2026 Courses
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All politics are global politics. Global flows of trade, capital and labor transform societies, unleash new political movements and challenge existing political institutions. States and other actors respond in ways that impose costs on other states, creating crises and opportunities for cooperation. This course will broadly survey the politics of international economics, focusing in particular on trade and finance. Along the way, it will introduce students to a range of economic models, but it will assume no prior exposure to economics.
This course will introduce students to the foundations of the United States government. Students will examine important political institutions and the interactions among them to understand how they shape the behavior of political actors and ordinary U.S. citizens. Specific topics will include: the need for a state, the purposes of elections, federalism, the three branches of U.S. government, and the role of interest groups in U.S. politics. Throughout, the course employs concepts from the rational-choice approach to political science to model key concepts; however, no background in this is necessary. This course is appropriate for majors and non-majors with an interest in understanding how and why the U.S. political system works as it does.
This course introduces students to positive political theory, a rigorous set of tools that helps clarify key questions in political science. Through examples drawn from all aspects of politics (from elections to protest movements to wars) as well as from everyday life (Why is housing so expensive? Why don't cities prepare for natural disasters?), we will study how the rules of the game affect the decisions citizens and politicians make as well as the policy outcomes we observe. NOTE: YOU MUST SIGN UP FOR A RECITATION WHEN REGISTERING FOR THIS COURSE.
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.
With world population of nearly 8 billion and global GDP of $85 trillion, human impacts on the environment have already reached dangerous levels. By 2050, world population could reach 9 billion and global GDP $200 trillion. Despite unprecedented growth in countries such as China and India, over 700 million people still live in extreme poverty-concentrated especially in South and Central Asia and Africa. The central challenge for humanity in the 21st century is the triple endeavor of ending extreme poverty, improving social inclusion, and achieving sustainability for the planet. Any effort to address these three complex, interlinked challenges must be interdisciplinary. Policies at the local, national and global level will need to draw on the best of our knowledge and innovation across sectors such as energy, biodiversity and conservation, health, sustainable business practices, food and nutritional security, social service delivery, and good governance. Interventions and policies in these sectors must be gender sensitive, address racial inequalities and discrimination, and be in keeping with international standards of human rights. They must involve governments, the private sector, and civil society. In September 2015, the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2015 to 2030 at the UN General Assembly while the historic Paris Climate accord was also reached under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change.
This course builds on PSCI 200, Data Analysis I, taking the linear regression model as its starting point. We will explore various statistical techniques for analyzing a world of data that is relevant to political science in particular, and to the social sciences more broadly. In addition to the classical linear regression model, we will examine models for binary data, durations, counts, censoring and truncation, self-selection, and discrete choice, among others. These models will be applied to topics such as international conflict, civil war onset, parliamentary cabinet survival, international sanctions, campaign contributions, and voting. Students will be taught how to (1) frame research hypotheses, (2) analyze data using the appropriate statistical model, and (3) interpret and present their results. Statistical analysis will be conducted using R and RStudio.
Prerequisite: Students must have taken at least one course in statistics that (1) covers probability, confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, and linear regression; and (2) uses R for data analysis -- e.g., ECON 230, PSCI 200, or STAT 212/213/214. Prior courses in calculus or linear algebra are not required.
Note: Students will need to bring a laptop computer to class with R and RStudio installed. Most tablets will not suffice.
Voters elect nearly all local prosecutors, sheriffs, and trial judges in the United States. In this seminar, we will explore the influence of political institutions on the decisions of those law enforcement officials. Topics include constitutional design, public opinion, racial disparities, electoral accountability, special interest politics, and the collateral consequences of incarceration. While rooted in recent phenomena, this course will also focus on historical perspectives. Likewise, while substantively focused, the class will also provide insights into social science research.
How does a country with five percent of the world's population, a country that nominally values freedom above all else, come to have nearly a quarter of the world's incarcerated people? In this survey course we investigate the history of imprisonment in the United States— from the founding of the republic to the present day. Special attention is paid to the politics, economics, race politics, and religious logics of contemporary mass incarceration, and to the efforts afoot to end mass incarceration.
Reformers and activists sometimes say that we should "think globally, act locally," meaning that we should try to address widespread needs by taking action in our neighborhoods, towns and cities. What happens when you apply this maxim to government and public policy in the United States? This course will introduce you to local government policymaking in the United States, with a focus on urban areas. You'll gain a familiarity with the powers local governments have over key policies and services—such as policing and criminal justice, housing and land-use regulation, transportation, public education and public health—and learn to think systematically about what local governments can do to address public needs. What you learn will be applicable throughout the U.S., but we'll focus on examples of policymaking currently underway in the City of Rochester and the surrounding region—offering you a chance to learn more about the University's local community.
