Course List

Data analysis has become a key part of many fields including politics, business, law, and public policy. This course covers the fundamentals of data analysis, giving students the necessary statistical skills to understand and critically analyze contemporary political, legal, and policy puzzles. Lectures will focus on the theory and practice of quantitative analysis, and lab sessions will guide students through the particulars of statistical software. Core topics include descriptive statistics, probability, hypothesis testing, and linear regression. RESTRICTION: Students who have taken ECON 230, PSCI 205, PSY/CSP 211, STAT 212, STAT 213, or STAT 214 may not take the course. Must have laptop on which you can run R and R Studio.

This course introduces students to the questions, concepts, and analytical approaches of political scientists and emphasizes careful reading and analytical writing. For its subject matter, this class focuses on the tension between majority rule and minority rights in the American political tradition. Topics include tyranny of the majority, slavery, constitutional design, representation, the paradox of voting, collective action problems, political ambition, the development of the American party system, congressional organization, racism and civil rights, women's rights, substantive due process, the politics of contraception and abortion and LGBTQ rights, partisan polarization, and democratic erosion. Readings are drawn from classic texts in American thought—the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, speeches by Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, Supreme Court cases—as well as from books and articles written by contemporary political scientists. Written requirements include a midterm, a final exam, and several short papers on the assigned readings.

What explains the current state of the American political system? How do elections and political campaigns work? Are voters manipulated by slick media-based election campaigns? What about campaign ads or social media? Do polls help or harm voters? Do differences in how states regulate voting matter? The goal of this seminar is to enhance our understanding of the contemporary political environment, how elections work, how politicians conduct campaigns, how campaigns and media coverage affect voters, and how we study election campaign dynamics. We will not only examine the academic literature on these topics, but we will also follow the ongoing events of the 2024 presidential primary campaigns. Through a combination of group projects, short assignments, and a research paper, we will arrive at an understanding of elections and campaigns. We also will consider the place of elections and campaigns in contemporary American democracy.

Through intensive reading and discussion, we will analyze the major institutional features of Congress, with an emphasis on historical development. We will examine the basic institutions of the House and Senate--committees, parties, leaders, and rules. In doing this, we will consider the rise of careerism, the seniority system, agenda-setting, electoral concerns, divided government, efforts at institutional reform, party polarization, gridlock, and the Senate filibuster.

PREREQUISITE: At least 1 course in Philosophy. Particularly in an election year, we should think carefully about the meaning and justification of the American Republic. In this course, we will study the founding of the United States by examining the political theory which sparked the revolution itself and which lay behind the writing of the Constitution. We will look at some of the key works that were read by the Founders, particularly the works of John Locke, the Baron de Montesquieu, and David Hume. But we will also look at important works that from the period surrounding the revolution and the writing of the Constitution, like those by Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, and we also look at writers that were sometimes ignored at the time, like those from Black authors and women. The eighteenth century was a time of remarkable intellectual activity in the West, and the Americans played a central role in it, both reflecting the thought in Europe and influencing the course of thoughts and events there. Although it was over 200 years ago, the eighteenth century was a modern period: their concerns are largely our concerns. But since they come from a different background, they approach these concerns in a different and (I hope) illuminating way. So we want to examine these ideas in their context, but we also want to see what these thinkers can tell us about the role and nature of government and of society.

Rochester sits in one of the worlds most explicitly carceral landscapes, with more than a dozen state prisons within a 90 min drive. This co-taught course is a collaborative ethnographic research project designed to examine how the presence of prisons in towns around Rochester reflects and shapes the political, economic, and cultural lives of those who live in the region. Students will be introduced to methods and practices of ethnography and conduct firsthand research on the cultural politics of prison towns. Through assigned reading, students will learn about the history, sociology, and cultural logics of Rochester and the wider region, and of mass incarceration. What does a prison mean for a person living near one? How does the presence of prisons shape peoples notions of justice, citizenship, and punishment? How do these nearby but largely invisible institutions shape the ways that we live in Rochester? Recommended prior courses: Being Human: Cultural Anthropology or Incarceration Nation.

Is consensus overrated? In this seminar course we will study the role of disagreement in a democratic society. Topics will include the causes and consequences of political polarization, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity on college campuses, and practical tools for managing disagreements.

The course examines how reforms to food policy in the United States make their way through the democratic process and how these reforms constitute efforts to democratize our food system, exploring how these efforts confront the same challenges that a democracy faces more broadly. How does our political system approach the task of reconciling the diverse preferences of the American public and the corporations that feed it, agricultural and health agencies, and the food activists and advocacy groups? How do we think about the concepts of representativeness, access, information, centralization, externalities, and regulation in the context of our food system?

In recent years, there has been much discussion of the possibility of a green economy. This course examines the potential for "green markets," focusing on three drivers-social, political, and economic-that can both constrain firms and potentially condition whether issues of environment and sustainability can be exploited as a means for competitive advantage. Among issues covered will be demand and willingness to pay for green goods, the roles of NGOs and investors, regulation and its alternatives, firm reputation and product differentiation, supply chain management, and green production processes. Special attention will be given to the need of firms to deal with climate change now and in the future.

An examination of discrimination from a social scientific perspective. Topics covered include defining discrimination, types of discrimination under the law, testing for discrimination, discrimination experiments, and a survey of what social scientists have discovered about discrimination in the areas of policing, bail, retail sales, automobile sales, and home mortgages. Although there is considerable time devoted to lecture, students are encouraged to participate.

What should governments do? What can governments do? What do policymakers want to do? This course examines these questions from the perspective of modern political economy. The perspective is twofold: it comprises both a set of tools (mathematical modeling and rigorous empirical analysis) and a fundamental premise that public policy is the outcome of rational, strategic choices by self-interested policymakers who face institutional constraints that shape their incentives and limit their scope of action. The course begins by discussing normative considerations about what might constitute "good" public policy. It then explores areas where public policy has the potential to improve social welfare in a modern economy. Finally, it analyzes how the political process influences policymakers' actual choices. Special attention is given to key differences between developed and developing countries.

In recent decades a number of important intellectual intersections have emerged between political science and economics. The course will explore these intersections as they appear in the work of several scholars who have won the Nobel Prize in economics. Our aim is to explore the analytical, explanatory and normative implications of this work in hopes of discerning lessons for thinking about enduring political issues and institutions. Some prior course work in economics or political science will be helpful but is not required.

Game theory is a systematic study of strategic situations. It is a theory that helps us analyze economic and political strategic issues, such as behavior of individuals in a group, competition among firms in a market, platform choices of political candidates, and so on. We will develop the basic concepts and results of game theory, including simultaneous and sequential move games, repeated games and games with incomplete information. The objective of the course is to enable the student to analyze strategic situations on his/her own. The emphasis of the course is on theoretical aspects of strategic behavior, so familiarity with mathematical formalism is desirable.

Students in the Local Law and Politics Internships work 10-15 hours per week in one of a variety of internships in policy, politics and law in the Rochester area. Possible internship placements include the district offices of state and federal legislators, the City of Rochester municipal government, policy research and advocacy organizations, and the Monroe County District Attorney's and Public Defender's offices. Students supplement their hands-on learning with a series of short research-based writing assignments related to their internships. Contact professor Stu Jordan to learn how to apply. Students must have a B average and must be a sophomore, junior or senior to be eligible.

These internships provide an opportunity to learn experientially one or more of the following: how government functions; how public policies are created, adopted and implemented; and how political campaigns work. Students intern in Congress, the executive branch, party campaign committees, and lobbying and advocacy groups. Please contact Professor Stu Jordan for more information.