice of executive leadership, and b) discussion of students’ research interests and strategies for gathering, organizing, and analyzing data for their own seminar papers. The second part of the course is devoted to students’ presentations, in class, of their own research on particular public, private, and non-profit executive leaders or problems in executive leadership, and to class discussion of their research.- Instructor
- Zebrowski
- Section
Section 007
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 008
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 009
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 010
Political Parties, Voting and Campaigns in American Politics
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 a t 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
Electoral Politics and Political Behavior in Comparative Perspective: A Focus on Immigrants, Diaspora and Expats
This course aims to introduce many of the important debates that have developed and still surround the concept and practice of voting across the world. We will first challenge many preconceptions about voting and discover new interesting perspectives on the following questions: What is voting? Why do we vote even if our individual votes have very little impact on the final outcome? Why do people vote even in authoritarian regimes, where the chances of making a difference are even slimmer? Why do some people or groups turn out to vote more than others? Which institutions favor and which limit voting turnout? We will then focus on one specific kind of voting: the vote of immigrants and expats. This topic is connected to a new way of thinking about global politics and political intersections between countries, which spurs the need to study complex political identities, the concept of citizenship from abroad, and new kind of voters and voting behaviors. We will address questions about voting, elections, and immigrants’ electoral behavior, by combining foundational work in political science with path breaking contributions that spans the disciplines from political philosophy to economics. Throughout the course, we will also examine relevant current events as well as cases studies presented by the students.- Instructor
- Superti
- Section
Section 002
Democracy and Populism in Central-Eastern Europe
The course will examine the growth of illiberal populism and democratic backsliding in East-Central Europe. The first part of the course will present various conceptualizations of the “quality of democracy” and will apply this framework on Central-Eastern Europe. Specifically, the first part will discuss conceptualization and measurement of populism, democratic backsliding, rule of law, electoral and inter-institutional accountability etc. and will examine how these indicators developed in the region of new Central-Eastern European democracies. The second part of the course will discuss factors that contribute to democratic backsliding in East-Central Europe. Specifically, this part of the course will examine 1) demand-side explanations that capture socio-demographic characteristic and attitudes of citizens (e.g. democratic values, cultural and economic grievances) and 2) the supply-side determinants that include political constraints and opportunities (e.g. institutional framework, political space and elite responses, EU accession).- Instructor
- Vrablikova
- Section
Section 003
Democratization
This course will examine the nature and the determinants of democratization processes around the world. Students are expected to become familiar with not only the cutting edge theoretical discussions on democracy and democratization, but also their real world implications. The purpose of this course is responding to the following two questions. Why some countries prefer and successfully transform into democracy, while others not? How do countries consolidate their democracy? The course will start with introducing the different definitions of democracy and the types of governance, as well as discussing the problem of democratic legitimacy. In the following weeks, our attention will be on the impact of cultural and socio-economic factors on democratization. These factors include political culture, civil society, structure of social classes, and economic development. Next, we will discuss the relationship between the constitutional designs and democracy. Final weeks are devoted to the topics on the durability of undemocratic or semi-democratic institutions and the role of civil military relations on democracy.- Instructor
- Aydogan
- Section
Section 001
Law of War
This course will examine the law of war as a subset of international law with the potential for dramatic real-world consequences. The first part of the course considers the law of war as dependent variable and seeks to understand why and in what circumstances states create law in as precarious an arena as that of war-fighting. Here we consider rationalist explanations of regime creation as well as realist and sociological alternatives. The second part of the course will turn to the law of war as independent variable and probe the possible effects of law on the behavior of states. As a seminar, the course privileges learning through active student discussion. Students have the option of writing a major research paper on a relevant topic of their own choosing or writing three short papers on provided prompts.- Instructor
- Greene
- Section
Section 002
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 not need to actually conduct this research.- Instructor
- Carnegie
- Section
Section 003
Theories of Revolution and Contentious Collective Action
