With a major focus on the United States, this course will explore how democracies attempt to reform themselves to advance values such as liberty, equality, fairness, participation, representation, accountability, and good governance. We will examine various types of reforms in different areas, including voting, campaign finance, ethics, and lobbying. Students will learn about the motivations behind reform, why they are so challenging to implement, and the consequences of such reforms on political participation and democratic institutions.

Not available at this time

Consider independently exploring a topic of interest under the guidance of a faculty member. Once you identify the subject, take time to research our faculty and their publications. It is important to ensure your interests intersect before asking if they will work with you. This work will be graded and may apply to your upper-level Political Science degree requirements.

The class will examine how political scientists use surveys to measure and understand public opinion and election outcomes. A significant component of the course will be a class project to develop, conduct, and analyze an exit poll survey of voters during the elections. In the process of conducting this survey, students will learn valuable skills including how to write survey questions, how to properly sample and interview respondents, and how to analyze survey data.

This course examines the multiple roles that language plays in politics. Among the topics it covers: Orwellian doublespeak, Black English, hate speech, truthfulness in politics, gender neutral pronouns, partisan word labs, the linguistic construction of the "war on terror," folk tales as a form of political resistance, and familial metaphors in American political discourse. More abstractly, this course is organized around three broad themes: the place of language in political action, language as a political resource and the language of politics in America.

The United States leads the world in spending on health care and is without peer in terms of biomedical research. However, the United States is not the healthiest country in the world as measured by key indicators of population health like infant mortality and life expectancy. Unequal access to quality health care is certainly part of the explanation in a country where, even after the new health care reform legislation, some 25 million Americans will have no insurance.

This course explores ideas and practices of political protest and dissent through a range of cases drawn from around the globe and utilizing the comparative method. We will explore such questions as, Why do people protest? Against whom or what is protest directed? To achieve what ends? What forms of protest are employed? While political activism, marches, riots, strikes, and other tried-and-true forms of protest are easily recognizable, what are the other ways in which individuals and groups might register or express political dissent?

Where is Central Asia? How have events and processes in Central Asia impacted us here in the United States? What can we learn about core political science themes ? for example governance and authoritarianism, political violence, identity politics, and economic development ? through an investigation of contemporary Central Asia? The course uses the Central Asian experience to critically interrogate the ways in which broader theories, concepts and approaches in political science resonate in Central Asia.

This course evaluates the role of international ethical norms in regulating the practice of organized political violence. We will be gin by considering how to think analytically about the effects of ethical norms on international policy-making. We next consider the origins and evolving dynamics of the laws of war, explore why political actors so often violate these rules and the conditions under which they follow them, and examine the political and ethical dilemmas involved in enforcing them.

The world will end. Political science can shed light on how--and can also help us avoid that date for as long as possible. In this course, we will investigate the role of politics in the end of the world, from nuclear war to global climate change to asteroid strikes.