COURSE OVERVIEW

The seminar is designed as a general foundation course for graduate students in political science. It introduces students to underlying epistemological and ontological choices that political scientists make in their work, and how these approaches relate to the study of politics. This survey course ultimately provides students with a systematic overview of core concepts and major research traditions in the study of politics: the rational choice paradigm (with its emphasis on the role of reasoned agency), cultural/ideational approaches (the role of rules, norms, values, and identities in politics), and structural/institutional explanations in political science (with the focus on material and institutional constraints on politics). By the end of the seminar, students will have a good sense of key contemporary debates in political science and how various theoretical and methodological choices we make affect the answers we get.