G53.2320: Political Parties (graduate). This graduate seminar is designed to provide an introduction to both the theoretical and the empirical puzzles which have animated the study of political parties. Although most of the reading concerns the subject of American political parties, the questions asked in the readings are general enough to be of interest to students of political parties in other countries as well. An overarching theme of the seminar is an examination of both spatial models of party policy positions, and the evidence which fails to support such models. Different weeks' readings will explore different possible explanations for this anomaly. In addition, readings will also examine voter partisanship, variation in the number of parties in any given country, and explanations of legislative party behavior. Throughout the seminar we will ask why scholars have been interested in these subject areas, why they have posed the questions in they way that they have, and whether their answers to these questions are satisfactory. We will also explore whether there are questions which scholars have not asked which might be worth asking. (Spring 2000).

G53.2324: Campaigns and Elections (graduate). This graduate seminar in campaigns and elections is intended to introduce students to advanced research on elections. For both doctoral and masters students, the readings should provide insight into the current questions which motivate political science research on elections, the data and methodologies used to investigate those questions, and the provisional results obtained. (Fall 1999).

V53.0395: American Politics Field Seminar: Elections in American Politics (undergraduate). This field seminar in American politics is intended to give students a hands-on introduction to the analysis of elections. Students will first survey the extent of our current knowledge about important topics in the study of elections. The emphasis in this part of the seminar will be on analyzing how authors have developed and tested individual-level models of electoral behavior. Emphasis will also be placed on thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of electoral data, such as voting returns and survey data. Students will then learn basic statistical skills, including probability theory and simple linear regression. The aim of this part of the seminar is not to cover these topics in depth, but rather to give students the basic skills they will need to analyze relationships in data. This part of the seminar will also include sessions in a computer lab, and will allow students to learn to use a statistical program, and to work with electoral data. Finally, students will write a final paper in which they develop and test their own hypotheses about electoral behavior. (Fall 1999).

V53.0800: Doing Political Science (undergraduate). This course is intended to provide a hands-on introduction to the methodology of political science. Each semester the course will focus on two important research questions in the discipline of political science. This semester, these two questions are "Why do people vote?" and "Why are some individuals partisans?" In the first part of the course, students will analyze different theoretical approaches to these research questions through a combination of lectures and small-group discussions. During this part of the course, students will write several brief research proposals which propose empirical tests of competing theoretical hypotheses. In the second part of the course, students learn how to conduct empirical tests. Through a combination of lectures and lab sessions, students learn basic statistical methods, including the use of a statistical software package. At the conclusion of this part of the course, students test their hypotheses about one of the research questions and submit their results in the form of an original research report. (Fall 2000).

A53.0300.001: Power and Politics in America (undergraduate). This course will explore the logic underlying the unique form of government which exists in the United States. Emphasis will be placed on the institutions which secure (or not) governmental responsiveness to citizen preferences. The course will begin by studying the institutional mechanism of elections, and will then cover federalism and separation of powers. After the midterm the course will examine in more detail specific institutions of American government: Congress, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the courts. (Fall 2000).

V53.0912: Junior Honors (undergraduate) The purposes of this class are 1) to acquaint students with the research agendas of the members of the faculty of the Department of Politics, 2) to provide students with the skills needed to design a feasible research project in political science and 3) to support students1 development of a detailed research proposal for the senior thesis. (Spring 2003)