DIVISION OF SOCIAL STUDIES

POLITICAL STUDIES

PS 104 International Relations

Professor: S. Baruah

CRN: 91678 Distribution: C

Time: W F 9:00 am ­ 10:20 am OLIN 201

An introduction to the basic concepts and to selected problems in international relations. How order is maintained in world politics is the central theme of the course. We will examine the role of balance of power, alliance systems, international organizations and international law, in maintaining order. Is a "new world order" taking shape since the end of the cold war? We will examine a number of current issues such as global trade and global environment, nuclear non-proliferation, terrorism, civil wars and failed states and explore what international cooperation or noncooperation in these areas means for world order.

PS 112 Introduction to American Government

Professor: J. Kahn

CRN: 91668 Distribution: C

Time: Tue Th 10:30 am ­ 11:50 am OLIN 202

Cross-listed: American Studies

This course provides an introduction to the study of the government of the United States. Its framework is freedom and power; the tensions between democracy and the demands of effective governance in modern society. All governments combine coercion and legitimacy. In a stable and legitimate system, coercion is hardly noticed. Government comes to be seen as a source of benefits. The purpose of the course is to look behind institutions, practices, and benefits to appreciate how, for what, and for whom we are governed.

PS 241 Late Modern Political Theory: Knowledge and Organization

Professor: D. Kettler

CRN: 91679 Distribution: A/C

Time: M W 10:30 am ­ 11:50 am OLIN 202

Since the end of the nineteenth century, political theory has been influenced by its confrontation with the question whether politics can be reduced to a science. Conflicting theories share common features. First, late modern approaches are strongly marked by attention to social theory, the intellectual project centered on problems of modern rationality. Second, conceptions of political knowledge are closely linked to conceptions of organization (and the fear of disorganization). Earlier emphases on justice and authority are overshadowed by questions about the intelligence of political rule. The course will compare major nineteenth- and twentieth-century proposals for institutionalizing rationality in the political system, as well as some outstanding critics of the project. Authors covered are J. S. Mill, Friedrich Engels, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emile Durkheim (writing on Saint-Simon), Max Weber, V. I. Lenin, George Lukács (writing on Lenin), John Dewey, Karl Mannheim, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Hayek, Michael Oakeshott and Jürgen Habermas. This is a fast-moving survey course, with class sessions alternating between lectures and workshop-tutorials on the reading excerpts assigned. Students will be required to write two short discussion papers and a final examination.

PS 243 Politics of Central Europe: Transition to Democracy

Professor: M. Haraszti

CRN: 91931 Distribution: C

Time: Tue Th 10:30 am - 11:50 am OLIN 306

The course aims at understanding the roots, the ways, and the prospects of the dissolution of Communism, specifically in the pioneering Central European countries. Never before the "revolution of 1989" have so many countries become democratic within such a short period of time, and the transformation of the Communist world is still going on. We will focus on this political transformation in Central Europe--the countries between Germany and the former Soviet union. Politics in Central Europe has been distinctive both during its half century long Communist rule and in its post-Communist developments. After uprisings and reforms, by the 1980s, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were ready politically, economically, socially and culturally for democratization. Their peaceful, negotiated and constitutional transition to free elections is a unique chapter in the history of democratization. These nations promise a relatively quick adjustment to Western standards not only in government and economy but even in the precarious supranational, multicultural and federalist demands of a United Europe.

PS 249 Dreams of Perfectibility, Part 1: The Quest for a Moral Foreign Policy from Jefferson to FDR

Professor: J. Chace

CRN: 91681 Distribution: C

Time: M 1:20 pm ­ 3:20 pm OLIN 203

Cross-listed: American Studies, History

Students must commit themselves to enroll in both this course and PolSt/AmerSt/HistSt/SS 295, "Dreams of Perfectability, Part Two: The Cold War from FDR to Bush,"* over a full academic year.

From the early days of the Republic, America's intense drive for absolute security has shaped our history and national character. Americans have, of course, gone to war for a variety of specific reasons--to expand their territory for economic gain, in response to affronts to their national honor and territorial integrity, to secure their nation's role as the guardian of freedom and the promoter of democratic values. Moreover, the overarching response to America's need to counter real or imagined foreign threats has been the use of unilateral action as the surest method of achieving national security. But American foreign policy has always been justified by appeals to American exceptionalism. America as an exemplar or as a crusader--these are the moral poles of U.S. foreign policy. Yet no American foreign policy can be successful in long term without a moral component. Should America have a democratizing mission? What are the consequences of this search for perfectionism in an imperfect world?