The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to and an overview of theories of revolution and contentious collective action, as well as the concrete historical experiences of societies in the modern period that have experienced these phenomena. It is worth noting that in some traditions revolution is considered positively (for example, early American society (1775-1812), 20th century Russia/Soviet Union, post-1789 France, the 20th century Arab world, early Zionism, 20th century China); whereas in other societies the view is more or less negative (England after Cromwell, continental Europe between 1815-1914, classical and medieval Islamic societies, China for much of the imperial period, Japan, India). In the West the consideration of revolution goes as far back as Aristotle, so the topic is hardly new. To my knowledge, independent generic political science courses on revolution at the university level have been on the books only since the 1950s, becoming a staple in the early to mid-1960s. Since the collapse of communist systems in the 1989-1991 era, interest in such courses has somewhat declined, but it is doubtful that the situation will reach the point where such courses will disappear. Revolutions are historically rare, whereas contentious collective action, centered on social movements, is a broader theoretical field. The literature in this area for many years prominently featured developments in Western democratic systems, but works in this tradition began to be applied to the Soviet-type European systems in the 1980s and have since proliferated to “third” and “fourth” world authoritarian systems.- Instructor
- Akhavi
- Section
Section 005
Civil War and Peace
This course examines the causes, conduct, and consequences of civil war and all types of intrastate violence short of it, as well as potential solutions to intrastate conflict, drawing on examples from countries and conflicts throughout the world. The causes of intrastate violence examined in the course include: ethnic and religious identities, economic and security concerns, environment, and democratization. Subjects explored related to the conduct of violence include: the use of child soldiers, gender-based violence, and attacks on civilian populations, while those related to ending conflicts and preventing new one from arising include, but are not limited to, peacekeeping elections, decentralization and partition.- Instructor
- Brancati
- Section
Section 006
Security Cooperation and Assistance
This course examines questions in international security cooperation and assistance. Examples of enduring and emerging questions include: under what conditions do states form alliances or fight together in coalitions? Why do great powers sometimes provide smaller states with arms, military aid, and training outside of alliance relationships? These questions, which we will consider in the first half of the course, treat security cooperation and assistance between states as a dependent variable, or an outcome to be explained. In the second half of the course, we will consider the consequences of security cooperation and assistance. When does security cooperation and assistance achieve its intended outcomes and when does it lead to unintended consequences, whether for the provider or recipient? We will consider a number of important consequences that range from combat effectiveness to political stability and human security, examining each topic from a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches. There are no prerequisites for the course. However, familiarity with theories of international relations and social science research methods will be helpful.- Instructor
- Miles
- Section
Section 007
Conflict and International Institutions
This seminar examines issues related to armed conflict and international mechanisms to prevent and address it. It introduces theoretical and empirical problems in research on conflict. The course considers factors related to constitutional design, democratization and interstate dynamics. It analyzes the role of civil society movements, economic sanctions, democracy assistance programs, international tribunals and international military intervention.- Instructor
- Kirschke
- Section
Section 008
International Crises Since the Cold War: Politics, Economics, Business, Law
This seminar takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying the international relations of the last thirty years, with a particular focus on the successive, often overlapping, and frequently mutually-influencing, crises in international politics, economics, business, and law during the period. While the end of the Cold War initiated in the U.S. and the West generally a striking sense of optimism that lasted for much of the 1990s, even that decade featured significant crises in the developing world, and from the perspective of today a number of that decade’s achievements are seen as having helped lay the groundwork for some of the subsequent international crises in developed and developing countries. The seminar attempts to address these large and interrelated subjects by tackling it chiefly in two roughly ten-year long blocks (and one shorter concluding period). The schedule also builds in “pauses” between the blocks around single years that served or could have served as significant pivot points, during which we can more explicitly consider how the various international streams (and periods) have interacted with each other. 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 value of knowing something about as many of them as possible.- Instructor
- Pam