.Introduction to American Politics (Yale)

This lecture course offers students an introduction to American political institutions and behavior. As a survey course, it will focus on the broad trends and controversies that animate the study of American politics. While some attention will be paid to local and state politics, the preponderance of this class is devoted to national political institutions and behavior.  The course is broken up into three parts.  Part I covers some of the theoretical foundations of American government.  Topics discussed include federalism, separation of powers, and the notion of representative government.  Part II of the course focuses on the study of formal institutions: Congress, the presidency, and the federal judiciary.  Part III covers the “behavioral” aspects of American politics: elections, parties, the media, public opinion, interest groups, and polarization. For each subject, we will examine some of the leading perspectives in political science, incorporating current events along the way.

The United States Congress (Yale)

This is a lecture course on the United States Congress.  We will explore such questions as: What are the causes and effects of political polarization?  How would term limits affect policy outcomes?  What is the effect of money on Congress?  Where do/should constituents fit in in all this?  How does Congress interact with the President and the bureaucracy? How does one run for office?   Why is Congress’s approval rating lower than any other institution in the country?  These are only a few of the questions we’ll be discussing this quarter.  The course is divided into two parts.  In Part I, we discuss the theoretical and historical foundations of legislative government the United States.  In Part II, we move beyond theories of legislating and on to the way Congress operates in practice. 

Learning Democracy (Yale)

This is a seminar on the theory and practice of civic education.  We will begin by investigating philosophies of civic education, asking such questions as: What is civic education and what is its purpose?  What knowledge, skills, and values promote human flourishing and the cultivation of a democratic society?  What roll can/should schools play in this cultivation?  In the next part of the course we will focus on civic education in practice, exploring various approaches to teaching civics and the empirical evidence in support of each method’s effectiveness. We will also discuss variations in access to civic education opportunities across socioeconomic, demographic, and national contexts, and how societies might deal with these disparities.  Later in the semester, we will visit New Haven Academy, a school dedicated to creating active citizens. 

Political Representation (Yale)

The notion of political representation lies at the center of government in the United States and much of the rest of the world.  In this seminar, we will examine the features of political representation, both in theory and practice.  We will ask (and possibly find ourselves struggling to answer!) such questions as:  What is political representation?  Should we have a representative system as opposed to something else like monarchy or direct democracy?  Should representatives demographically resemble those they represent, or is that not necessary?  How do things like congressional redistricting, electoral competition, and term limits affect the quality of representation?  Do constituents’ preferences actually translate into policy in the United States, and if so, how?  These are only a few of the important questions we’ll be asking this quarter. 

The course is divided into three parts.  In Part I, we discuss the theoretical foundations upon which representative government rests.  In Part II, we move beyond theories of representation and on to the way political representation actually operates in the United States.  In Part III, we move beyond the ways in which representation works and focus instead on some ways in which it doesn’t work.  Proposed solutions are also explored.  

America From Scratch (Yale)

What would the United States look like without a Supreme Court?  Without a Senate?  Without states?  What if the United States had ten presidents instead of one? Or no president at all?  As radical as these constitutional propositions might sound, they were all at least considered by America’s founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the state ratifying conventions that followed. 

In this seminar, we will examine such proposals—proposals considered unthinkable today, but not during the Constitutional Convention or in other countries throughout history. Of each reform, we will ask two questions: what if America had adopted this reform from the start? What if America adopted it now?  In an attempt to answer these questions, we will read the records of the Constitutional Convention documents, speeches, and letters considering these “radical” constitutional designs and connect them to attempts to realize these reforms today.

Participatory Democracy (Yale)

What does democracy look like without elections?  In this seminar, we will discuss the theory and practice of “participatory” forms of democracy—that is, those that allow and encourage citizens to influence policy directly, rather than indirectly through elected representatives. The first part of the course is dedicated to discussing theories of participatory democracy, while the second part is dedicated to discussing how participatory democracy either does or might work in a variety of settings, including national legislatures, cities, the workplace, and schools. 

The Politics of Technological Revolutions

In this class we will examine the intersection of politics and “revolutionary technologies”—that is, technologies with the potential to upend political structures, transform societies, and in some cases even redefine what it means to be human.  We will spend the first few weeks of the semester looking at technological revolutions of the past (e.g. fire, agriculture), but most of the course will focus on the present and near future (e.g. nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, autonomous weapons systems, colonizing other planets). How might people and governments prepare for these advancements in ways that promote progress and prevent destruction? For each technology, we will (1) spend a class or two on its history and basic science, and then (2) spend a class or two on its political implications/solutions.