Politics - Spring 1999

Instructor: George Von der Muhll
Phone: 427-0346
E-mail: mozart@ucsc.edu

This course is designed as a Core Seminar in Politics to meet one of the Politics Department's requirements for its Majors. Although it has no prerequisites, it is particularly intended for second and early third years students as a first Upper Division course in Politics. Like other Core Seminars in Politics, this one will be limited to 20 students to facilitate active participation in class discussions and to permit the instructor to give close attention to each student's individual essays. Top priority for entry will be given to Politics Majors, and within that group to those whose level of advanced standing makes completion of this course most urgent. Other students are welcome within those constraints.

Several variants of Politics 100--all suitable for meeting the Politics Major requirement--are offered by other instructors throughout the year. All are defined by the Politics faculty's common objectives of encouraging sustained classroom discussion of a limited number of core texts in Politics and of developing students' facility in composing clearly argued, clearly expressed essays in a timely manner concerning basic political issues. Given those general objectives, the individual courses differ greatly through the instructor's choice of substantive themes and texts. Because, five years ago, I arranged to take early retirement after this Spring Quarter (and a subsequent Summer School course, Politics 50) in order to provide myself with a cleared field for scholarship and other activities in the new millennium, I should note that the particular approach embedded in this section of Politics 100 will probably not be repeated by other faculty of the Politics Department after I leave. For the same reason, students who in the past have had difficulty in completing the assigned work for a class in the Quarter in which it is offered would be unwise to enroll in this course.

As I last taught Politics 100 three years ago and have been off campus on a Fulbright Lectureship at Charles University in Prague for much of the interval since then, it may be helpful to those considering taking this course if I outline its distinctive focus in some detail. Perhaps more directly and generically than in certain other sections of Politics 100, I intend to explore with the class such questions as why all complex societies have governments. What distinctive human needs and what distinctive risks have arisen from the exercise of state power, and who benefits in what characteristic ways from its exercise? What can we say in general terms about how states compare with such other social institutions as markets in meeting similar demands? What principled conclusions can we draw from these comparisons in defining the proper scope for state action (for what states should and should not do)? Since the character of states is critically defined through who is bound by the laws and policies of a state and who gets to participate in making these collectively binding decisions, what can we learn about states by examining their terms of membership, exit, and exclusion?

These fundamental questions were first clearly asked by the philosophers of ancient Greece some 2,500 years ago, and they have received radically varying answers ever since. After looking at the formulations provided by two sharply contrasting schools of thought most notably embodied in the political treatises of Aristotle and the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, I would like to trace the logical implications of the latter perspective (known today as liberal individualism or--for certain purposes--as "methodological individualism"). We will start with the most famous general defense of individual liberty ever written, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, then turn to Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, an explicit and influential but contentious application of Mill's principles to a number of issues concerning the proper scope for state action in the contemporary economy. We shall then see how, using the same paradigmatic "rational choice" reasoning as Friedman, fellow economist Mancur Olson and biologist Garret Hardin demonstrate certain internal paradoxes in the radical case for free-market liberalism, thereby identifying certain functions that states can perform better than free markets or that only states can perform. At this point, our familiarity with the precepts of methodological individualism will enable us to pursue the argument in two urgently contemporary directions. On the one hand, we shall look at how David Osborne, in Reinventing Government (a treatise that has profoundly affected the thinking of presidential hopeful Al Gore), seeks to answer the question of how to harness the admitted benefits of market pressures in improving governmental performance of those functions that are best performed by states. On the other, we shall examine contemporary reformulations by economist Albert Hirschman and philosopher Michael Walzer of Aristotle's reflections on the implications of the terms of membership in the political community.

A Core Seminar in Politics is expected to give particular emphasis to cultivating skills in discussion and writing. To encourage both, I have chosen to track a single coherent and controversial tradition of analysis and argumentation from its basic premises to a variety of systematic policy applications in the contemporary world. In so doing, I shall seek to demonstrate how explicitly structured reasoning leads to logically integrated conclusions while provoking orderly discussion about the most enduring questions of political choice and institutions. By showing how a single perspective can unfold in numerous unexpected and compelling directions, moreover, I hope to give everybody in the class a better sense of how to overcome the challenges everyone must face in attempting to write clear, effective, anticipatorily critical, elegantly balanced essays about politics.

