Spring 2027 Courses
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This course will introduce students to the foundations of the United States government. Students will examine important political institutions and the interactions among them to understand how they shape the behavior of political actors and ordinary U.S. citizens. Specific topics will include: the need for a state, the purposes of elections, federalism, the three branches of U.S. government, and the role of interest groups in U.S. politics. Throughout, the course employs concepts from the rational-choice approach to political science to model key concepts; however, no background in this is necessary. This course is appropriate for majors and non-majors with an interest in understanding how and why the U.S. political system works as it does.
This course introduces students to positive political theory, a rigorous set of tools that helps clarify key questions in political science. Through examples drawn from all aspects of politics (from elections to protest movements to wars) as well as from everyday life (Why is housing so expensive? Why don't cities prepare for natural disasters?), we will study how the rules of the game affect the decisions citizens and politicians make as well as the policy outcomes we observe. NOTE: YOU MUST SIGN UP FOR A RECITATION WHEN REGISTERING FOR THIS COURSE.
This course is a response to current events. We will examine the war in Ukraine, its origins, its causes, the conduct, and the prospects for termination. Rather than impose a theoretical framework up front, the course begins with historical background and a large amount of reading of publicly available sources starting in November 2021. I will then schedule one or two full class discussions, to solicit from the students what they think are the "causes" of this war. We then proceed to examine the specific conduct of the war -- which unfortunately will have a lot of content that will make you uncomfortable. (Students are of course free to skip over some of the more graphic aspects.) I will then schedule a session or two on how the conduct of this war address the causes of war. After all, war is supposed to do something that makes peace possible. A question to keep in mind, thus, is what that something actually is. We then turn to the prospects for peace. We will read various peace proposals and discuss their feasibility. At the end of this class you'll hopefully have a thorough understanding of this war, which is likely to shape global affairs for decades to come. Where appropriate, I will invite guest lectures with expertise on specific issues. You must also register for a recitation for this course.
Data analysis has become a key part of many fields including politics, business, law, and public policy. This course covers the fundamentals of data analysis, giving students the necessary statistical skills to understand and critically analyze contemporary political, legal, and policy puzzles. Lectures will focus on the theory and practice of quantitative analysis, and lab sessions will guide students through the particulars of statistical software. Core topics include descriptive statistics, probability, hypothesis testing, and linear regression. RESTRICTION: Students who have taken ECON 230, PSCI 205, PSY/CSP 211, STAT 212, STAT 213, or STAT 214 may not take the course. Must have laptop on which you can run R and R Studio.
This course explores how to use surveys to make inferences in the social sciences. The course begins by situating surveys in the larger research process, touching on validity, ethics, and the evolution of surveys. It then focuses on sampling including canonical topics such as probability and non-probability sampling as well as non-response and reaching hard to survey populations. The course next turns to how respondents answer questions and how to write optimal questionnaires. The final classes cover analyses and reporting, and various domain specific topics (e.g., survey experiments, election polling). Students will complete a research project that involves designing and collecting their own survey data.
This course builds on PSCI 200, Data Analysis I, taking the linear regression model as its starting point. We will explore various statistical techniques for analyzing a world of data that is relevant to political science in particular, and to the social sciences more broadly. In addition to the classical linear regression model, we will examine models for binary data, durations, counts, censoring and truncation, self-selection, and discrete choice, among others. These models will be applied to topics such as international conflict, civil war onset, parliamentary cabinet survival, international sanctions, campaign contributions, and voting. Students will be taught how to (1) frame research hypotheses, (2) analyze data using the appropriate statistical model, and (3) interpret and present their results. Statistical analysis will be conducted using R and RStudio.
Prerequisite: Students must have taken at least one course in statistics that (1) covers probability, confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, and linear regression; and (2) uses R for data analysis -- e.g., ECON 230, PSCI 200, or STAT 212/213/214. Prior courses in calculus or linear algebra are not required.
Note: Students will need to bring a laptop computer to class with R and RStudio installed. Most tablets will not suffice.
