QUANTITATIVE METHODS 3: DISCUSSION
QUANT METH 3-DISC
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4724.
- F 10:10 a.m.-11 a.m.
-
Instructor:
Daniel B Markovits
Info - 0 points
RESEARCH TOPICS IN GAME THEORY
Prerequisites: POLS W4730 or the instructors permission. Advanced topics in game theory will cover the study of repeated games, games of incomplete information and principal-agent models with applications in the fields of voting, bargaining, lobbying and violent conflict. Results from the study of social choice theory, mechanism design and auction theory will also be treated. The course will concentrate on mathematical techniques for constructing and solving games. Students will be required to develop a topic relating political science and game theory and to write a formal research paper.
- MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Carlo Prato
h-index: 11 Info - 4 points
GLOBAL ENERGY: SECURITY/GEOPOL
The course focuses on the nexus between energy and security as it reveals in the policies and interaction of leading energy producers and consumers. Topics include: Hydrocarbons and search for stability and security in the Persian Gulf, Caspian basin, Eurasia, Africa and Latin America; Russia as a global energy player; Analysis of the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on energy markets, global security, and the future of the energy transition; Role of natural gas in the world energy balance and European energy security; Transformation of the global energy governance structure; Role and evolution of the OPEC; Introduction into energy economics; Dynamics and fundamentals of the global energy markets; IOCs vs NOCs; Resource nationalism, cartels, sanctions and embargoes; Asia's growing energy needs and its geo-economic and strategic implications; Nuclear energy and challenges to non-proliferation regime; Alternative and renewable sources of energy; Climate change as one of the central challenges of the 21st century; Analysis of the policies, technologies, financial systems and markets needed to achieve climate goals. Climate change and attempts of environmental regulation; Decarbonization trends, international carbon regimes and search for optimal models of sustainable development. Special focus on implications of the shale revolution and technological innovations on U.S. energy security.
- MW 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Albert Bininachvili
CULPA: 6
Info
- 3 points
NAT SECURITY STRAT OF MID EAST
At the crossroads of three continents, the Middle East is home to many diverse peoples, with ancient and proud cultures, in varying stages of political and socio-economic development, often in conflict. Following the Arab Spring and subsequent upheaval in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and more, the region is in a state of historic flux. The Sunni-Shia rivalry, especially between Saudi Arabia and Iran, growing Iranian-Israeli conflict, population explosion, poverty and authoritarian control, Russian ascendance and US retrenchment, are the primary regional drivers today. Together, these factors have transformed the Middle Eastern landscape, with great consequence for the national security of the countries of the region and their foreign relations. The primary source of the worlds energy resources, the Middle East remains the locus of the terror-WMD-fundamentalist nexus, which continues to pose a significant threat to both regional and international security. The course surveys the national security challenges facing the regions primary players (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinians and Turkey,) and how the convolutions of recent years have affected them. Unlike many Middle East courses, which focus on US policy in the region, the course concentrates on the regional players perceptions of the threats and opportunities they face and the strategies they have adopted to deal with them. It thus provides an essential vantage point for those interested in gaining a deeper understanding of a region, which stands at the center of many of the foreign policy issues of our era. The course is designed for those with a general interest in the Middle East, especially those interested in national security issues, students of comparative politics and future practitioners, with an interest in real world international relations and national security.
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Charles D Freilich
CULPA: 2 Info - 4 points
INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
This course explores key frameworks and issue areas within international political economy. It examines the history and key characteristics of (economic) globalization, the theories of international cooperation, as well as the nature and role of international organizations (such as the World Trade Organization) in fostering trade and international economic cooperation. Furthermore, the course discusses the pros and cons of globalization and its implications on domestic policies of nation-states, with a particular focus on the tensions globalization creates and the lines of cleavages between winners and losers from globalization. Finally, the course reflects on the future of globalization and international trade and the challenges faced by national and supranational policy makers.
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Davit Sahakyan
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
INT'L POLITICAL ECONOMY-DISC
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4865.
- T 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
- M 6:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Anna L Garner
Info -
Instructor:
Emiliano Cabrera
Info - 0 points
M.A. PROSEMINAR
This course introduces students to the different subfields of the discipline by presenting various perspectives on one key topic in political science. Throughout the course, both theoretical and empirical debates surrounding the study of democracy are explored. Although the specific topic may change from year to year, the goal and structure of the course will remain the same: to contribute to the students understanding of an important topic in political science and discuss it through the lens of the different subfields: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. By doing so, students will also learn the technical language, important concepts, and different methodological approaches of each subfield. Please note that this course is only for students in the Political Science Departments M.A. Program.
