The course introduces basic concepts and selected problems in international relations. How order is maintained in world politics is the central theme. The role of the balance of power, alliance systems, international organizations, and international law in maintaining order is examined. Has a "new world order" been taking shape since the end of the Cold War? The course studies study of a number of current issues, such as global trade and the global environment, nuclear nonproliferation, terrorism, civil wars, and failed states and explores what international cooperation or non-cooperation in these areas means for world order.

From voting to abortion rights, the American state has fundamentally shaped the social, economic, and political possibilities for women. Consequently, since the founding of the American republic to the present, women have contested the boundaries of their exclusion, pushed for the greater equality, and argued for full citizenship rights. This course begins with a consideration of the competing theories of the American policymaking process. Next, the more specific dynamics of gendered policies will be addressed with attention paid to the issue framing, shifting partisan affiliations, labor force participation, and the difficulties of referring to gender as a homogeneous category. The latter half of the course surveys a range of topics such as coverture, women's suffrage, the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion rights, welfare reform, anti-discrimination laws, and laws concerning violence against women. The course concludes with an analysis of contemporary currents regarding gender politics and policy.

A comprehensive overview of the relationships between the United States and the nations of Latin America, how this process was affected by historical and ideological events, and what possibilities exist for its future. The course is divided into three sections: first, historical overview of the events that shaped US-Latin American relations, emphasizing US military interventions in Latin America, US attempts to establish political and economic hegemony, and US efforts to export democratic government; second, an examination of the principal issues that currently dominate the relations between the US and its southern neighbors: economic integration, trade, drugs, and immigration; third, a close look at the relationships between the United States and three countries of special interest to it and its domestic politics: Cuba, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Open to all students.

This course places race and racial inequalities at the center of the analysis of historical and contemporary dynamics of American politics from the antebellum period to the present. Over the semester, students will consider the importance of race in shaping American institutions, propelling partisan strife, and how racial divisions continue to affect political discourse and public policy. In particular, this course concentrates on how racial exclusions affected the development of social welfare policy from the New Deal to the contemporary Republican trend to devolve authority back to the states. Also, this course places the political mobilization of African Americans within a broader historical context to identify the principal factors that have contributed to the advance of racial equality as well as those factors that have stalled, blocked, and even reversed this change.

Economic globalization along with new telecommunications and computer networks have in recent years weakened the authority of states over their territories. While territorial states are alive and well, the notion of state sovereignty and the ability of governments to influence a nation's economy, culture and society has eroded. This decline may not be as apparent in the case of powerful states such as the United States. But among less powerful states many, for instance, have to make economic policy with an eye to how the bond-rating agency Moody's rates its bonds and the International Monetary Fund assesses the health of its economy. Ministries of culture are more worried than ever about the penetration of their airwaves by global media networks. Powerful states have not escaped this trend of declining authority. They may, for instance, welcome the movement of capital that globalization entails but not the movement of people. Yet traditional tools of immigration control are no longer adequate to control the transnational movement of people in the age of globalization. The course will examine the issues of global governance in this age of the declining authority of the territorial state. We will look at what is new about globalization--the transnational flow of ideas, images, finance and people in our times--, and the authorities of "global governance" such as the International Monetary Fund and global credit agencies. If a "system" of global governance is emerging, is there much in the way of an opposition that could make this "system" more accountable? We will look at the potential of activist global organizations--e.g. human rights organizations and environmental organizations--to play an oppositional role.

This course explores the interaction of politics and the economy in Latin America. Perhaps more than any other region of the developing world, economic factors figure prominently in the political evolution and present-day configuration of Latin American countries. This is especially the case in regards to the the fate of democracy, whose fortunes in Latin America for much of the past five decades have been intimately linked to shifting conditions in the world economy. Thus, a central mission of the course is to provide students with a theoretical and empirical understanding of how economic factors and conditions - from the patterns of dependency set with European colonization to on-going efforts to create market-oriented economies - have impacted the creation of sustainable democracies throughout Latin America. The course is limited to moderated students with a background in Latin American studies, especially PS 153 - Latin American Politics.

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 co-called realist tradition. Readings will include Thucydides, Machiavelli, Lorenzo dei Medici, Hobbes, Hume, Bolingbroke, Locke, Alexander Hamilton, Harold Nicolson, Henry Kissinger, Woodrow Wilson, George Kennan, Hans Morganthau, David Fromkin, and Fareed Zakaria. 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 Wilsonian universalism in 20^th-century America.

With the collapse of Soviet power in 1990, the bipolar world that endured for almost five decades cam to an end. This has produced an unexpected result in the international order: the end of superpower rivalry and the emergence of globalized economy. The United States is thus deprived of a role that provided its national mission and its self-justification throughout the years of the cold war. It finds itself compelled to reconsider not only what it must do but, in a significant respect, what it is. There is a new global agenda for the United States, whose power and predominance has never been greater, in which the search for security takes place in a world torn by disorder and conflict. Is the American Age then also the Age of Anxiety? This new agenda will be the subject of a seminar by a group of upper-level students.

Although critics often assume that elites or "special interests" rule over the political process, many examples contradict this assertion. New regulations loom over the tobacco industry, anti-trust litigation threatens to break up a software giant, and the enactment of a Patient's Bill of Rights over the objections of powerful HMOs appears imminent. As these examples indicate, the government intervenes into market processes in a manner that overrides the clear preferences of big business. Yet, in other instances, elected officials do appear to act on behalf of business as critics contend. The puzzle is: why does the government sometimes favor business preferences and, at other times, act against them? In solving this puzzle, this course clarifies not only what the government does and why but also addresses how political power operates in the United States. Case studies will include business regulation, trade, national defense, health care, welfare, and taxation. Comparisons to other advanced industrial democracies will be used to elucidate the distinctive features of American politics and policy.

This course is devoted, first, to a careful study of Karl Mannheim's seminal book, Ideology and Utopia, and, second, to an inquiry into more recent work on a number of Mannheim's major theses and questions. The principal themes to be subject to critical reconsideration include the supposed correlation between ideologies and political party tendencies, the conception of the political field as a scene of competitive conflict among ideologies, the expose of ideologies as a means of democratization, the critique of Communism and Fascism as modes of reprimitivization, the social formation of intellectuals and their political role(s), the nature of political education, and the values of utopianism. Readings will include excerpts from newly uncovered Mannheim texts and a new book on the subject by the instructor.

This course examines the collapse of Soviet political and economic institutions and focuses on the troubled emergence of a new Russian state. Topics include the development of political institutions, economic reforms and their impact on society, identity and nationalism. The course attempts to put the Russian political, social and economic transformation in a comparative perspective through a selective examination of changes in neighboring countries, including Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states.