With world population of nearly 8 billion and global GDP of $85 trillion, human impacts on the environment have already reached dangerous levels. By 2050, world population could reach 9 billion and global GDP $200 trillion. Despite unprecedented growth in countries such as China and India, over 700 million people still live in extreme poverty-concentrated especially in South and Central Asia and Africa. The central challenge for humanity in the 21st century is the triple endeavor of ending extreme poverty, improving social inclusion, and achieving sustainability for the planet. Any effort to address these three complex, interlinked challenges must be interdisciplinary. Policies at the local, national and global level will need to draw on the best of our knowledge and innovation across sectors such as energy, biodiversity and conservation, health, sustainable business practices, food and nutritional security, social service delivery, and good governance. Interventions and policies in these sectors must be gender sensitive, address racial inequalities and discrimination, and be in keeping with international standards of human rights. They must involve governments, the private sector, and civil society. In September 2015, the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2015 to 2030 at the UN General Assembly while the historic Paris Climate accord was also reached under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change.
Reformers and activists sometimes say that we should "think globally, act locally," meaning that we should try to address widespread needs by taking action in our neighborhoods, towns and cities. What happens when you apply this maxim to government and public policy in the United States? This course will introduce you to local government policymaking in the United States, with a focus on urban areas. You'll gain a familiarity with the powers local governments have over key policies and services—such as policing and criminal justice, housing and land-use regulation, transportation, public education and public health—and learn to think systematically about what local governments can do to address public needs. What you learn will be applicable throughout the U.S., but we'll focus on examples of policymaking currently underway in the City of Rochester and the surrounding region—offering you a chance to learn more about the University's local community.
The course introduces the legal and social justice frameworks for urgent public health issues, such as vaccinations, tobacco regulation and gun control. Pre-requisites: PHLT 116 or PHLT 236; juniors & seniors only. Restrictions: Instructor Permission.
Students will learn how government funds, organizes and delivers health care, broadly defined, to mothers, children, and adolescents; as well as legal and policy writing skills relevant to advocacy, such as issue fact sheets, legislative testimony, and letters to the editor. Pre-requisites: PHLT 116, PHLT 236, or PHLT 230 required; juniors & seniors only. Restrictions: Instructor Permission.
This course provides a foundational understanding of U.S. environmental law, with a focus on existing federal environmental statutes and regulatory programs. Topics include the common law origins of environmental law, the historical genesis of federal regulation over human impact on the environment, the enduring role of the States in environmental regulation, along with an overview of critical federal environmental laws (such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and CERCLA/Superfund). Students will be introduced to how agencies implement and enforce these laws and how judicial decisions shape them. The course also touches on how and whether these decades-old laws are suited to address 21st-century challenges like climate change and environmental injustice.
In recent years, there has been much discussion of the possibility of a green economy. This course examines the potential for "green markets," focusing on three drivers-social, political, and economic-that can both constrain firms and potentially condition whether issues of environment and sustainability can be exploited as a means for competitive advantage. Among issues covered will be demand and willingness to pay for green goods, the roles of NGOs and investors, regulation and its alternatives, firm reputation and product differentiation, supply chain management, and green production processes. Special attention will be given to the need of firms to deal with climate change now and in the future.
This course takes up three questions: What is ethnicity and when is it politically important? How does ethnic politics matter for economic outcomes? What is the relationship between ethnic politics and political violence? Class materials will include theoretical accounts of ethnic politics and research from a variety of countries, including Nigeria, India, Thailand, Syria, France, and the United States. One of the themes of the course will be comparing research on ethnic politics conducted in the United States to research from other contexts. Students will be evaluated based on weekly individual and/or group projects, preparation to discuss weekly readings; participation in class; and a take-home final essay.
Fascism is a common term of political opprobrium, but few know what it actually means. This course examines the ideologies and practices of fascist movements to understand both the past and the present. Students learn about the economic, political, and cultural circumstances from which fascism emerged, and we consider the fascist obsession with national, sexual, and racial identity. Class time is divided between lecture and discussion; students are encouraged to participate.
