11903 |
PS 104 International
Relations |
Christopher
McIntosh |
M . W . . |
1:30 -2:50 pm |
HEG 106 |
SSCI |
(PS core course) Cross-listed:
Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights This course provides an
introduction to competing theories about the structure, functioning and
transformative potential of the international system. Part 1 deals with the traditional problem of
international life, maintaining order among relatively equal states in a
condition of anarchy. Part 2 calls the
assumption of anarchy into question by looking at hierarchical power
relationships in a variety of issue areas.
Part 3 addresses contemporary challenges to the state’s authority and
the problems of governing in an increasingly global community. Throughout the course an effort will be made
to illustrate the relevance of theoretical disagreements for the real
world. Students will be evaluated on
their understanding of the assumptions and logics of competing theories as well
as their ability to apply those theories to historical and contemporary global
problems. Class size: 20
11904 |
PS 105 Comparative
Politics |
Omar
Encarnacion |
M . W . . |
11:50 -1:10 pm |
OLIN 203 |
SSCI |
(PS core course) Cross-listed: Global & Int’l Studies The basic
intellectual premise of comparative politics is that we can better understand
the politics of any country by placing it within a broader, global
context. This comparative “method”
allows us to address some of the most fundamental questions in the study of
politics, such as what makes democracy possible, how is political
representation organized around the world, and why some nations are more
successful than others at generating wealth and prosperity, while contributing
to the building of theories about the nature and evolution of states, interest
groups, civil society, and the dynamics of political processes such as
revolution, modernization, and democratization.
Class lectures and discussions will cover developed and developing
states, as well as democratic and non-democratic ones. Class
size: 22
11905 |
PS 109 Political
Economy |
Sanjib
Baruah |
M . W . . |
8:30 -9:50 am |
OLIN 204 |
SSCI |
(PS core course) Cross-listed: Global & Int’l Studies; Human Rights The term Political
Economy refers to the interrelationship between politics and economics.
However, political scientists and economists do not always use the term in the
same sense. Even within these two disciplines the term has multiple meanings.
The course will review the ideas of a few major thinkers such as Adam Smith,
Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi, Thorstein Veblen, John
Maynard Keynes, and John Kenneth Galbraith, and will introduce students to two
subfields in particular: international political economy and the political
economy of development. Among the questions we would ask are: Why are some
countries rich and others poor? What is development? What are the prime movers
of globalization? Is the US an empire given its influence and power in the
global economy? How can development be redefined to tackle the challenge of
climate change? Among issues that we will look at closely is the role of
organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the
World Trade Organization in managing the global economy and the current debates
about reforming these institutions. Class size: 22
11906 |
PS 122 American
Politics: Issues and
Institutions |
Simon
Gilhooley |
. . W . F |
10:10 - 11:30 am |
RKC 200 |
SSCI |
(PS core course ) Cross-listed: American Studies This course introduces
students to the basic institutions and processes of American government. The
class is meant to provide students with a grasp of the fundamental dynamics of
American politics and the skills to be an effective participant in and critic
of the political process. During the semester, we will examine how the
government works, interpret current political developments and debates, and
consider how to influence the government at various levels. Class
size: 16
11909 |
PS 222 Democracy
in Latin America |
Omar
Encarnacion |
M . W . . |
3:10 -4:30 pm |
OLIN 307 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed: Global
& Int’l Studies, Human Rights, LAIS
In
contrast to the United States and Western Europe, Latin America’s political experience
is characterized by an inability to hang on to stable democratic
government. Throughout the 20th
century, Latin America gravitated between democracy and variety of
non-democratic regimes (caudillos, military juntas, and revolutionary
governments), with the last wave of democratization occurring in the last three
decades. At the present time all the
Latin American nations (save Cuba) operate under democratic rules, but the
quality of democracy leaves a lot to be desired, leading many scholars to
qualify contemporary Latin American democracy as “low-quality, “delegative” and even “illiberal.” Understanding the social, economic, and
political roots of this political trajectory is the main concern of this
course. The course is organized in three main sections. The first section provides a broad historical
overview of patterns of political development in Latin American from the
independence period to the present. The
second section examines theories of political development in Latin America,
with an emphasis on the major schools of thought: “cultural” approaches that
focus on Latin America’s Iberian heritage, “economic” approaches such as the
Marxist inspired “dependency” theory, which views domestic politics in Latin
America as intimately tied to European and American imperialism, and
“political” approaches” that emphasize the weakness of the post-independence
state and the disorganization of civil society.
