|
Office Hrs: Tues 1:45-3; Th 11-12:15; dinner after class if requested, and by appt |
| Class: Th 3:30-6:15pm; Tydings 1111 |
| Course Description: |
| During the last 45 years important theoretical arguments have been made and tested increasing our understanding of puzzles central to the study of politics. These new theories stem from the extension of traditional behavioral tools of micro-economics (i.e. rationality theory) to non market contexts.1 This sort of study of politics has developed from a political science oddity 25 years ago to a mainstream activity: Almost 25% of the space in leading political science journals is devoted to the presentation and testing of these arguments. |
| The department regularly offers a two semester sequence on the subject. The order that they are taken is up to the student. [The other course focuses on theoretical game theory: one of the foundational pillars of formal theoretical analysis in political science.] 831 focuses on the applications which stem from various arguments developed in the formal theory field. Some students will learn most effectively by tackling applications first and then the more abstract theoretical principles. Others may find they first prefer to master the theory and then begin applying them more concretely. Thus we leave it to the student to decide the order in which to take these two courses. Most students, however, begin with 831, and then move on to 832. The material in both courses is a prerequisite for other formal theory courses. |
| The theories all relate directly to substantively political matters. Specifically, this semester, we will work on theories dealing with choice, party platforms, voting outcomes, democratic theory and processes, collective action (e.g. strikes, boycotts, revolutions, etc.), and coalitions.2 This course, 831, is an introduction to this literature, with a strong emphasis on its applications. It should enable students, at minimum, to comfortably read and perhaps incorporate in their research agendas, the material in the area. Specifically, after going over some fundamentals students consider the major applications of formal theory to political phenomena: with special emphasis on 5 of 63 broad categories of extant modeling: |
|
Collective Action & Public Goods (including, for example, Olson, repeated n–person prisoner’s dilemmas, social dilemmas, alternative models, etc.) |
|
Policy Design and Political Economy (including Coase’s discussions of quasi markets, incentive compatible design, etc., and criticisms) |
|
Voting and electoral Models (including, for example, spatial models, structure-induced equilibria, Pivotal Politics as well as classics such as Downs, Enelow and Hinich, etc.) |
|
Social Choice and social welfare (including, for example, sincere vs. strategic voting, Arrow, Condorcet, McKelvey etc.) |
|
Public Choice (including, for example, Niskanen, Calculus of Consent, constitutional political economy, institutions as equilibria, culture as equilibria, delegation, etc.) |
| Through this, we aim to give graduate students a broad sweep of the substance, applicability, and at least some of the technical, methodological foundations of this material.4 |
| In order to facilitate the students’ use of the material in their research, homework assignments will require the modeling and solving of political problems of interest to the students. |
| The course is introductory: there is no assumed corpus of knowledge, beyond a requisite tolerance of mathematics.5 Although introductory, the course is more than a “survey.” We will give rigorous treatment of the most important topics during the semester.6 The emphasis thus goes beyond a literature survey to an examination of the assumptions and the conclusions and will extend to the technicalities of the derivations. |