Week 1: Introduction
“Governments differ in kind, as will be evident to anyone who considers the matter according to the method that has guided us so far. As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always be disaggregated into the simplest elements, or essential parts, of the whole. We must therefore look at the elements of which the state is composed, in order to see how the different kinds of rule differ from one another and whether any scientific result can be attained about each one of them.”
-- Aristotle, The Politics, Book 1, Chapter 1
In class:
- Introductions
- Scheduling changes (if necessary)
- Review of syllabus
- Nominations for alternative weeks and vote on which week to cut out of the last three
- Questions for class discussion
- Preview of readings for next week
Week 2: The State
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 3: Social Structure, Classes, and Political Regimes
- Lecture:
- The classical sequence of regimes
- The Marxist model
- Class alliances and regime types
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 4: The Role of Culture (in Democracy, Corruption, Growth, etc.)
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 5: Leadership
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 6: Constitutional Choices and Governmental Performance
“So great is the force of laws, and of particular forms of government, and so little dependence have they on the humors and tempers of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them as any which mathematical sciences afford us."
-- David Hume, “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,” Essay III in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 7: Parties, Party Systems, and Electoral Behavior
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 8: Clientelism and Patronage Politics
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 9: Modernization and Development
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 10: Nationalism and National Identity
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 11: Colonial Legacies
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 12: Street-Level Bureaucracy
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
Week 13: Political Institutions and Economic Growth
- Questions for class discussion
- Response paper due