The course introduces the legal and social justice frameworks for urgent public health issues, such as vaccinations, tobacco regulation and gun control. Pre-requisites: PHLT 116 or PHLT 236; juniors & seniors only. Restrictions: Instructor Permission.
Students will learn how government funds, organizes and delivers health care, broadly defined, to mothers, children, and adolescents; as well as legal and policy writing skills relevant to advocacy, such as issue fact sheets, legislative testimony, and letters to the editor. Pre-requisites: PHLT 116, PHLT 236, or PHLT 230 required; juniors & seniors only. Restrictions: Instructor Permission.
Consider this real-world scenario: You are the CEO of a major corporation, and a new US president takes office who has pledged to implement government rules that would hurt your industry. How do you respond? You may think this scenario refers to President Donald Trump, but he was hardly the first president to attack corporations (although his tactics were certainly unorthodox). In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to enact a windfall profits tax on oil companies if elected, and in 2021, President Joe Biden laid out an agenda to take on "Big Tech." The lesson? Regardless of who is control of government, managers must incorporate factors outside of markets - including government, public opinion, activists, and the mass media - into decision making and strategy building. In this course we will use the tools of political science and economics to study how businesses affect and are affected by politics. In addition to studying how laws and regulations get made in the United States, we will devote several classes to corporate social responsibility, brand activism, and employee activism. Class sessions will be interactive and feature in-depth discussions of real-world topics and cases in industries including finance and e-commerce.
Through analysis of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we examine criminal procedure as elaborated by federal and state court decisions. Topics include arrest procedures, search and seizure, right to counsel, and police interrogation and confessions. We will discuss the theoretical principles of criminal procedure and the application of those principles to the actual operation of the criminal court system.
An examination of environmental issues from a social scientific perspective. Topics covered include the reasons for environmental regulation, the history of environmental policy, the state of contemporary environmental policy, the role of state and local governments, the impact of environmental activists, and a comparison of domestic and international regulation of environmental affairs. Although there is considerable time devoted to lecture, students are encouraged to participate. Each student will also develop and briefly present a research paper which investigates a relevant issue of interest.
This course provides a foundational understanding of U.S. environmental law, with a focus on existing federal environmental statutes and regulatory programs. Topics include the common law origins of environmental law, the historical genesis of federal regulation over human impact on the environment, the enduring role of the States in environmental regulation, along with an overview of critical federal environmental laws (such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and CERCLA/Superfund). Students will be introduced to how agencies implement and enforce these laws and how judicial decisions shape them. The course also touches on how and whether these decades-old laws are suited to address 21st-century challenges like climate change and environmental injustice.
Recent years have seen a renewed sense of nationalism, only this time tinged with an underlying and powerful religious dimension. This class seeks to illumine this religious nationalism from a comparative perspective. Using an analytical frame, we will examine the historical rise of religious nationalism, its key elements and defining features, before examining a set of particular case studies (e.g., India, Pakistan, Israel, the United States).
Fascism is a common term of political opprobrium, but few know what it actually means. This course examines the ideologies and practices of fascist movements to understand both the past and the present. Students learn about the economic, political, and cultural circumstances from which fascism emerged, and we consider the fascist obsession with national, sexual, and racial identity. Class time is divided between lecture and discussion; students are encouraged to participate.
This course is designed to give students a background in the causes and consequences of the changes in political, economic and social changes that have so profoundly altered the world over the past five centuries, and a basic knowledge of both classic and contemporary scholarly accounts of these changes. After describing political and economic conditions in the pre-modern world, it describes how a distinctively ''modern'' political economy emerged in Western Europe, how this political economy became pervasive over the rest of the world, and the long term and continuing consequences of these changes. The reading mixes classic historical and social scientific accounts. While there are no prerequisites, students should note that the course will involve an unusually high, and enforced, level of required reading.
Is American democracy under threat? What about democracy in the West, or the world more generally? How can we detect if democracies are eroding? Democratic Erosion is a new upper-level undergraduate seminar, based on a cross-university collaboration, which is aimed at evaluating threats to democracy both in the United States and abroad through the lens of theory, history and social science. Importantly, the class is not intended as a partisan critique, but rather teaches students how to answer questions about democratic erosion using both analytical and empirical tools.
Examines the implications of economic globalization for domestic and international politics.
A high level of migration within and between countries is the most controversial feature of our globalized and technologically integrated world. This class will review the economic and non-economic causes of trends in migration and discuss the political conflict that migration can spark. The course will deal with both international and internal migration. The primary focus will be on comparing nativist politics in the US and Europe to political conflict over migration in poorer countries. There will be two in-class midterms and a comprehensive final exam.
The bargaining model of war is the main theoretical tool in the study of international conflict these days. But the model brackets, i.e., ignores, the question of what gets put on the bargaining table in the first place, and what leaders and states choose not to contest. In this course, we examine the issues states fight over from both a historical as well as contemporary perspective. The course will involve some basic new analytical tools such as GIS (Geographical Information Systems) and some very basic data analysis.
