Syllabus

Introduction to Politics and Government
Fall 2007
Political Science Course # PS 106 01

Course Description

Students technically do not need to be "introduced" to politics and government, since these affect almost every aspect of their lives, from what they earn (e.g., taxes) to what they eat (food safety laws) to where they go (public roads) and how they get there (oil policies). Yet students, like many Americans, may feel bewildered, shut out, overwhelmed, or even disgusted by the political process. To overcome these obstacles to understanding, this course offers a systematic approach to politics and government. Students will address broad political questions like the following:

• Is liberal democracy the best form of government?
• How does power affect the distribution of resources?
• What is a political ideology?
• How do political institutions like Congress and the courts operate?
• What drives nations to go to war?

By engaging with questions like these, the course should help students clearly identify the ways in which politics affects their lives, and the lives of others, and to critically evaluate claims made by political actors. We will also work together towards developing skills that transcend the classroom. Through the study of politics and government, students should begin to develop powers of analysis and argumentation that will improve their thinking, writing, and speaking, both on and off campus.

Finally, this course also serves as an introduction to the discipline of political science. Those students considering this field as a major or minor will come away from the course with an understanding of the main sub-fields of political science, as well as some of the dominant theoretical approaches within the discipline.

Required Texts

Students are encouraged to purchase the following book:

Power & Choice
W. Phillips Shively
10th Edition (2007)
ISBN: 9780073278902

This book is available from Shakespeare and Company (939 Lexington Avenue, at 69th Street). In addition, a number of less expensive used copies may be available online. If you purchase online or elsewhere, however, make sure that you obtain the correct edition and that you can get the book in a timely fashion.

Additional readings will be assigned throughout the semester through the use of handouts, library access, and online links at the course website. Readings will be assigned at the end of each class, and also will be posted on the class website.

Course Requirements

• Come to class prepared. Complete all required readings beforehand, and bring your textbooks to class.
  

• Participate. Attend class regularly and on time—you cannot participate if you are not present—and join your colleagues in critical analysis of the assigned readings. In order to encourage participation, you will be asked to complete the following assignment:
  

• Summaries. Write five (5) one-page summaries of assigned readings throughout the course of the semester. Guidelines for summary writing will be distributed during class. In general, you can submit summaries whenever you would like, with the following restriction: one summary must be completed in September, with an additional one (two in total) due by the mid-term exam. Still, I encourage you to WRITE YOUR SUMMARIES EARLY – do not wait until the end of the semester, or you may run out of time to complete your required seven.
  

• Complete all other written assignments:
  

• Exams. You will be given two examinations throughout the course, a mid-term and a final. The final exam focuses primarily on material covered in the second half of the course, but may build upon and refer to material discussed earlier. Exams will consist of brief essay questions, with the questions distributed in advance. Exams will be based on the required readings and on classroom discussions.
  

• Paper. One 5-7 page research paper will be due later in the semester. Details for the assignment, including deadlines and instructions, will be distributed in class after the mid-term examination.

Grading

Your grade will be based on your written work and your class participation. Course requirements will be weighted as follows when calculating your grade:

Exams: 50%
Of the two exams, your lowest grade will be worth 20%, while your highest will be worth 30%. Make-up exams will be given only when proper documentation for the absence is provided.

Paper: 25%
Grading criteria will be included when the paper assignment is distributed. A one letter grade penalty will be imposed upon late papers without valid documentation (e.g., medical emergency).

Participation: 25%
Submission of all required summaries establishes a base participation grade of B. Failure to submit a summary will lower this grade by one-third of a letter grade (e.g., B to B-). Excessive lateness or absences may lead to further reductions, while frequent and thoughtful contributions to class discussion will have the opposite effect.

Incomplete grades will be assigned only for a valid and documented cause, for a length of time specified by the instructor when the documentation is accepted.

Academic Integrity

Students should be aware of the college’s policies regarding cheating, plagiarism and any other kind of academic misconduct as outlined in the MMC Academic Honesty Policy. These policies will be discussed briefly during the first class, and are available online. Students who have questions or concerns about their written work should discuss these with the instructor before submitting any assignments.

Special Needs

Any student who is learning disabled, whose primary language is other than English, or who has other special needs and may thus require special accommodations should notify me immediately.

Course Schedule (subject to change)

Thursday, September 6
Introduction to Politics (and Political Science)

Thursday, September 13
Introduction to Government
Concepts: Power

Thursday, September 20
Concepts: Authority, Legitimacy and Democracy

Thursday, September 27
Ideologies: Liberalism and its Critics; Fascism and Totalitarianism

Thursday, October 4
Constitutions and the Modern State
Exam Review

Thursday, October 11
MID-TERM EXAMINATION

Thursday, October 18
Institutions: Legislatures and the Executive (Parliamentary vs. Presidential Systems)

Thursday, October 25
Institutions: Law and the Courts; the Bureaucracy

Thursday, November 1
Public Policy (what governments do)
Political Participation: Elections and Parties

Thursday, November 8
Political Participation: Interest Groups, Social Movements and Social Capital

Thursday, November 15
International Politics: Realism and Institutionalism

Thursday, November 22
NO CLASS – THANKSGIVING BREAK

Thursday, November 29
International Politics: War and Peace

Thursday, December 6
Issues in Politics
Exam Review

Thursday, December 13
FINAL EXAM

Sample Summary

Nelson Munz                                                                                           PS 101 01
9/5/07                                                                                              Summary #2
Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition In America, by Paul Frymer

Frymer seeks to explain why African-Americans are consistently marginalized by the American two-party system. This marginalization is not accidental, he argues; the American electoral system that developed in the early 19th century was designed specifically to defuse and deny issues of race. Frymer begins with an example: the contemporary revitalization of the Democratic Party, culminating in the 1992 election of President Clinton. The Democratic Party leadership pursued ideologically moderate voters by downplaying or even neglecting traditional African-American interests such as welfare, affirmative action, and racial injustice. These leaders believed that commitment to Black interests alienated key white voters; playing down these commitments would enable the party to build the broad coalition necessary to elect a Democratic President. According to Frymer, this contemporary example is part of a larger pattern. Since the creation of the two-party system, party leaders have consistently followed this pattern, which was intended to minimize racial conflict.