- F 10:10 a.m.-noon
- F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Chiara Superti
CULPA: 3
Info
- 4 points
ISSUES IN POLITICAL THEORY
Prerequisites: the instructors permission prior to registration. A survey of selected issues and debates in political theory. Areas of the field discussed include normative political philosophy, history of political thought, and the design of political and social institutions.
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
David C Johnston
CULPA: 25 Info - 4 points
THEORIES & DEBATES-AMER POL II
This is the second of two semester-long courses that provide graduate students with an overview of the scholarly study of American politics. G6210 and G6211 constitute the American politics field survey. The field survey is designed for political science doctoral students who intend to specialize in American politics, as well as for those students whose primary interests are comparative politics, international relations, or political theory, but who desire an intensive introduction to the American style of political science. In this course we will cover a range of topics related to American politics that, for the most part, are not covered in G6210. Our focus will be on public opinion and political behavior. The reading assignments are a mix of foundational contributions (i.e. the canons of American politics literature) and recent research. The first part of each seminar session will aim to clarify and probe enduring puzzles, theories, and debates highlighted in the foundational texts. The latter portion of the seminar session will focus on how recent studies contribute to ongoing debates and define the research agenda going forward.
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Yamil R Velez
CULPA: 1 h-index: 8 Info - 4 points
COMPARATIVE POLITICS SURVEY I
This is the first course in the two-semester sequence surveying covering foundational research in comparative politics across the developed and developing world. The course is designed for Ph.D. students preparing for comprehensive exams and who intend to conduct research relating to comparative politics, and has two core objectives. The first objective is to expose students to a range of arguments organized around questions motivating major research agendas in comparative politics. The second objective is to expose students to processes of theorizing, hypothesis formation, and testing and to strengthen students’ analytical skills in evaluating and critiquing political science research. It should go without saying that these two classes cannot exhaustively cover the many important works, topics, and methodologies in the field.
The Fall semester of this sequence will primarily focus on citizen-level and politician-level behaviors, while the Spring semester will focus on more macro-level institutions and applications of the building blocks covered in this course. However, it is not necessary to take the classes in a particular order.
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Maria Victoria Murillo
h-index: 37 Info - 4 points
THEORIES OF INT'L RELATIONS
Prerequisites: the instructors permission prior to registration. Issues and problems in theory of international politics; systems theories and the current international system; the domestic sources of foreign policy and theories of decision making; transnational forces, the balance of power, and alliances.
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Jack L Snyder
CULPA: 27 Info - 4 points
Theory of Democracy Revisited
This colloquium will study democracy in its most representative contemporary interpretations and its challenges in comparative theoretical perspective. Starting with democracy’s procedures and institutions (the “rules of the game”) the colloquium will examine their main interpretations and most recent variations; it will end with a discussion of plebiscitary leadership, populism and lottocracy. The aim of the colloquium is to give students of political theory and political science some basic theoretical tools for analyzing, understanding and evaluating contemporary mutations in democratic visions and practices in several western countries.
- T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Nadia Urbinati
CULPA: 29 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
Political Theory of Democratization, De-
Democ, De-Democ, Regime C
Concern about the retreat of democracy, democratic recession and/or democratic backsliding are proliferating in the political theoretical and comparative politics literature. While domestic and external threats to democracy and reverse waves are not new, there is widespread agreement that today even long-consolidated, wealthy democracies are now at risk and that new dynamics of de-democratization are at play. This course will involve an in-depth study of the political theory and comparative politics literature on the relevant concepts and dynamics: transition, democratization, de-democratization, democratic backsliding, hybridization, “post-democracy” and the assumptions undergirding them. We will discuss the various concepts of democracy and regime used or presupposed in the relevant literature and assess how these have evolved. The purpose of the first part of the course is to rethink the basic concepts and theories regarding democracy breakdown, transitions to democracy, democratic consolidation, backsliding and hybridization of democratic regimes and to clarify the conceptual and political issues regarding thresholds, cycles, and the like. The last third of the course will focus on cycles of democratization, de-democratization and re-democratization in the case of the U.S.: the oldest representative constitutional democracy and the one most typically taken as the exemplar of a consolidated democratic regime.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Jean L Cohen
CULPA: 7 Wikipedia h-index: 63 Info - 4 points
Institutional Roots of Race and Inequali
Inst. Roots Race & Inequa
This course is about the relationship between two complex and nebulous phenomena in the world: race and institutions.
