Lawrence Dodd and Bruce Oppenheimer, Congress Reconsidered, 7th ed ., 2001. Kenneth R. Mayer and David T. Cannon, The Dysfunctional Congress 1999. All texts are available in the bookstore. Assignments Grades will be based on class participation, a take-home final, and a short paper. The final due on July 5.
Summer terms go by quickly, it is important to keep up with the readings.
Undergraduates will have your choice of either of two paper assignments. You may write a paper about a U.S. Senate election in 2000, or about a bill considered by Congress, and passed by at least one chamber in a recent session. Graduate students are expected to write either a literature review or a research paper, 12-15 pages long. All papers are due on July 3. Students are also expected to do readings on time and be prepared to discuss them in class, and to keep up with contemporary politics by reading the Washington Post or some other national newspaper.