The third and final section examines democratic development in selected
Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Cuba, and
Venezuela). These countries are selected
for their importance in suggesting paradigmatic political junctures of
political development in Latin America, such as corporatism, populism, and
bureaucratic-authoritarianism. Class
size: 18
11910 |
PS 234 Occupy
Political Theory |
David
Kettler |
. T . . . |
3:10 -5:30 pm |
OLIN 302 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed: Human
Rights This seminar examines the challenges to Political
Theory from Social Theory (initiated by Montesquieu, expanded by Rousseau and
Ferguson, and developed in the nineteenth century by Harriet Martineau, Karl
Marx, and Peter Kropotkin). Twentieth-century continuators are Karl
Mannheim and Herbert Marcuse. As the title suggests, the course examines
thinkers who challenge the social foundations that they maintain actually give
meaning to the political forms that ordinary political theory takes as its
focus, just as the recent Occupy movement challenged the ordinary terms of
reference of American democracy. Class meetings will alternate between lecture
and discussion sessions. Class size: 12
11911 |
PS 238 The Politics
of Nuclear Proliferation |
Michelle
Murray |
M . W . . |
11:50 -1:10 pm |
OLIN 205 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed:
Global & Int’l Studies This course examines
nuclear weapons proliferation and its impact on the United States’ national and
international security interests. To do this, we will consider the
central academic debates about why states want nuclear weapons and evaluate
these ideas against the major cases of nuclear acquisition and restraint in the
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The objective of the
course is to think analytically and critically about the causes and
consequences of nuclear proliferation and to develop theoretically informed
policy recommendations for how the United States can stop and/or
manage the spread of nuclear weapons in the years to come. Class size: 22
12322 |
PS
239 The United Nations and Model U.N. |
Jonathan
Becker / James
Ketterer |
.
. . . F |
1:30pm
– 2:50 pm |
OLIN
202 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed:
Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights
1 credit* This is a year-long course, divided into two parts. The first part
will explore the history of the United Nations and will introduce students to
its structure and principal aims. It will also focus on the role of specialized
agencies and the ways in which alliances impact on the UN’s day-to-day
operations. The second part of the course will focus on an assigned country
(for each Model UN, each college is assigned a country to represent. It will
entail a study of the country’s history, politics and economics and will
conclude with the writing of ‘position papers’ that reflect that country’s
approach to issues confronting the UN. In addition, there will be a public
speaking component. Students taking the course will have the opportunity to
participate in a Model United Nations. Students wishing to enroll should
e-mail [email protected] with 1-2 paragraphs
indicating why they would like to participate. Class size: 15
11907 |
PS 242 Public
Opinion and the Challenges of Democracy |
Michiel Bot |
. T . Th . |
1:30 -2:50 pm |
OLIN 308 |
SSCI |
Public opinion is often considered the key legitimation of modern democratic politics. However, how
public opinion is constituted and by whom has always been a matter of great
controversy. For instance, various twentieth century thinkers have argued that
while public opinion may ideally be the outcome of critical discussion among
all citizens united in a well-informed public, in practice it is little more
than ideology administered by the mass media to support the powers that be.
Other critics have claimed that emotions rather than reasons are at the heart
of democratic politics. In this class, we will explore how theorists and
critics of public opinion imagine the relations in democratic politics between truth
and fiction; between the public and the private sphere; between speech and
(“popular”) voice; between ideology and critique; and between reason and
affect. We will give special attention to questions of representation and
medium, and conclude by exploring the possibilities for public opinion in an
age of globalization, blogs, and WikiLeaks. The
syllabus will include work by Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Tocqueville, Marx, Mill,
Lippmann, Schmitt, Gramsci, Adorno,
Marcuse, Fanon, Arendt, Habermas, Derrida, and Rancière. Class size: 18
11908 |
PS 247 American
Foreign Policy Tradition |
Walter
Mead |
. . W . F |
11:50 -1:10 pm |
RKC 102 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed: Global
& Int’l Studies This course, which normally requires some
background in American history, invites students to examine the questions
facing American foreign policy today through several lenses: global
geopolitics, economics, resource issues, culture and ideology, and regional politics. The course will stress the connections
between domestic and international policy and help students understand the
leading alternative schools of thought currently contending to shape the
foreign policy agenda of the Obama administration and of various critics and
opponents. The readings will include
essays and books by leading scholars and practitioners. Class
size: 22
11912 |
PS 254 Security
& International Politics |
Michelle
Murray |
M . W . . |
10:10 - 11:30 am |
OLIN 202 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed: Gender
& Sexuality Studies; Global & Int’l Studies; Human Rights Security is one of the foundational concepts
in the study of international politics.
As the principle rationale for war, the quest for security influences
both states’ behavior in the international system as well as the structure of
state and society relations in domestic politics. Too often, however, the meaning of security
is taken for granted in the study of world politics, with individuals,
societies and states homogenized into one coherent model. This course will interrogate the concept of
security in an attempt to denaturalize the taken-for-grantedness
of the traditional understanding of security.
Some of the broad theoretical themes covered include challenges to the mainstream
approach to security, the construction of dominant discourses of security and
its representation in international politics, critical and discursive
approaches to security and the politics of threat construction. The aim is to assess the validity of these
alternative approaches and highlight their value-added to security
studies. We will then (re)consider some
contemporary security problems in light of these alternative conceptualizations
of security:
migration, the environment, health, development, the war on terror, and
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, among others. The course ends with a discussion of the
ethics of national security by looking at the politics of torture, human rights
and the suspension of civil liberties in the state of exception. Class
size: 22
11915 |
PS 314 Political
Economy of Development |
Sanjib
Baruah |
. T . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
HEG 201 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed:
Global & Int’l Studies, Human Rights The study of economic development of the “Third World” has gone through
several intellectual phases. The first generation of scholars viewed the
process somewhat optimistically as the global extension of modernity.
