UNDERGRADUATE COURSES:

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POSC1000: Intro to Politics

Everybody from your grandma to your next door neighbor thinks they know something about politics. How much do you know? How do governments form? How do citizens get to express their opinions? Do politicians play a different role in different countries, or is politics the same everywhere? This course provides an introduction to politics, from how citizens think and act to the institutions that structure the way politics happens every day. We will focus on many different countries and political systems to gain a broader understanding of what politics is all about. After this, you can debate with grandma all day long.
Link to recent syllabus: Winter 2022

 

POSC3340: Women and Politics

This course will provide an exploration of the role gender plays in politics, including voting, party activism, leadership, candidacy, office-holding, and law-making. Special attention will be paid to the relationship between gender and political behaviour, including political participation, attitudes, and policy making. This course is not based solely on Canada, and much of our discussion will centre on American politics as well. We will discuss the meaning of gender and sex, and the role they play in politics.
Link to recent syllabus: 3340-winter2018

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POSC3350: Public Opinion and Voting

Barack Obama is soaring in the polls. Two thirds of “rich” Americans think they’re poor. One quarter of Canadian Conservative supporters said they voted for Justin Trudeau because they don’t like Harper’s attitude. We read poll results in the news every day. Do we really believe them? Whose values are being reported, anyway? And why do people think they way they do? This course will look in-depth at public opinion: how it’s measured, its origins, and its impact on society and government. You will never see polling results the same way again.
Link to recent syllabus: 3350syllabusF2018

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POSC3355: Sex, Scandals, and Elections

Politics can be dirty. We’ve seen sex scandals (e.g. Lewinsky, Spitzer, Packwood, Craig, Foley, Weiner); Congressional & Judicial Scandals (e.g. House Banking Scandal, Abscam, Keating Five, Koreagate; Clarence Thomas Affair); and power scandals (e.g. Watergate) in the American context. The Canadian context is not scandal-free either (e.g. Sponsorship Scandal; Airbus Affair; Shawinigate; Robocall Scandal; Senate Scandal). Do scandals matter? What impact do scandals have on citizen trust? On candidates? On political campaigns? How does media coverage affect the impact of corruption and scandals?

This course considers the above and other questions related to political scandal and corruption in election campaigns. We will focus mainly on American elections and campaigns, and the course coincides with the 2016 American Election, providing a useful backdrop from which to assess literatures related to voters, public opinion, campaigns, and scandals. By the end of the course, students will be able to better navigate campaigns and elections, and in particular, will be able to marshal voting behavior literature and theoretical perspectives to understand the impact of past scandals and the potential impact of future scandals for voters & electoral democracy.
Link to fall 2020 syllabus: 3355syllabusF2020

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POSC4340: Women and Mass Politics: Behavior and Participation

For centuries women have been excluded from mainstream politics, and the legacy of this exclusion remains. To this day women are marginalized in our political system, missing from the highest administrative posts, and they continue to participate in lower numbers than men. This course explores women’s political behavior and participation, focusing primarily on the experiences of women in North America. We will look at women’s efforts to secure political rights from the mid-19th century onward, as well as assessing women’s attitudes towards politics, participation, and public policy.  Over the course of the semester we will address systemic and institutional barriers to participation, as well as looking at the effects of women’s participation in politics, both in conventional institutional settings as well as non-conventional forms of activism. Women’s behavior is different from that of men, but it also varies across women. What are these differences? How does non-participation affect the translation of group and individual interests into policies? How big a problem is it if women don’t vote, don’t run for office, and don’t legislate? We will explore these and other normative questions.
Link to recent syllabus: 4340Winter2020

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GRADUATE COURSES:

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POSC6000: Political Science Concepts

This seminar provides an overview of important theoretical and methodological issues in political analysis based on readings in philosophy of science, political behavior, rational choice, feminism, qualitative analysis, and post‑modernism, among other things. The subject matter of this seminar is applicable to all sub‑fields of the discipline. The course is meant to give a taste of some of the various debates, controversies, and issues in political analysis, as well as providing a general sense of the plurality of approaches that exist in the field as a whole. No two political scientists are the same, and the ways in which they choose to approach research questions are often very different. At the end of this course students should have a basic understanding of some (not all) of the different kinds of things that political scientists “do,” and should be able to situate themselves to some degree within the field. We all have preferences of our own, and all approaches have tradeoffs. When we consider a research question, it is important to think about the methodological and ontological tradeoffs involved with approaching the question from different angles. The tools gained in this course should be useful to all future research in political analysis.
Link to recent syllabus: syllabus 6000 fall 2017

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POSC6010: Political Science Research Methods

This course is an introduction to research methods in political science. Its goal is to familiarize you with the scientific study of politics. We will apply a scientific approach to questions about political phenomena, instead of the more familiar approaches taken by politicians, interest groups, and popular media. We will learn how to ask empirical questions about politics, how to answer these questions scientifically using the appropriate types of evidence, and how to clearly convey our arguments to others. The course topics will include the logic of the scientific method, the measurement of political concepts, research design and methods of data collection, statistical techniques for analyzing data, and various (although certainly not all) quantitative and qualitative practices in the field of political science. Learning to think scientifically in this manner is a skill that you will find useful in other political science courses and in your career (and life!). No background in statistics or mathematics is assumed. There are no prerequisites other than a desire to think about political problems in a systematic and critical fashion.

Link to recent syllabus:  Syllabus - Winter 2022