Some time ago, Harold Lasswell declared that politics is the struggle over "who gets what, when, how." As this definition suggests, politics involves competition among diverse interests but should this competition be regarded as a contest among numerous groups, as a clash between competing majorities, or dominated by elites representing "special interests"? These contrasting conceptions of power in American politics will be evaluated against the backdrop of a general introduction to the institutions and processes of the United States government. The class is meant to furnish students with a conceptual analysis of political power, a grasp of the fundamental dynamics of American politics, and the skills to be an effective participant in and critic of the governing process. During the semester, we will take apart how the government works and why, make sense of current political questions, and learn how to influence the government at various levels. Special attention will be paid to the 2000 election and implications of the results.

This course examines political life in Latin America in the postcolonial period. The course covers the entire region but emphasizes the most representative countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru. The overarching purpose of the course is to understand change and continuity in this region. We will endeavor to accomplish this by emphasizing both the historical development of institutions and political actors in Latin America (e.g. the state, capital, labor, the church, the military) as well as the variety of theoretical frameworks that scholars have constructed to understand the dynamics of political development throughout the region (e.g. modernization, dependencia, and political culture). Among the major themes covered in the course are the legacies of European colonialism, state building, revolution, corporatism and populism, military rule, and redemocratization. Open to all students.

This course introduces the study of political theory by examining four representative texts from two different epochs. Principal assignments are in Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. The course compares their approaches to still-current issues in political inquiry: political containment of physical force, conflicts between deep beliefs that give meaning to people's lives and the demands of rulers, relations between the order of the household (oikos) and the order of the political association (polis), and connections between knowledge and politics.

This course introduces students to the office of the presidency and, more generally, to the major dynamics affecting American politics today. Using the 2000 presidential election as a starting point, we will explore this contemporary contest in search of deeper historical patterns concerning the transformation of dominant issues, party coalitions, and the institutional capacities of the presidency. Particular attention will be paid to the struggles and crises that have led to the enlargement and contraction of presidential power including the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War, civil rights mobilization, Vietnam, and Watergate. These episodes not only led to the crafting of new tools of macroeconomic management and the emergence of the national security state, they decisively contributed to the construction and eventual decay of the coalitions that have defined the horizons of political possibility in the twentieth century and beyond. Other topics include the resurgence of Congress, the 1994 triumph of the congressional Republicans, divided government, and the political manipulation of scandals.

Humanitarianism, or, as it used to be called, charity has existed as an idea in almost every civilization and for most of recorded history. But it has come to occupy a special, and in the mind of some people at least, a disproportionate role in the second half of the 20^th century. Wars are fought in the name of humanitarianism --Kosovo is only the most recent example - and humanitarian aid workers operate in areas where almost no other outsiders are otherwise present. At the same time, however, there are many in the developed world who view the humanitarian enterprise as a stalking horse or a flag convenience for other Western interests, and indeed, for a post-modern version of neo-colonialism particularly suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world in the least favored parts of the globe. This course will examine both the ideals and the contradictions inherent in, and probably inseparable from contemporary humanitarianism. The idea is to chart both the strengths of the humanitarianism enterprise and the challenges that confront it in the field, without ignoring the deeply contradictory nature of the idea itself.

This seminar course examines broad questions about the relationship between the news media and politics. It addresses the interaction between government and news media, concentrating on the characteristics of different media systems, the role of news media in elections and the impact of news media on the formation of foreign and domestic policy. It also focuses on the impact of corporate ownership on news media, claims and counter-claims of liberal and conservative bias, and the emergence of new media technologies. It primarily addresses contemporary news media in the United States, although significant attention will be devoted to other national systems and historical periods.

When the colonial world finally wrested its independence from the European colonial powers, there were great hopes that this would not just lead to political emancipation, but to economic development. After more than a half century and despite the fact that some countries along the Pacific Rim have become prosperous, the situation in much of Asia, Africa and Latin America has not only not improved, but in many places has actually grown worse. For all the talk of the glories of globalization, the reality for the overwhelming majority of the earth's people is one of increasing immiseration. How did this go wrong? Why were the expectations of so many dedicated and intelligent people in the 1950s and 1960s never properly fulfilled? This course will chart the history of thinking about development and its interactions with the liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s. It will examine the way the idea of development and foreign aid were interpreted differently among the donor nations in the global North and the beneficiary nations of the global South. It will also consider the United Nations' failures and successes in determining both the agenda and the scope of the development project and focus on the role of UN agencies and international financial institutions. The course will attempt to analyze whether development is, in fact, an idea whose time has passed, or alternatively whether it is in fact an idea that has not yet been tried in a serious way.

Since the mid-1970s, over forty nations in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia have exited authoritarian rule and inaugurated democratic government, occasioning a global democratic revolution of unprecedented proportions. The rise of open and competitive political systems in parts of the world once seemingly condemned to dictatorship raises at least two critical questions to students of political development in general and democracy in particular. What accounts for the triumphant rise of democracy at the end of the twentieth century? And what are the prospects for democratic consolidation among fledgling democracies? These questions provide the anchor for this seminar on the politics of democratization. They frame a wide range of issues and theoretical questions in the study of the politics of democratization such as whether democracy is the outcome of material prosperity or skillful political actors, which kinds of political institutions and arrangements are best suited to a new democracy, how democratizing societies settle the legacies of repression of the retreating authoritarian regime, and the links between democratization and political violence. The cases covered by the seminar include Spain, Argentina, Russia and South Africa. Open to students with a background in the social sciences.