Courses tagged with "Kadenze" (166)

Videos about how government works in the United States. PPACA or "Obamacare". The Fiscal Cliff. More Fiscal Cliff Analysis. Electoral College. Primaries and Caucuses. Deficit and Debt Ceiling. Government's Financial Condition. Social Security Intro. FICA Tax. Medicare Sustainability. SOPA and PIPA. Pension obligations. Illinois pension obligations. PPACA or "Obamacare". The Fiscal Cliff. More Fiscal Cliff Analysis. Electoral College. Primaries and Caucuses. Deficit and Debt Ceiling. Government's Financial Condition. Social Security Intro. FICA Tax. Medicare Sustainability. SOPA and PIPA. Pension obligations. Illinois pension obligations.

This course is intended as an introduction to political philosophy as seen through an examination of some of the major texts and thinkers of the Western political tradition. Three broad themes that are central to understanding political life are focused upon: the polis experience (Plato, Aristotle), the sovereign state (Machiavelli, Hobbes), constitutional government (Locke), and democracy (Rousseau, Tocqueville). The way in which different political philosophies have given expression to various forms of political institutions and our ways of life are examined throughout the course.

This graduate seminar has two main goals: to explore the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of contemporary Chinese politics; and to relate those approches to broader trends in the field of comparative politics. What has the study of China contributed to the field of comparative politics, and vice versa? What are the most effective ways to integrate area studies, broader comparative approaches, and theory? Seminar presumes a basic understanding of the history and politics of contemporary China.

This field seminar in international political economy covers major theoretical, empirical, and policy perspectives. The basic orientation is disciplinary and comparative (over time and across countries, regions, firms), spanning issues relevant to both industrial and developing states. Special attention is given to challenges and dilemmas shaped by the macro-level consequences of micro-level behavior, and by micro-level adjustments to macro-level influences.

Political issues facing the state of California, the United States, or the international community. Instructor: Alan Ros

Interdisciplinary introduction to contemporary Latin America, drawing on films, literature, popular press accounts, and scholarly research. Topics include economic development, ethnic and racial identity, religion, revolution, democracy, transitional justice, and the rule of law. Examples draw on a range of countries in the region, especially Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. Includes a heavy oral participation component, with regular breakout groups, formal class presentations on pressing social issues (such as criminal justice and land tenure), and a structured class debate.

In this course, we will seek to interpret capitalism using ideas from biological evolution: firms pursuing varied strategies and facing extinction when those strategies fail are analogous to organisms struggling for survival in nature. For this reason, it is less concerned with ultimate judgment of capitalism than with the ways it can be shaped to fit our more specific objectives--for the natural environment, public health, alleviation of poverty, and development of human potential in every child. Each book we read will be explicitly or implicitly an argument about good and bad consequences of capitalism.

Increasingly, political scientists are using game theory to analyze strategic interactions across many different settings. Each of the sub-fields, to differing degrees, has seen game theoretic concepts enter its vocabulary, and students entering the profession will need to understand the potential and limits of game theory. This course aims to give students an entry-level understanding of the basic concepts of game theory, and how these concepts have been applied to the study of political phenomena.

Because an important component of game theory in political science and political economy is the analysis of substantive political phenomena, we will cover illustrative examples each week in combination with methodological developments. The political and economic phenomena that we will examine include legislative rules, nuclear deterrence, electoral competition, and imperfect markets.

This seminar has three purposes. One, it inquires into the causes of military innovation by examining a number of the most outstanding historical cases. Two, it views military innovations through the lens of organization theory to develop generalizations about the innovation process within militaries. Three, it uses the empirical study of military innovations as a way to examine the strength and credibility of hypotheses that organization theorists have generated about innovation in non-military organizations.

In recent years both scholars and policymakers have expressed a remarkable amount of interest in the concepts of social capital and civil society. A growing body of research suggests that the social networks, community norms, and associational activities signified by these concepts can have important effects on social welfare, political stability, economic development, and governmental performance. This discussion based course examines the roles played by these networks, norms, and organizations in outcomes ranging from local public goods provision and the performance of democracies to ethnic conflict and funding for terrorism.

This course focuses on cyberspace and its implications for private and public, sub-national, national, and international actors and entities.

