POLITICAL SCIENCE Y204: Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Spring 1995

Students are expected to come to class every day, and to complete each day's assigned readings before class. Students are encouraged to ask questions and to discuss course readings. Not all of the material covered in class will be covered in any assigned readings, yet, students will be responsible for understanding all material covered in class or in the readings.

Student grades will be based on three exams, each taken in a closed-book, no notes, setting. Although a few objective (multiple-choice, matching) questions may be included, each exam will consist of short identification and essay questions. The final exam will be comprehensive, although with emphasis placed on material covered since the second midterm. Numerical scores will be provided for each exam, weighted 20% (1st), 30% (2nd), and 40% (final) towards the overall course grade. The remaining 10% will be determined by an indeterminate number of unannounced quizzes, intended to increase student incentive to attend class regularly and to complete all assigned readings.

Incompletes or make-up exams will be allowed only in extreme circumstances, and only if the instructor approves in advance. Approval is not automatic. Students should be warned that this instructor takes a very dim view of cheating. Students caught cheating will receive a failing course grade and will expose themselves to additional disciplinary action. Don't do it.

Most required reading assignments will be taken from the following (paperback) textbooks, each of which can be purchased from local bookstores:

Edward H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis: 1919-1939. Harper & Row, 1964 (originally published 1939)

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, Bantam Books, 1982, (originally published 1787-1788).

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963.

Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, Yale Univ. Press, 1982.

Copies of all required readings will be available on reserve in the Political Science Research Collection, Woodburn Hall 200, and/or in the Reserve Room in the Undergraduate section of the Main Library. (Details will be provided as the semester progresses.)

Jan. 10 Introduction to course

Collective Action and the Roles of Governments

Jan. 12 The Invisible Hand and Market Failures

Friedman, Introduction, chapters I-II, pp. 1-36.

Jan. 17-19 Two Views of the State: Efficiency and Redistribution

North, Douglass C. "A Neoclassical Theory of the State," in Structure and Change in Economic History, Norton, 1981, chap. 3, pp. 20-32.

Individual and Groups

Jan. 24-26 The Logic of Collective Action

Olson, chapter 2, pp. 17-35

Jan. 31-Feb. 2 Some Examples of Collective Action

M. Twain, "The Pilots' Association," chap. XV in Life on the Mississippi

Friedman, chapter IX, pp. 137-160, and chapter VI, pp. 85-107.

Feb. 7 MIDTERM 1

Groups and the State

Feb. 9 Governance as Banditry

Olson, Mancur "Autocracy, Democracy, and Prosperity," in Strategy and Choice, ed. by Richard Zeckhauser, MIT Press, 1991, pp. 131-157.

Feb. 14-16 Governance as Competition Among Interest Groups

Olson, chapters 1, 3-4, pp. 1-16, 36-117.

Feb. 21-23 Capitalism and Democratic Governance

Tiebout, Charles. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, October 1956, 64, pp. 416-24.

Lindblom, Charles. "The Market as Prison," Journal of Politics, 1982, 44, pp. 324-336.

Feb. 28-March 2 War, Trade, and Domestic Political Economy

Olson, chapters 5-6, pp. 118-180.

Porter, Bruce, War and the Rise of the State, Prologue, pp. xiii-xix.

March 7 Governance as the Founders Intended It

Federalist, numbers 10 and 51, pp. 42-49, 261-265.

March 9 MIDTERM 2

*** SPRING BREAK ***

States and the International System

March 21-23 Realism and Collective Action at the International Level

Federalist, numbers 1-9, 11, 14-17; pp. 2-42, 49-55, 62-84.

March 28 Liberal Hopes of Progress

Angell, Norman, The Great Illusion 4th edition, 1913. pp. ix-xiii.

March 30-April 4 Power and Values; Realism and Idealism

Carr, chapters 1-9, pp. 1-169.

April 6-11 Law and Order: Domestic and International Variants

Carr, chapters 10-13, pp. 170-223.

April 13 A New World Order?

Carr, chapter 14, pp. 224-239.

April 18-20 Why Democracies Fight

Russett, Bruce, Grasping the Democratic Peace, chaps 1-2, pp. 3-42.

April 25 Tensions in U.S. Foreign Policy

April 27 Review Session

Tuesday, May 2, 10:15-12:15 FINAL EXAM (Room TBA)

Final Exam Essay Question. Answer the following question in a well-organized and clearly written essay. Your response should be analytical, in the sense that you should provide justifications or supporting arguments for your assertions. You should make use of all relevant course material in your response.

In a recent issue of Newsweek (April 10, 1995, pp. 20-25) President Bill Clinton provided a series of justifications for the many roles that he thinks the national government should play in our society. Being a practical politician, President Clinton is skillful at combining desirable elements from a wide range of political ideologies and analytical perspectives. But you should now have the ability to separate these many justifications into different categories, and to identity where these ideas originally came from. This question asks you to do precisely that: take this (excerpted) statement apart and connect each of its parts to the political ideologies and analytical perspectives covered in this course. You should be able to connect this quote to all of the assigned textbooks and to much other course material. [Numbers were added for ease of references.]

[1] A professor of mine at Georgetown University, Carroll Quiqley, used to say that you have to build institutions to make a civilization work--but that institutions tended to become "institutionalized." In other words, they would abandon the original purpose for which they were established, and, instead, become more concerned about preserving themselves, their prerogatives, their position, their power.

[2] At its worst, government can act just as a powerful monopoly does in the private sector--unaccountable, abusive of power and immune to change. Examples include the welfare system, a lot of public housing, and some of our public schools. ...

[3] There are some things the government does quite well. One, of course, is national security. We have the finest military in the world. And, with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the crime bill that we passed last year, the government can help make people feel safer in our streets and schools.

[4] The government is also good at what is known in the policy world as "income transfers." In other words, it's good at taking in tax money from the people as a whole and redistributing it to people with special needs. ...

[5] Government has successfully set up institutions that protect economic markets from their own worst excesses. ...

[6] Finally, the government has done well when it set out to provide education to a broad base of Americans. ...

[7] I've understood for nearly 20 years that big government is not the solution to every problem. ... But it is equally wrong to say that government is the source of all our problems. The difference between the Republicans and me is that I still believe that the federal government has an affirmative responsibility to help people to make the most of their own lives. ...

[8] I think the American people are torn about what role government ought to play. They say they can't stand big government and they want less of it--but they have huge aspirations for it.