Neo-Marxist critics tried to locate Third World underdevelopment in the
history of colonialism and in the persistence of structures of dependency
of Third World countries. “Post-development” theorists took on the
idea of development itself. Globalization and the emergence of a
new international division of labor, has reframed the debates. Developing
countries like Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and
South Africa are now members of the G-20 group of countries, which many
see as a likely successor to the G8 group of leading industrial economies.
After reading representative authors of competing theoretical traditions,
we will move on to concrete cases. This segment will be shaped partly
by student interest. The course is meant as an Upper College seminar
for students with some prior background in issues of development (through PS 222: Political Economy, or other courses).
Research papers and class presentations are among the requirements. Class size: 15
11913 |
PS 321 The US
Constitution as a Political Text |
Simon
Gilhooley |
. . . Th . |
1:30 – 3:50 pm |
OLIN 309 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed: American
Studies This course offers a
consideration of the United States Constitution as a constitutional document,
seeking to consider the origins of the Constitution, the manner in which it has
developed, and the influence and importance of it within contemporary America.
In place of traditional constitutional law courses that cover the accepted and
contested meanings of the law derived from the Constitution, this course would
consider the influence that the Constitution has had upon American society.
While it would necessarily engage with legal discussions, these interactions
would be aimed at exploring the Constitution’s role within American society,
not at providing a background in law. Proceeding in three broad parts, the
course would initially introduce students to the debates within political
thought regarding the nature of the Constitution. A second segment would draw
from those actors operating after the Founding, and as such considering the
Constitution as an existing institution. A final section would turn to the
Constitution as it now exists in contemporary political life. Looking to the
first two amendments of the Bill of Rights, the class would consider the way in
which the text of the constitutional document shapes notions of free speech and
fire-arms regulation within the American polity. Class size: 15
11974 |
PS 328 Post Cold
War International Relations Theory |
Jonathann
Cristol |
M . . . . |
3:10 -5:30 pm |
OLINLC 118 |
SSCI |
The
end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union took most
international relations theorists by surprise. Indeed it was commonly
thought that either the Cold War would persist for decades (if not centuries),
or it would end in war. The idea that a state could voluntarily
disintegrate for any reason other than total military defeat was thought to be
theoretically impossible. In this class we will examine how international
relations theorists reacted to the end of the Cold War, both in terms of rethinking
and/or reexplaining their own theories, and creating
new ones. After a unit on neorealism/Ken Waltz
before and after, the class will spend a significant amount of time studying
the major theoretical articles of the immediate cold war period including:
Fukuyama’s “The End of History”; Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations”; Mearsheimer’s “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe
After the Cold War;” and Kaplan’s “The Coming Anarchy”; as well as the numerous
major responses to these works that have emerged over the last two
decades. The course will end by examining the changing course of the
field after the Cold War and recent developments and ideas that could not have
been conceived before 1989. The class does not require knowledge of Cold
War history and we will not be directly discussing the politics of the USSR or
US-Soviet policy. This class will benefit from joint meetings with Professor
Scott Silverstone’s class at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
At least one of: PS 104, PS 254, PS349, PS369, and/or the permission of the
instructor is required. Class size: 15
11914 |
PS 352 Terrorism |
Christopher
McIntosh |
. T . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
RKC 200 |
SSCI |
Cross-listed: Global
& Int’l Studies The September 2001 terrorist
attacks irrevocably changed US politics and foreign policy, giving rise to more
than a decade of war, expanded surveillance domestically and abroad, the use of
torture and indefinite detention and most recently a targeted killing policy
through the use of drone strikes around the globe. While only recently
coming to dominate the US national security agenda, terrorism as a political
activity has a long history. This seminar will provide a theoretical and
empirical examination of terrorism as a political phenomenon. The first
part of the course will explore the conceptual and theoretical debates
surrounding terrorism. Topics discussed will include the distinctions
between terrorism and other forms of political violence, why individuals and
groups resort to terrorism to achieve political goals, the role of religion and
ideology in motivating terrorist groups, and the importance of state
sponsorship in supporting terrorist activity. The second part will
address the challenges of counterterrorism, including the strengths and
weaknesses of counterterrorist tools such as military force, diplomacy,
intelligence and law enforcement, the relationship between counterterrorism and
democracy, the role of the international community in stopping terrorism. Throughout
the course special effort will be made to situate the US experience with
terrorism in a comparative and historical perspective through an examination of
prominent case studies drawn from different regions and time periods. Class size: 15
11916 |
PS 377 Grand Strategy From Sun Tzu to Clausewitz |
Walter
Mead |
. . . Th . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
HEG 201 |
SSCI/DIFF |
Cross-listed: Global
& Int’l Studies, Human Rights The question of what war
is and how wars can be won has exercised great minds from the dawn of recorded
history. In this advanced seminar,
students will explore classic texts on conflict from ancient China to modern
Europe. The class will examine the
nature of conflict, the role of chance in human affairs, the definition of
power and the development of strategic thought.
Students will be expected to produce a significant research paper. Class
size: 15