Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

A discussion of issues in the philosophy of the social sciences which are relevant to the study of politics and a critical evaluation of contemporary approaches to political inquiry, including empirical theory, rational choice theory and hermeneutics. Quantitative.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course is designated as a “Q” course, meaning that it is designed to introduce students to logical and quantitative methods of analysis in political science. Concepts and principles derived from Game Theory and Social Choice will be used for that purpose. Students will learn about, and apply, a variety of “games,” some of which, e.g., the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD), are very well known. Game Theory raises fundamental questions such as: do self-interested individuals end up working against their own interest? Can social cooperation emerge spontaneously, or do we need government to keep us in line? Why are political coalitions unstable? And Social Choice raises questions about the limitations of democratic procedures. Game Theory and Social Choice follow a deductive approach. It will be contrasted with other approaches that define the logic of social inquiry differently, either by using inductive methods of analysis (e.g., survey data analysis), or by moving completely away from “scientific” methods and paying more attention to the ways in which social problems are “constructed” by the actors themselves (i.e., interpretive approaches). In brief, the purpose of this course is to answer the question of how political scientists make sense of politics in general, but the emphasis bears more on formal/deductive methods than on the other two approaches because they are not covered in other methods courses.

 

There will be a two‐hour lecture and a one to two‐hour weekly discussion time.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: