College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Graduate Course Offerings
CORE GRADUATE COURSES
| Course Name | Credit Hours | Description |
|---|---|---|
| POLI:5000 Introduction to Political Analysis | 4 s.h. | Conceptual problems of political analysis; empirical research strategies and philosophy of science. |
| POLI:5001 Introductory Methodology | 4 s.h. | Introduction to quantitative techniques in political science. Selected topics include set theory, probability distributions, estimation and testing. Emphasis will be placed on establishing the mathematical prerequisites for doing more advanced quantitative work in political science. |
| POLI:5004 Introduction to Formal Models in Political Science | 4 s.h. | Introduction to the use of formal mathematical models in political science. Discussion of current modeling techniques and overview of applications in American politics, comparative politics, and international politics. |
| POLI:5100 American Politics | 4 s.h. | Review and analysis of major literature of American politics, stressing comparative, systemic, and behavioral studies. |
| POLI:5400 Comparative Politics | 4 s.h. | Current approaches to comparative analysis of political systems; special attention to conceptual and other methodological issues. |
| POLI:5500 International Politics | 4 s.h. | Emphasizes various approaches to the study of international politics. |
| POLI:6632 Crossing Borders Pro-seminar | 1 s.h. | |
| POLI:6635 Crossing Borders Seminar | 3-4 s.h. | Same as ENGL:6635 , ARTH:6635 , HIST:6635 , GEOG:6635 , 045:285, CINE:6635 , ANTH:6635 , AFAM:6635 . Political Science graduate students should register for 4 s.h. |
ADVANCED GRADUATE COURSES
| Course Name | Credit Hours | Description |
|---|---|---|
| POLI:5003 Intermediate Methodology | 4 s.h. | Analytical techniques of data analysis; statistical models, and relationship of models to hypotheses to be tested. Prerequisite: one semester of intermediate statistics. |
| POLI:7000 Writing Political Science | 4 s.h. | Exercises in planning and completing political inquiries, with an emphasis on writing for scholarly publication. Students refine prior research projects for submission to disciplinary journals, then draft dissertation proposals. Open only to doctoral students in political science or to others with consent of instructor. |
| POLI:7001 Experimental Methods | 4 s.h. | Introduction to the methods and techniques used in political science experiments. |
| POLI:7002 Topics in Methodology | 4 s.h. | Application of advanced statistical techniques in political science; limited dependent variable regression techniques, simulation methods, missing data techniques, history/rare event analysis and maximum likelihood, and topics tailored to students’ research; focus on learning how and when to apply these techniques. Repeatable with consent of instructor. |
| POLI:7003 Advanced Methodology | 4 s.h. | Introduction to regression techniques for limited dependent and qualitative variables in political science. Topics include logit, probit, multinomial logit and probit, ordered logit and probit, event history models and event count models. Emphasis will be on understanding how and when to apply these models when doing quantitative work in political science. |
| POLI:7004 Qualitative Methods | 4 s.h. | Introduction to qualitative methods in political science research; interviewing, ethnographic research, process tracing, comparative historical analysis, content and discourse analysis, fuzzy set theory. |
| POLI:7100 Modeling American Politics | 4 s.h. | Main questions to be explored in this course: How well do formal models explain the real world? In what ways can the fit between formal models and the real world be improved? |
| POLI:7102 The Presidency | 4 s.h. | Analysis of the American chief executive: history, recruitment, behavior, roles, responsibilities, powers and relationships with other institutions. |
| POLI:7150 Problems in American Politics | 4 s.h. | Selected problems in the study of the American political system, including structures, functions, and behavior. May be repeated with consent of instructor. |
| POLI:7200 Legislative Behavior | 4 s.h. | Systematic analysis of legislative institutions, processes, and behavior, which may focus on United States, Europe, or developing countries. May be repeated with consent of instructor. |
| POLI:7201 Political Psychology | 4 s.h. | The study of political phenomena from a psychological perspective. The individual level political behaviors examined will include decision making by elites and masses, evaluations of political candidates, mass mobilization, and response to the mass media. A number of psychological theories previously employed to explain these behaviors will be discussed. Among the psychological concepts examined are stereotyping, social cognition, attitude, group identification, and attribution. |
