Global Arc

Investigation of a major theme in comparative politics. Reading and intensive discussion of selected issues in the literature. One three-hour seminar.

Investigation of a major theme in comparative politics. Reading and intensive discussion of selected issues in the literature.

Investigation of a major theme in comparative politics. Reading and intensive discussion of selected issues in the literature. One three-hour seminar.

Investigation of a major theme in international relations. Reading and intensive discussion of selected issues in the literature.

Investigation of a major theme in methods of political science. Reading and intensive discussion of selected issues in the literature. One three-hour seminar.

Can policy problems like broken systems of representation, social prejudice, fake news, and environmental mismanagement be solved? How would we know if we are making progress? In this course we will combine the examination of the theoretical underpinnings of these policy challenges with real world lessons that social scientists have learned in their efforts to alleviate them. We will focus not only on the ideas behind solutions to policy problems, but we will also learn if and how these solutions work. We will explore how randomized control trials, also known as A/B tests and randomized experiments, have already been used to test these ideas.

This seminar examines how long-run structural changes have shaped political conflict. We will consider economic, social and demographic transformations and study the ways in which they influence voter preferences, party strategies, government policies and electoral outcomes. Questions include: How do voters prioritize economic interests vs. cultural concerns? When does deindustrialization benefit populist politicians? Why have politicians failed to prevent affordable housing crises? What factors promote or prevent the advancement of women in politics? Why are social democratic parties declining in much of Europe?

This course surveys ways in which the value of the environment has been conceptualized in political philosophy, with a special focus on the moral problem of climate change. What is the value of nature, biodiversity, and non-human animals? What is a fair distribution of environmental goods? How does climate change interact with other structures of inequality in our society? Is economic growth the problem or the solution? What are our environmental responsibilities to future generations? How should individuals and governments respond to the problem of climate change?

Media and journalism are undergoing what many observers are describing as a profound structural change. How we view the consequences of this change for democracy depends on what we normatively expect from the relationship between the media and politics in the first place. Hence we shall start with basic questions about this relationship and critically examine previous transformations and what were perceived as crises in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We finish with a closer normative and empirical look at the role of social media and attempts transnationally to re-shape media landscapes. There will be a number of guest speakers.

This course examines political thinkers who profoundly shaped normative thinking about politics in Indian, Islamic, African and Chinese contexts. The course will examine non-Western ideas of modernity, and justified forms of moral and political order. It will shed new light on key ideas of modern political thought: rights, justice, nationalism, identity, violence, perfectionism, democracy and power. The thinkers in this course such as Gandhi, Iqbal, Ambedkar, Qutub, Fanon, Cesaire, Mao and others, not only contribute to political theory. Their arguments also define fault lines in contemporary politics.