*Spring 1996: PolSt/Amer St/HistSt/SS 250, Dreams of Perfectability, PartTwo: The Cold War from FDR to Bush. Immediately after the Second World War, a clash of ideologies developed into a Cold War between the two victors, the United States and Soviet Russia. To what extent was this a moral struggle and to what degree, a classic conflict of great powers. This course will analyze the direction of American foreign policy during an era that has been characterized as a pax americana. It will also make use of new material dealing with the Soviet approach to the postwar world by studying excerpts from recently released Soviet archives. The Cold War also traces a trajectory from American predominance to American decline, from Soviet assertion as a superpower to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War paradoxically marks the end of the superpower phenomenon.

PS 262 The Environment, Law and Culture

Professor: J. Kahn

CRN: 91680 Distribution: A/C

Time: Tue Th 2:50 pm ­ 4:10 pm OLIN 205

Cross-listed: American Studies, CRES, History, MES

How, why, and to what extent should the American legal system protect the natural environment? If it protects the natural environment, should it also protect aspects of the human­made environment? This course will begin by exploring the logic of preservation underlying the laws protecting endangered species, wilderness, and national parks. We will move beyond environmental law itself to consider such issues as what is wilderness? what makes a natural wonder different from a cultural or human­made wonder? what makes either, or both, deserving of preservation? To address these questions we will compare the logic of environmental preservation laws with laws protecting historic buildings and historic artifacts such as the Elgin Marbles. Finally, we will consider whether distinct cultural communities can or should be accorded legal protection on a par with natural communities.

PS 272 Topics in Public Policy

Professor: O. Levin-Waldman

CRN: 91921 Distribution: C

Time: W 3:30 pm - 6:00 pm OLIN 309

The course will explore a variety of topics in public policy analysis including policy formation, implementation and evaluation. The course will focus on the process by which policy is formulated--the interaction of policy entrepreneurs, interest groups, politicians and public officials--as well as issues involving the politics of policy choice. Why do some policy alternatives become more viable than others? We will look at structural variables such as the constitutional system that define the limits of policy debate. The course will examine the relationship between social science methods and policy analysis. With the use of social science methods does policy analysis become a neutral enterprise or are these methods used to promote particular ideological and political agendas?

PS 352 Individual and Community in American Political Life

Professor: J. Kahn

CRN: 91682 Distribution: C

Time: M 3:00 pm ­ 5:00 pm OLIN 303

Cross-listed: American Studies

This course will examine how individuals come to see themselves as political actors through identification with larger associations or groups. Through a series of historical case studies ranging from the late nineteenth century to the present, we will explore how awareness of race, class, gender, and authenticity shape political identity and inspire political action. Topics may include the urban political machine, women's suffrage, labor in the Depression, the civil rights movement, the New Left, the Moral Majority, and contemporary feminism. Prerequisite: college­level background in American politics or American history, or permission of the instructor.

PS 353 Problems of Post-Communism

Professor: M. Haraszti

CRN: 91932 Distribution: C

Time: Wed 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm OLIN 306

The course will examine dilemmas and problems facing post-Communist democracies. These will include: the crystallization of pluralistic party systems, the implications of different types of transition -- negotiated or revolutionary ones, questions of constitution-making, different strategies of "decommunization" and of coming to terms with the legacy of Communism, the comebacks in free elections of former Communists, different strategies of privatization and their social implications, defederalizations -- in the cases of former Yugoslavia, Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia --, nationalism and minority issues and the differential prospects for integration with the West.

PS 355 Power Politics

Professor: J. Chace

CRN: 91683 Distribution: C

Time: W 10:30 am ­ 12:30 pm OLIN 301

The "realist" tradition in international relations has long been central to the method by which rulers and policymakers deal with the foreign policy of the state. This is an upper-level seminar that will concentrate on analyzing the classic works of the so-called realist tradition. Readings will include Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Lorenzo dei Medici, Harold Nicolson, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Woodrow Wilson, George Kennan, and Hans Morgenthau. Theory will be combined with an historical study of power politics from 1815 to 1940. In this context, we will examine the exercise of the balance of power in Europe as against the Wilsonian tradition in 20th-century America.

PS 383 Colonialism

Professor: S. Baruah

CRN: 91684 Distribution: C

Time: Th 9:00 am ­ 11:00 am OLIN 308

of related interest: MES

Colonialism in a general sense is as old as history. In this course, however, our concern will be more specific: the conquest of Africa and Asia by European powers. The experience is constitutive of the "modern" world; the countries that we now call the Third World are almost all former colonies, and they participate in a global economy, global political arrangements, and a global culture. The course will provide an introduction to the history of European expansion into these areas and the debates on the impact of colonialism. We will consider arguments defending colonialism on grounds such as extending the benefits of civilization, critiques of colonialism by nationalist intellectuals, and theoretical writings on the subject ranging from J. A. Hobson, Joseph Schumpeter, and V. I. Lenin to contemporary works on "postcoloniality."