This course is designed to give students a background in the causes and consequences of the changes in political, economic and social changes that have so profoundly altered the world over the past five centuries, and a basic knowledge of both classic and contemporary scholarly accounts of these changes. After describing political and economic conditions in the pre-modern world, it describes how a distinctively ''modern'' political economy emerged in Western Europe, how this political economy became pervasive over the rest of the world, and the long term and continuing consequences of these changes. The reading mixes classic historical and social scientific accounts. While there are no prerequisites, students should note that the course will involve an unusually high, and enforced, level of required reading.
This course focuses on a key mechanism facilitating international cooperation - international institutions. The course examines institutions ranging from informal institutions, or regimes, to formal, intergovernmental organizations. We ask the following questions: how are institutions established? What makes them change over time? What impact (if any) do they have? How do they influence government policies? How do they operate? How do they structure decision-making? How do international institutions affect domestic politics? The course will begin by focusing on different theoretical perspectives on these questions, and continue by examining international institutions in specific issue areas. Instructor permission required for W section.
The last ten years or so have seen a major revolution in the social sciences. Instead of trying to discover and test grand "covering laws" that have universal validity and tremendous scope (think Newton's gravity or Einstein's relativity), the social sciences are in the process of switching to more narrow and middle-range theories and explanations, often referred to as causal mechanisms. Mechanisms play a crucial role in this new conception of theory in the social sciences. In this course we will examine one particular mechanism each week and see how it has been applied in international political economy and/or security studies. Students will be introduced to formal reasoning in an informal manner. We will explore several substantive themes, such as the "democratic peace," ethnic conflict and international trade to illustrate the mechanisms and cumulative potential of this research approach.
This course explores the rational choice approach to understanding political phenomena. The main results of social choice theory, game theory, and spatial modeling are presented through application to a broad range of political situations: voting, legislative politics, political campaigns, comparison of electoral systems, the evolution of cooperation, and international relations. While there are no formal mathematical prerequisites for the course, some familiarity with mathematical reasoning and formalism is a must.
This advanced undergraduate course in political theory focuses on various topics in democratic theory such as the relation between democracy and other basic political principles (liberty, equality, justice), whether democratic institutions should best be aggregative or deliberative, and the role of referenda, lotteries and new telecommunications technology in democratic decision-making. Readings are drawn from both advocates and critics of democratic politics and will encompass historical and contemporary theorists. The class format will combine lecture and discussion.
Game theory is a systematic study of strategic situations. It is a theory that helps us analyze economic and political strategic issues, such as behavior of individuals in a group, competition among firms in a market, platform choices of political candidates, and so on. We will develop the basic concepts and results of game theory, including simultaneous and sequential move games, repeated games and games with incomplete information. The objective of the course is to enable the student to analyze strategic situations on his/her own. The emphasis of the course is on theoretical aspects of strategic behavior, so familiarity with mathematical formalism is desirable.
In this course, graduating PPE majors will select and workshop a paper for their paper presentation requirement. The course will culminate in presentation of papers to members of the PPE program.
This course examines the formation and evolution of American health policy from a political and historical perspective. Concentrating on developments from the early twentieth century to the present, the focus of readings and discussions will be political forces and institutions and historical and cultural contexts. Among the topics covered are periodic campaigns for national health insurance, efforts to rationalize and regionalize health care institutions, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and the further evolution of these programs, the rise to dominance of economists and economic analysis in the shaping of health policy, racial and gender disparities in access to care and in quality of care, the formation and failure of the Clinton administration's health reform agenda, health reform in the George W. Bush administration and the 2008 presidential campaign, and national health reform and pushback during the Obama administration. Instructor permission required for 2nd year students. Sophomores should request a Pre-requisite override to gain entry to the course. Restriction: Not open to First Year and Sophomore - AS&E.
A year-long research project supervised by a faculty member in the department and culminating in a written work.
Students in the Internships in Politics, Law, and Civic Life Internships work 10-15 hours per week in one of a variety of internships in policy, politics and law in the Rochester area. Possible internship placements include the district offices of state and federal legislators, the City of Rochester municipal government, policy research and advocacy organizations, and the Monroe County District Attorney's and Public Defender's offices. Students supplement their hands-on learning with a series of short research-based writing assignments related to their internships. Contact professor Stu Jordan to learn how to apply. Students must have a B average and must be a sophomore, junior or senior to be eligible.