Examines role of European states in postwar period of rapid economic growth and current crisis. Includes analysis of different state traditions ("etatist," liberal, authoritarian); government's role in decline of some economies and rise of others; why and where Keynesianism, indicative planning, and state enterprises were introduced; alternative conceptions of contemporary economic problems (new international division of labor? too few producers? oil shock?); and of policies to deal with them (industrial policy? monetarism? protectionism?).

This course explores organizational concepts and research methods that explain the performance and development of military organizations in peace and war. Classic studies are reviewed. Approaches to current policy problems based on theoretical insights into military organizations and practices are also considered. The class stresses development of new theory.

This course focuses on strategic and political implications of ongoing trends in global energy markets, particularly markets for crude oil and natural gas. The course examines the world's major oil and natural gas producing regions: the Middle East, the Caspian Region, Russia, Venezuela, and the North Sea. Producer-consumer relationships are considered for China, India, Japan, and the United States. United States foreign policy implications, especially with respect to China, are discussed.

This course examines the problems and issues confronting American national security policymakers and the many factors that influence the policies that emerge. But this is not a course about "threats," military strategies, or the exercise of military power.

What threatens those interests? How should the U.S. defend those interests? What kind of military should we build? Should the U.S. enter into alliances with other countries? Do we need a larger Navy? How much should we spend on weapons procurement?

The course has four broad goals:

• to demonstrate that definitions of national security and the specification of vital interests are subjective and fluid and that they are as much functions of domestic politics as they are responses to international politics and "objective threats";
• to demonstrate that policy decisions involve complex tradeoffs among political, social, economic, military, legal, and ethical goals and values;
• to explore how the many organizations, institutions, and individuals that participate in American national security policymaking affect policy formulation, implementation, and outcomes; and
• to better understand the historical context, evolution, and linkages of national security problems and solutions.

The course is organized along an historical time line. Beginning with the final days of World War II we follow American national security policy from the first stirrings of confrontation with the Soviet Union and China, into two hot wars in Asia that cost over 100,000 American lives and spawned social upheavals, through a close encounter with nuclear war, stumbling into the era of arms control, and conclude with the collapse of the communism. Selective case studies, memoirs, and original documents act as windows into each period. What were US national security decision makers thinking? What were they worried about? How did they see their options?

Tracing the evolution of international interactions, this course examines the dimensions of globalization in terms of scale and scope. It is divided into three parts; together they are intended to provide theoretical, empirical, and policy perspectives on source and consequences of globalization, focusing on emergent structures and processes, and on the implications of flows of goods and services across national boundaries – with special attention to the issue of migration, on the assumption that people matter and matter a lot. An important concern addressed pertains to the dilemmas of international policies that are shaped by the macro-level consequences of micro-level behavior. 17.411 fulfills undergraduate public policy requirement in the major and minor. Graduate students are expected to explore the subject in greater depth through reading and individual research.

This course provides a broad overview of the theories of and approaches to the study of nationalist thought and practice. It also explores the related phenomena termed nationalism: national consciousness and identity, nations, nation-states, and nationalist ideologies and nationalist movements. The course analyzes nationalism's emergence and endurance as a factor in modern politics and society. Topics include: nationalism and state-building, nationalism and economic modernization, nationalism and democratization, and nationalism and religious conflict.

A proper understanding of modern military operations requires a prior understanding of both the material side of war, and the human or organizational side of war. This seminar will break apart selected past, current, and future sea, air, space, and land battlefields into their constituent parts and look at the interaction in each of those warfare areas between existing military doctrine and weapons, sensors, communications, and information processing technologies. It will specifically seek to explore how technological development, whether innovative or stagnant, is influenced in each warfare area by military doctrine.

This course is designed to provide an introduction to a variety of empirical research methods used by political scientists. The primary aims of the course are to make you a more sophisticated consumer of diverse empirical research and to allow you to conduct advanced independent work in your junior and senior years. This is not a course in data analysis. Rather, it is a course on how to approach political science research.

This graduate research and reading seminar examines an array of issues facing labor in today's global world. The premise of this course is that recent developments (e.g., globalization, liberalization, privatization, etc.) have created a mix of opportunities and risks for labor in most developing countries.