The course has two goals. The first is to generate greater understanding of the historical background and current implications of these central concepts. The second is to teach a rigorous way of asking questions and thinking about abstract concepts that one can use in other areas of one's life and work. This course deals with the institutions and processes of American politics, including the roles of public opinion, interest groups, political parties, Congress, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the judicial branch. Particular attention will be paid to elections and to questions about democratic control of government by the public as opposed to the influence of organized interests.
Law lies at the heart of Western conceptions of the state and public order.
It is often conceived as an autonomous force, but since the rise of the nation state, it has always been the product of political forces and the tool of political factions. This course examines law as both a social and political phenomenon but one with a very special history and culture. It ask how regimes use law as instrument of social control, how they attempt to maintain its legitimacy, and how the legal culture frames individual disputes and political conflicts within various societies. It examines the institutions and processes such as courts and litigation, and it also asks students to analyze the ways in which social structure and custom sometimes keep disputing out of law's formal reach and at other times draw them into its embrace. Lectures with discussion sections.