Please contact Professor Stu Jordan for more information.
The New York State Assembly Semester offers students the opportunity to learn hands-on about state-level policymaking via an academic internship in Albany. Students in the program spend the spring semester in Albany working as an intern in the State Assembly and taking an academic course on state politics and policymaking. To learn how to apply for the program visit https://www.sas.rochester.edu/psc/undergraduate/internships.html#assembly.
The New York State Assembly Semester offers students the opportunity to learn hands-on about state-level policymaking via an academic internship in Albany. Students in the program spend the spring semester in Albany working as an intern in the State Assembly and taking an academic course on state politics and policymaking. To learn how to apply for the program visit https://www.sas.rochester.edu/psc/undergraduate/internships.html#assembly.
These internships provide an opportunity to learn experientially one or more of the following: how government functions; how public policies are created, adopted and implemented; and how political campaigns work. Students intern in Congress, the executive branch, party campaign committees, and lobbying and advocacy groups. Please contact Professor Stu Jordan for more information.
Researchers in comparative politics, American politics, international relations, political methodology, and political theory increasingly rely on data collected from various types of experiments to answer important questions in their fields. This graduate-level class is designed to introduce students to experimental techniques and the applications of experiments in political science. Students who take this course should have completed causal inference (PSC 504). While this is primarily a seminar course, students will cover statistical material and get a hands-on introduction to programming tools for experimental research in R. This course is not specific to a particular subfield; students will get exposure to a wide range of experimental methods (lab experiments, field experiments, surveys, etc.) used across different research areas.
Implicit in all research designs are (traditionally under-appreciated) strategic interactions relevant to the interpretation and validity of empirical work. Recently, social scientists across several sub-disciplines, and especially political scientists, have begun to analyze these theoretical implications of empirical models (TIEM). This course surveys the work being done in this nascent field of scholarship and, necessarily, the dominant empirical methodologies employed in political science and economics. For context and guidance, we will also draw upon work from adjacent lines of research, such as the decision-theoretic underpinnings of empirical models, the rationalization of behavioral regularities, and the evolutionary grounding of preferences, as well as upon philosophical perspectives on the interplay between theory and empirics.
This course aims to provide graduate students with a foundation from which to conduct original research on U.S. political institutions. We will survey theoretical and empirical literature across areas of focus in the sub-field of U.S. politics. We will also explore perspectives on the institutions-based approach to research, especially in the context of U.S. politics. In addition to reading published research, students will gain exposure to a set of "workhorse" models and empirical strategies that practitioners rely upon when conducting research on U.S. political institutions. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussions as well as to lead some discussions of assigned articles. The central assignment will be the development of a research proposal that demonstrates promise for development into a publishable paper.
This course is one of two core courses in the U.S. politics sequence, with the other laying the foundation for conducting original research on U.S. political behavior. The two may be taken in either order. The prerequisites for this class include the first semester of the graduate theory and methods training.
This course introduces the most distinctive configurations of democratic political institutions and the behaviors of citizens and elites that they induce. The political institutions include election rules, parliamentary and presidential executives, strong and weak legislatures, political parties and party systems. The behaviors studied include ideological and clientelistic party strategies and citizen voting, government formation and policymaking, and efforts to influence and to avoid constraints. We will consider multiple research approaches, the dynamics of stability and change, comparisons to electoral authoritarianism, and the effects of context.
Designed as a forum for upper-level doctoral students who have completed formal coursework to present ongoing research. Students regularly present research either stemming from their dissertations or from ancillary projects.
Democracies are distinguished among political systems by the use of non-violent methods for the resolution of social disagreements, but do not preclude and, in fact, encourage organized action to influence social policy. The course aims to provide a cohesive treatment of mathematical models of key democratic processes with particular attention paid to legislative/parliamentary policy-making; electoral competition and voter participation; and coalition and party formation. Precedence will be placed on dynamic models and on models that are actionable, in the sense that they are amenable to analytical or numerical computation. Suitable methods and algorithms for numerical analysis will be covered in depth when appropriate. The course is designed primarily for PhD students in Political Science, but advanced undergraduate students with mathematical background are also welcome (with instructor permission).