Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Seminar: 2 sessions / week, 1 hour / session

Recitation: 1 session / week, 1 hour / session

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

Why You Should Take This Class

This class will teach you about politics around the world, focusing on subjects like democracy, the political roots of economic development, and how America's political system compares to that of other countries. If you are interested in political science as a major, minor, or concentration, this class will prepare you for more advanced subjects. If you just want to understand what is going on in the world, this class will provide you with useful theoretical frameworks and factual background on some of the most important countries.

What This Class is About

This class first offers some basic analytical frameworks—culture, social structure, and institutions—that you can use to examine a wide range of political outcomes. We will use theoretical arguments and empirical evidence from several case studies to address a number of broad questions in political science: Why are some countries democratic and others not? What are the roots of economic development and political conflict? Frequent reference points include contemporary Germany, Iraq, Mexico, and the United States, with some material on other regions (e.g., the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and East Asia) and time periods (e.g., classical Greece). The lessons drawn from the material covered in class will prepare you to analyze other countries. At the end of the course, you should be able to understand and discuss a range of political events around the world, drawing on the theoretical explanations provided in the class.

Readings

Readings total 80–120 pages per week and should take you about four hours to digest, depending on how quickly you read.

For several sessions, you will have to identify readings yourselves. Aim for a total of 80–120 pages per person per week. Because for some of these weeks, different team members will read different things (i.e., there will be only limited overlap), and teams may have as many as five members, a team might be reading up to 600 pages per week. Choose your readings carefully.

For further detail, see the Readings section.

Class Participation

This subject is designed so that there is extensive class discussion. The first third of the semester includes more in the way of presentations by the instructor to make sure everyone is on the same page; the other weeks involve breakout groups and student presentations. However, even the "lectures" will involve exchange and debate. You are expected to participate actively and intelligently in class discussions throughout the semester. As a rule of thumb, you should plan to spend about an hour going over your notes from the readings and preparing for class each week after you have completed the readings.

Class Debates, Breakout Groups, Presentations

There will be one in-class debate, in which all students are expected to participate. You will receive two grades for the debate—one based on your individual performance and one based on your team's performance. You will also be expected to present to the class, to comment on the presentations of others, to discuss articles on current events, to participate in breakout sessions, and to contribute to class discussions as appropriate. For some people, that may mean pushing yourself to talk more than feels instinctively comfortable; for others it may mean holding yourself back. If participation becomes unbalanced, we will feel free to "cold call" people.

In your formal presentations be sure to practice and to time yourself. We encourage you to use visual aids (PowerPoint, notes you have written on the blackboard ahead of time, handouts, etc.). With a strict time limit, some people fail to move quickly into the empirical meat of their topics; you should make sure to frame your question clearly in the beginning and then move on swiftly.

Papers

Due dates and assignments are listed in the Calendar section.

We would like to practice blind grading, so please do not include a title page or put your name in the footer; instead, put your name on a separate page after the paper. We ask that all papers be double-spaced and submitted in Times New Roman 12-point font. (Otherwise we learn people's fonts after the first paper, which defeats the purpose of blind grading.)

I will read a sample of the papers and the TA will read and grade all of them. If you do not like the grade the TA gave you, you may appeal to me. You will then receive the grade I give, whether higher or lower. Of course, you may also ask for me to read and comment on any paper you submit without appealing your grade if you simply want my feedback.

Extensive resources are available to you if you want help with writing, such as the MIT Writing and Communication Center, the TA, the course website, and the instructor. Some hints for writing papers are attached; we urge you to internalize them.

For further detail, please see the Assignments section.

Final Exam

There will be an open book final exam that will address some aspect of political and economic development in Iraq, based on issues we have covered during the semester. For instance, you may be asked to assess the desirability of certain institutional arrangements in Iraq (e.g., federalism). Alternatively, you may be asked to address the extent to which constitutional engineering can enhance Iraq's prospects for establishing and consolidating a democratic regime. The topic will be discussed in greater detail during the last week of classes.

For further detail, please see the Exams section.

Grading Policy

Plagiarism Clause

When writing a paper (or essay exam), you must identify the nature and extent of your intellectual indebtedness to the authors whom you have read or to anyone else from whom you have gotten ideas (e.g., classmates, invited lecturers, etc.). You can do so through footnotes, a bibliography, or some other kind of scholarly device. Failure to disclose your reliance on the research or thinking of others is Plagiarism, which is considered to be the most serious academic offense and will be treated as such. If you have any questions about how you should document the sources of your ideas, please ask your instructors before you submit your work. You should also consult Academic Integrity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: A Handbook for Students (PDF) for guidance.