Course Level: Graduate

Selected Topics: Non-recurring (1-6)

Campaign Finance

Money in politics is one of the most consistently controversial and compelling topics in American elections. Fundamental issues of free speech, government regulation and public participation in the democratic process are all central to campaign finance policy and law. This rigorous course explores campaign finance in federal elections and public policy. Thes course examines how American campaign finance policy has evolved, the intersection of policy and law, and considers how money and politics are important in campaigns and governing. Few other areas of American politics and law have evolved as substantially as campaign finance in recent years. This course provides a unique opportunity to learn about an area that is politically, practically, and academically essential to the democratic process. Meets with GOVT-496 001.

Course Level: Graduate

Selected Topics: Non-recurring (1-6)

Democracy in the Developing World: Theory and Cases

This course helps students construct a cognitive road map of the extensive literature on democracy and democratization. The course mostly addresses recent processes of democratization (those of the last 25 years), which have been concentrated in the developing world. In particular, the focus is on empirical examples from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. After initial sessions dedicated to defining and measuring democracy, the class discusses democracy's causes and outputs, considers hybrid regimes (with characteristics of authoritarian and democratic regimes), and then looks at how transitions have occurred in the three world regions.

Course Level: Graduate

Selected Topics: Non-recurring (1-6)

The Political Thought of Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was the first and arguably greatest conservative thinker. He was an anti-philosophic philosopher and an influential statesman skeptical of what states can do. This course analyzes Burke's most important political, moral, economic, and aesthetic writings, including his famous works on the American and French Revolutions, through which he lived, as well as the writings of some of Burke's most important contemporaries, in order to shed light on his conservatism, and see how it compares to contemporaneous and current strands of conservatism and liberalism. The course uses Burke to meditate deeply on the nature of political ideology. Meets with GOVT-496 003.

Course Level: Graduate

Selected Topics: Non-recurring (1-6)

Native Nations, the Global Economy and the Future

This WINS program course builds GOVT-436/636. The focus is on contemporary issues important to AI/AN/NH communities through a combination of lectures, discussions, relevant readings, research projects, field trips, volunteer work and guest speakers. At a challenging economic and political moment in America's history, the course addresses the role Native nations can play in the economic, social, and political future of the United States. Exploring various theories of development in Native communities, the course applies those theories to challenges and opportunities facing tribes and other Indigenous communities in the United States and around the world. The course engages students from an asset-based frame to see the strengths tribes offer to our nation and the world. Open only to students in the WINS program. Meets with GOVT-496 N01T.