New Courses
Descriptions of courses offered by the Department that are not yet listed in the University of Florida course catalog. Click here for course descriptions in the 2005-06 UF Undergraduate Catalog. Click here for a list of courses offered during the 2006 Spring semester.
Spring 2007
CPO 6046, Section (TBA) -- Advanced Industrial Societies (3 credits), Prof. Thomas Biebricher
Advanced Industrial Societies (AIS) face a host of problems that range from rising immigration to the erosion of the powers of the nation-state due to economic globalization and/or increased supra-nationalism in the context of the EU. However, the most severe challenges are arguably related to the welfare state. A shift towards employment in the service economy, the internationalization of production regimes, a decreasing tax base, the rapid 'graying' of almost all Western societies, exploding costs in health care services and changes in family structure, to name but a few factors, have put increasing pressure on systems of social welfare. The response to these pressures has typically taken the form of a shift towards 'workfare' or 'enabling/activating' welfare state policies as well as a growing privatization in the provision of social welfare. The correlate is a dramatic rise in socio-economic inequality, intersecting with divisions of gender and race, which is most pronounced in the United States but holds across a large number of AIS.
The course aims to provide students with a comprehensive and comparative introduction to the various issues related to the welfare state in AIS. It will employ an ideologically diverse variety of theoretical/methodological approaches ranging from Institutionalist to Marxist studies; from Rational Choice to Discourse-Analytical Approaches, and from historical to Political Economy perspectives. Taking the conceptual questions related to the (welfare) state as a starting point we will scrutinize various approaches to analyze the functioning as well as the problems of the welfare state in its multifarious aspects as they manifest themselves in four AIS (Great Britain, Germany, Sweden and United States), each of which is considered to represent a specific 'welfare regime' (Esping-Andersen).
Previous Semesters
POS 6933, Section (TBA) -- Environmental Politics (3 credits), Prof. Katrina Schwartz
How do politics -- political ideologies, institutions, interests, and power relationships -- shape humans' relationship with the natural environment? This seminar explores a variety of theoretical approaches to this central question. The complexity and border-crossing nature of environmental issues demand a pluralistic and interdisciplinary scholarly agenda. Along with seminal works from across the political science subfields -- theory, American, comparative, and international relations -- we draw on some of the most important contributions from geography, anthropology, and other social sciences. We will examine:
Eco-political theory: What are the diverse strands of green political thought, and how do they challenge the major Western political traditions?
State-centered perspectives: How well do bureaucracies cope with the complexity of environmental management? What might a "green" alternative to the liberal democratic state, the growth-dependent welfare state, and the neoliberal market-focused state look like? How has global ecological interdependence transformed traditional state institutions and power structures?
Environmental economics: How can we move beyond neo-classical economics, with its notion of "rational economic man" and the profit-maximizing firm, to a broader, politically informed understanding of efficiency and sustainability?
Critiques of development: How can we best theorize the environmental impacts of economic globalization -- of global trade, investment, aid, and the dynamics of wealth and poverty? How and why aremultilateral development lenders continuing to foster environmental devastation, despite their newly professed commitment to sustainability? Is "sustainable development" itself a failed paradigm? Has the globalization of managerial control over nature succeeded only in making the world safe for continued economic growth as usual?
Third-World perspectives: Are citizens of LDCs "too poor to be green"? How do environmental movements in the global South differ from those in the North in tactics, priorities, values, and ideologies? How can recognizing these differences deepen our understanding of environmentalism?
Political ecology: Emerging out of studies of natural resource use and control in colonial and post-colonial settings, this relatively new interdisciplinary field uses the analytical lens of political economy to explain environmental outcomes. Political ecologists employ research methods less frequently used by conventional students of environmental politics, particularly ethnogrphy and discourse analysis. How does political ecology deepen our understanding of the embedded narratives and power relations that structure human-environment relationships?
There will be frequent short writing assignments on the assigned readings throughout the semester, as well as a set of integrative essays (on prelim-type questions) at the conclusion. There will be no independent research paper.
POS 6933, Section (TBA) -- State-Building (3 credits), Prof. Conor O'Dwyer
Wednesdays, Period 8-10, Matherly 12
The modern state is of central interest to students of comparative politics, international relations, and American political development.? Whether condemned as an instrument of repression or elevated as an engine of economic development, the state is inarguably the fundamental unit of national political organization in the world today.? This course will examine the processes that produced the modern state in the region where it first appeared, Western Europe, and then analyze attempts to transplant this singular institutional innovation to Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, East Asia, as well as the United States.? We will address the following questions: what is the modern state? In what historical circumstances did it originate? Can state-builders in late-developing nations reproduce the institutional forms of the modern state, or are these institutions inevitably altered in transit? When does state-building fail and why? Finally, in an era of economic globalization and emerging supranational institutions such as the European Union, are some states undergoing fundamental redefinition?
Our reading will include selections from Perry Anderson, Danel Carpenter, Peter Evans, Francis Fukuyama, Otto Hintze, Atul Kohli, Joel Migdal, Martin Shefter, Susan Strange, Charles Tilly, Max Weber, and Daniel Ziblatt.
POS 6933, Section (TBA) -- Comparative Elections and Party Systems (3 credits), Prof. Bryon Moraski
Fridays, Period 2-4, Matherly 117
The course exposes graduate students to major issues related to the study of elections and political parties in the comparative context. Specifically, we will discuss the relationship between political behavior and electoral institutions in authoritarian, democratic, and transitional political systems. The major topics in the course include an overview of different types of parties and party systems, the societal roots of political parties, and the role electoral institutions and elite behavior play in producing a proliferation or scarcity of parties. In addition, we will discuss the many features that comprise an electoral system, the nearly infinite array of electoral design options that results from these features, and how institutional designers have manipulated electoral rules to influence election results. Likewise, we will consider how the operation of elections and the behavior of political parties may spur transitions from authoritarian rule, shape whether such transitions lead to democracy, and influence the quality of democracy where democracy is already recognized as being consolidated.
A link to the working syllabus can be found at: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/bmoraski/
POS 6933, Section 4122 -- The Politics of Education (3 credits), Prof. Richard K. Scher
THURSDAYS, Periods 4-6 (Anderson 21)
Instructor's Office and email address: 204 Anderson, kingsch@polisci.ufl.edu
The course is designed as an exploration of selected topics in the politics of education, primarily but not exclusively American education. Approximately half the course is devoted to pre-K - 12 schooling, and the remainder to higher education. The seminar is for students with a range of professional interests and backgrounds. It is open to all graduate students interested in the political issues of modern education, including those from fields cognate to political science (such as sociology, anthropology, history) and those from the Colleges of Education, Journalism, and Law. The emphasis is on an investigation of issues, controversies, literatures and bibliographies appropriate for each student, rather than on a unified set of requirements which all must meet. Relevant materials may well include institutional, behavioral, and policy literatures, as well as readings from other fields such as history, sociology, law, political science, policy analysis, etc., as appropriate.