| POLI:7202 Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior | 4 s.h. | Analysis of political attitudes and beliefs in mass publics; voting behavior, functioning of electoral systems. |
| POLI:7350 Problems in Political Theory | 4 s.h. | Selected problems of prescriptive and explanatory political theory. May be repeated with consent of instructor. |
| POLI:7401 European Union | 4 s.h. | The course examines politics of the European Union. It begins by focusing on the European Union’s institutional characteristics, and builds on the institutional discussion with an examination of major political issues in the European Union, including popular and national responses to European integration. |
| POLI:7409 Democratization and Authoritarianism | 4 s.h. | Rival understandings and practices of democracy and authoritarianism, including challenges of quantifying them for comparative analyses; major theoretical and empirical approaches to studying democratization and other forms of regime change. |
| POLI:7411 Religion, Ethnicity and Politics | 4 s.h. | Survey of theories and empirical work on the relationship between religions and politics, including issues of law and political behavior. Review of the development of theoretical models in the study of ethnicity, and nationalism. Topics include: religious and national identities in modern society; and opportunity structures and resource mobilization in the context of religious and national movements. |
| POLI:7420 Asian Political Systems | 4 s.h. | Comparative study of democratic, transitional, and totalitarian types of government in Asia; special emphasis on leadership recruitment, social control, political participation. |
| POLI:7422 The State | 4 s.h. | The state has been called “the vexed institution that is the ground of both our freedoms and our unfreedoms.” In this and countless other respects, the apparatus of government remains a central concern in our discipline, as it has been for political thinkers from Socrates and Aristotle to the postmodernists. This graduate seminar surveys major theoretical and empirical work on the state, drawn especially from comparative politics. Topics include state-building, bureaucracy, “developmental” and “predatory” states, state-society relationships, failed states, and more. |
| POLI:7423 Comparative Parties & Elections | 4 s.h. | Provide students with a thorough introduction to the important questions and puzzles in the study of political parties. Topics to be covered include: party formation and development, the role of parties in society, how parties are organized, party systems, electoral systems, party strategy and behavior, the development of new parties, whether parties are still relevant, the regeneration of communist parties in post-communist regimes, ethnic parties, and the failure of party consolidation. |
| POLI:7450 Problems of Comparative Politics | 4 s.h. | Selected problems in comparative analysis of politics. May be repeated with consent of instructor. |
| POLI:7500 Foreign Policy | 4 s.h. | Foreign policy making & international behavior in relation to theories and findings from selected countries. |
| POLI:7501 Dynamic Models of International Politics | 4 s.h. | Overview of several dynamic modeling techniques used to study international relations; modeling assumptions, the kinds of information models can provide, evaluation of models. |
| POLI:7502 International Systems and Global Governance | 4 s.h. | Literature of international systems and international organization; major schools of thought in international relations theory, their utility in explaining evolution of the international system and recent developments in international organization and global governance. |
| POLI:7503 International Conflict and Cooperation | 4 s.h. | Recent theoretical and empirical debates in international relations literature; emphasis on formal and quantitative research. |
| POLI:7504 Theories of International Political Economy | 1,2,3,4 s.h. | An examination of various theories focusing on the international system, the state, bureaucracies, interest groups, international organizations, bargaining processes, and distributive norms. |
| POLI:7550 Problems in International Politics | 4 s.h. | Intensive examination of selected issues of international politics, emphasizing problems of theoretical analysis. May be repeated with consent of instructor. |
| POLI:7900 Readings Tutorial | arr. | Independent individual study. Prerequisite: consent of supervising faculty member. May be repeated. |
| POLI:7901 Research Tutorial | arr. | Individual training in applied research. May be repeated with consent of instructor. Consent of supervising faculty member required. |
| POLI:7910 Ph.D Dissertation | arr. | Consent of supervising faculty member required. |