Race and race-like concepts have been deployed for centuries (at least), often with the purpose of justifying economic, social, or political inequality. The study of Race and Ethnic Politics is well-established in political science, but the majority of this research draws on methods and theories from psychology or public opinion research, which are not generally designed to study
institutions or their effects. But if we accept that race is a social construction, it is largely composed of institutions: formal rules governing what one person may do to another that invoke
"racial identities," informal norms about interpersonal interactions, and the mental habits, attitudes, and beliefs that have developed around them.
The purpose of the course is to explore the implications of defining race as primarily a set of institutions for our understanding of politics. In particular, the course is designed to present repeated exercises in two kinds of analysis: first, assessing what published research (mainly in political science) can tell us about the world, and second, what methods or questions might have
been better suited to illuminate the phenomena that the researchers are interested in.
The course does not have pre-requisites, but readings will involve a variety of political science methods, including experiments, statistical analysis, and game theory. If not already familiar with these methods students are expected to engage thoughtfully with arguments relying on them.
- M 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Andrew J McCall
Info - 4 points
POLIT ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT
Why are some nations able to grow and prosper while others mired in conflicts and poverty? What are the political factors that shape countries’ success in growing their economies How does economic progress affect a regime’s ability to stay in power and the prospects and direc-tions of political changes? This course addresses these questions by introducing students to major ideas and findings from both classical and cutting-edge scholarship on political economy of de-velopment. The first part of the course will review major episodes of growth (or the lack thereof) in human history and how they influenced the theoretical paradigms for studying development. The second half of the course will be devoted to more specialized topics, examining how differ-ent institutions, strategies, and contingencies affect countries’ economic fortunes. The goal of the course is to help you acquire the necessary conceptual and empirical toolkit for digesting and producing scholarly knowledge about the origins and consequences of economic development.
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Junyan Jiang
h-index: 8 Info - 4 points
POL ECON ANALYS OF POL BEHAVIOR
This course examines comparative political behavior from a political economy perspective, focusing on how incentives drive the micro-level behavior of voters and politicians. Students will rigorously examine contemporary debates, both theoretically and empirically. Student will also combine formal models and modern research designs to generate hypotheses, identify causal effects, and ultimately seek to interpret them. The course draws from evidence from across the democratic world. The goals of this course are twofold. The substantive goal is to familiarize students with theoretical arguments and frontier empirical evidence pertaining to central questions in comparative political economy. The methodological goal is to help students think critically and conduct cutting edge research. Specifically, the course aims to empower students to read and even write formal models, implement modern causal inference techniques in their research, and combine the two approaches to interpret the evidence.
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
John Marshall
h-index: 20 Info - 4 points
CHINESE POLIT ECON-COMP PERSP
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. A graduate seminar designed to explore the content, process, and problems of China's political and economic reforms in comparative perspective. Please see the Courseworks site for details
THEORIES OF WAR AND PEACE
In this course we undertake a comprehensive review of the literature on the causes of war and the conditions of peace, with a primary focus on interstate war. We focus primarily on theory and empirical research in political science but give some attention to work in other disciplines. We examine the leading theories, their key concepts and causal variables, the causal paths leading to war or to peace, and the conditions under which various outcomes are most likely to occur. We also give some attention to the degree of empirical support for various theories and hypotheses, and we look at some of the major empirical research programs on the origins and expansion of war. Our survey includes research utilizing qualitative methods, large-N quantitative methods, formal modeling, and experimental approaches. We also give considerable attention to methodological questions relating to epistemology and research design. Our primary focus, however, is on the logical coherence and analytic limitations of the theories and the kinds of research designs that might be useful in testing them. This course is designed primarily for graduate students who want to understand and contribute to the theoretical and empirical literature in political science on war, peace, and security. Students with different interests and students from other departments can also benefit from the seminar and are also welcome. Ideally, members of the seminar will have some familiarity with basic issues in international relations theory, philosophy of science, research design, and statistical methods.
CIVIL & ETHNIC WARS
This course explores the causes, dynamics and outcomes of civil wars and insurgencies. It addresses when and why violence is employed in place of peaceful solutions to conflict and what accounts for individual and mass recruitment into armed organizations. It aims to understand variation in warring groups’ cohesion, repertoires of violence, and relations with civilians, state counterinsurgency methods, and the political economy of conflict. The course concludes by examining war duration and termination. Students will be pushed to grapple with research written in many traditions including philosophical, statistical, game theoretic, and qualitative materials.
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Sarah Daly
Info - 4 points