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.
This course analyzes major social and political problems from the multi-disciplinary perspectives of politics, philosophy, and economics. Topics covered may include: Income inequality and wage gaps, environmental policy and climate change, race and incarceration, democratic structures and norms, and immigration.
This course examines the formation and evolution of American health policy from a political and historical perspective. Concentrating on developments from the early twentieth century to the present, the focus of readings and discussions will be political forces and institutions and historical and cultural contexts. Among the topics covered are periodic campaigns for national health insurance, efforts to rationalize and regionalize health care institutions, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and the further evolution of these programs, the rise to dominance of economists and economic analysis in the shaping of health policy, racial and gender disparities in access to care and in quality of care, the formation and failure of the Clinton administration's health reform agenda, health reform in the George W. Bush administration and the 2008 presidential campaign, and national health reform and pushback during the Obama administration. Instructor permission required for 2nd year students. Sophomores should request a Pre-requisite override to gain entry to the course. Restriction: Not open to First Year and Sophomore - AS&E.
A year-long research project supervised by a faculty member in the department and culminating in a written work.
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.
Please contact Professor Stu Jordan for more information.
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.
The goal of this course is to give students a comprehensive toolbox for reading and producing cutting-edge applied empirical research, with focus on the theory and practice behind causal inference in social sciences. We will cover treatment effects, experiments, panel data, differences-in-differences, instrumental variables, nonparametric regression, regression discontinuity, matching, synthetic control, and more. Students will read applied papers from both political science and economics, and write review reports examining research designs, identification strategies, and causal claims. They will also produce research proposals that will be presented in class. Applications will be taught with R.
Prerequisites: Undergraduates must obtain the instructor's (or a Political Science advisor's) permission to take this course. Students must have taken a sequence in calculus and have attended the Political Science two-week Math Bootcamp. The Math Bootcamp may be waived in rare cases where a student has already taken courses in multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and probability.
This course is part of a rigorous introduction to the main concepts and results in positive political theory. It is the second half of a two-course sequence consisting of PSC 407 and PSC 408. This course will focus on the basics of game theory, which analyzes individual behavior in strategic situations. It will also cover the mathematical tools required to express the theory. Examples and applications will be drawn from several different areas in political science, including the American Congress, voting, international relations, political economy, and law.
Prerequisites: Undergraduates must obtain the instructor's (or a Political Science advisor's) permission to take this course. Students must have taken a sequence in calculus and have attended the Political Science two-week Math Bootcamp. The Math Bootcamp may be waived in rare cases where a student has already taken courses in multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and probability.
This course principally introduces students to the political science and political economy literatures on interest groups, with a special focus on how these groups operate in the context of American politics (however, contrast with other advanced and the European Union are included). This will include developing an understanding of the makeup of the group system, the contribution decision, the internal politics of organizations, and the role that groups play with respect to formal political institutions.
This course will familiarize students with the "workhorse" models of domestic political institutions. Students will further develop their ability to consume and create models in contexts ranging from elections to interest groups to interbranch relationships. Throughout, we will explore and emphasize principles of applied modeling. Accordingly, students will complete problem sets and present published papers, as well as take an exam that prompts them to come up with a model of a given political phenomenon. The class is intended for graduate students in the social sciences who are familiar with game theory, though advanced undergraduates may take the course with instructor permission.
This research seminar surveys the literature on race and ethnic politics in the United States. We will focus on the causes and consequences of electoral rules, the political representation of minority groups, and the mechanisms through which government policy coordinates social inequities. This course will incorporate diverse analytical perspectives while highlighting recent theoretical and empirical innovations in political science.
Civil order under girds all other political processes. When order exists, institutions that regulate violence within a specific population or jurisdiction. This course covers where order comes from, how it is sustained or challenged, and the emergence of states as the most common order-providing institutions. We also discuss how the boundaries between civil orders are created and eroded. We examine the roles of geography, political economy, ethnic identity, and nationalism in the boundaries between political communities.
This is an advanced course intended to prepare Ph.D. students for comprehensive exams in international relations. The course conducts a broad survey of major works in the field and current research into the causes of international conflict and cooperation.
Designed as a forum for upper-level doctoral students who have completed formal coursework to present ongoing research. Students regularly present research either stemming from their dissertations or from ancillary projects.
This course examines the literature on conflict that has developed in the last decade. We will examine recent formal literature as well as the latest substantive (non-formal) literature on conflict. The course will help graduate students identify the broad direction of international conflict studies and will also permit graduate students to pursue topics or ideas of their own interest. To that end, we set aside two classes for "model building sessions" where students can explore approaches to formalize some of the ideas in the substantive literature, or explore extensions of the current formal literature. Students should have taken or be concurrently taking PSC 584 or have an equivalent knowledge of complete and incomplete information game theory.