Frymer introduces the concept of “electoral capture,” in which minority interests are rejected by the opposing party and have no choice but to remain with their current one. In this case, the current party can take the support of the minority interest for granted, focusing on voters who may swing to either party. While African-Americans are ideologically closer to Democrats than Republicans, the primary reason they are not courted by Republicans is that Republican Party leaders are afraid of the disruptive effects African-Americans would have on their party; these leaders believe that appeals to Blacks would drive racist whites from their party, destroying their national party coalition and costing them their chance at the Presidency.

Scholars of political parties tend to view parties as empowering minorities; they provide the best means for minorities to effect political change. These scholars point to the example of the Jacksonian Democrats, who brought disenfranchised white males into the political system. However, the two best examples of parties empowering Blacks (the Reconstruction Republicans and the 1960’s civil rights Democrats) actually occurred during periods in which a single party was dominant. It is only in the absence of a strong two-party system, argues Frymer, that African-American interests are represented.

Frymer argues that the traditional party model, in which competition leads parties to make appeals to all interests in order to balance against each other, does not work. Instead, parties have limited resources, and so will concentrate their efforts on those voters who require less effort to mobilize, i.e., those who already participate. Moreover, party scholars who suggest that minority interests will eventually be represented in the majority on some issue are incorrect; there is a long-term majority white interest in the US, and Black Americans will never end up on the majority side of this issue. The overall effect of the two-party system is to minimize explosive conflict, but at the expense of African-Americans.

Summary Guidelines

Reading Summaries - Guidelines

One of your course requirements is to write and submit a certain number of summaries of reading assignments (see syllabus for exact number and any specific deadlines). Below are some guidelines for writing these summaries.

Purpose

Summaries have at least two purposes. First, they are part of your participation grade because they help to prevent you from falling behind in your reading assignments. When students feel time pressures, reading assignments are one of the first things to be abandoned. Yet if you write regular summaries, you are more likely to contribute to class discussion and less likely to be unprepared for exams or paper assignments. (Good summaries can be helpful study aids.)

Second, summaries help you focus on the main points of an assigned reading. You cannot write an accurate summary unless you make careful choices about what is important or central in a text. This includes filtering out material that is not essential; as noted below, summaries can be too long as well as too short.

How to Write a Successful Summary

• A summary should be approximately one, and certainly no more than two, double-spaced, typed pages with 1” margins. (Summaries that are significantly shorter than one page, or more than two, may be returned for no credit.) If your summary is two pages, please staple in the upper left.

• Summaries must be submitted at the start of the class period in which the reading will be discussed. If multiple readings are assigned for a class period, you may choose which reading to summarize; however, only one summary may be submitted per class. If you are absent, you may arrange to have someone else deliver the summary. Summaries may not be transmitted via e-mail. No late summaries will be accepted for any reason.

• All summaries should have a heading using the same, single-spaced format. In the top left, put your name and date. In the top right, put the course number and which number summary it is, e.g., Summary #5. (This assures that your count and mine are the same.) On the third line indicate the reading you are summarizing, listing title and author. (See sample summary for a heading example.)

• In the body of the summary:

• Restate the author’s main points in the order they have been presented. A summary is not simply a compilation of random notes. Your task is to present the author’s argument and key evidence. It may help to use the first sentence or two to briefly summarize the overall argument.

• Identify the author’s argument, not your view on the subject. Although you are not prohibited from including your reaction to what you read, the point of the summary is to restate the author’s key points. If you devote too much space to your view and too little to the text, you can expect me return the summary without credit.

• Put the author’s main points in your own words. You may NOT quote from the reading in these summaries. Be careful: any quotations, inadvertent or otherwise, that are submitted under your name without proper sourcing constitutes plagiarism, and will bring serious punitive consequences.

• Divide your summary into paragraphs, one for each of the author’s key points. (Failure to divide a summary into paragraphs is a warning sign that you have not followed the structure of the author’s argument.) When a text contains headings, you can often use these as a guide in organizing your summary, with (generally) one summary paragraph per heading.

• Summarize the entire argument, and not just the first few pages. Summaries that cover only part of the assigned reading will be returned without credit. (Again, summaries should only cover ONE text, even if more than one reading is assigned for a particular class.)

• Submit only the required number of summaries for the semester. If you accidentally submit an extra summary, you will not receive credit for it.

Grading

Summaries are not graded with letter grades. Either a summary is acceptable (marked with a check mark), or it is not. As suggested above, failure to follow the above guidelines may lead me to return a summary without credit. I will likely consider a summary unacceptable if it:

• Is too short (only half a page);
• Is too long (over two pages);
• Only covers a small part of the reading;
• Devotes a considerable amount of space to your views instead of the author’s;
• Presents the author’s words, not yours;
• Violates these guidelines in any other way.

If a particular summary shows considerable merit—i.e., it is organized exceedingly well, it clearly and comprehensively presents the author’s argument in its entirety, and it is free of grammatical and mechanical errors—I may mark it as an “exceptional” summary (with a check-plus mark). Exceptional summaries help increase your class participation grade.

We will spend some time in class going over these guidelines, and will cover summaries again after you have had the chance to submit a few. I encourage you to SUBMIT YOUR SUMMARIES EARLY; do not run out of time to complete the required number.