Among other matters, I will suggest answers to such common questions as where to start in writing an essay, how to move forward from the opening paragraphs, how to use other authors while developing one's own thoughts, how to foresee the objections one is likely to provoke, how to reach conclusions to which readers will assent, and how to engage in one's own critical review of what one has written. We shall spend time in class discussing the rationale underlying various principles of focused, grammatical, properly punctuated writing; and I shall do my best to communicate these same principles contextually through my detailed comments on your essays. Since process is as important as product in a small seminar of this nature with these objectives, I shall also need to enforce standards of timeliness that might seem arbitrary in a long, substantively focused research project. For all these reasons, prompt submission of first--and second--drafts of three relatively short (5-7 page) essays will serve as the complementary written requirement to regular attendance and well-prepared participation in class discussions in this course.

Instructor: Michael Urban
Office hours: T, Th 4:00-5:30,
Office: 232 Stevenson
Phone: 459-3153
E-Mail: urban47@ucsc.edu

Scope, Content, and Objectives

This seminar concerns the most extraordinary ohenomena in modern politics: revolution. Although distinguished fundamentally from normal politics, revolutions have become a feature of the modern political world-- a fact reflected in our survey which spans five centuries and includes many scores of cases drawn from every quarter of the globe. The combination of these features -- extraordinary yet ubiquitous -- makes our topic an especially challenging one, putting to the test one or another set of explanations derived form certain revolutions by applying them to others; indeed, calling into question the very idea of revolution itself as a name for some identifiable political phenomena.

Our approach to this topic is correspondingly multi-form. That is, we seek to understand revolution via a number of different approaches to the subject -- poltiical philosophy, comparative historical-sociological studies, works featuring cultural-symbolic and interactionist approaches-- represented by our texts:

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1990).

Charle Tilly, European Revolutions, 1492-1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).

Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of CAlifornia Press, 1984.)

Michael Urban, The Rebirth of Politics in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

The interplay of both multiple cases and a variety of approaches, while not amenable to drawing air-tight definitions, should lead to a broad appreciation of just how much revolution entails.Equally, that knowledge sheds new light on revolution's counterpart, state building, and on normal politics itself. The following topical questions serve to foucs our discussions.

• What is a revolution? How might it be distinguished from other forms of poltiical activity such a mass protest, rebellion, or coup 'd etat? Does the category "revolution" entail specifiable regularities?
• What is a revolutionary situation? What brings it about?
• What is a revolutionary outcome?
• What is the role of revolutionaries in precipitating revolution and in consolidating a new political order?
• What is the role of ideas and symbols in the revolutionary process?
• Are certain collectivities and/or social forces critical to the making of revolutionary outcomes?
• Is there a relationship between war and revolution?
• What does the specific experience of a revolution contribute to the political order that succeeds it?
• What is the role of violence in revolution?

Course Requirements: Each student is required to play an active part in this seminar. This includes: (1) participation in general seminar discussions; (2) leadership of a seminar discussion; (3) presentation of a research paper to the seminar; and (4) serving as an "official opponent" whose task it is to discuss the research paper presetned by antoehr student. The research paper itself consists of a relatively in-depth examination (15-20 pages) of one or more revolutions selected by the student in consultaiton with the instructor that applies appropriate conceots taken from course readings. Copies must be delivered to both the instructor and the official opponent at least one week prior to the date of presentation. This version of the paper is then redrafted on the basis of comments and suggestions made at its presentation and submitted by the Monday following the last day of winter classes.

President Clinton just called for a major increase in military spending and wants to build a national missile defense system. Despite the end of the cold war, the national security apparatus is, in many ways, still on a cold war footing. This has enormous consequences for all aspects of U.S. politics.

What was the Cold War and why did it have, and why does it continue to have, such a significant effect on American politics? This course examines the evolution of the policies and politics of cold war and post-cold war American national security. While considerable attention is given to the content of military policies, both conventional and nuclear, the analytic focus is on the formation of policy and the relationship between the military policy and American politics and society. Students have the option of doing two papers on assigned topics or one longer research paper.

Excellent course for other majors as well, including American Studies, History, and Sociology. No prerequisites.

Instructor: George Von der Muhll
Phone: 427-0346
E-mail: mozart@ucsc.edu

Politics 140B has been designated as suitable for meeting the Upper Division Core Course distribution requirement for Politics majors. It has no prerequisites. Those who seek to meet the general Social Sciences distribution requirement for the campus or the Politics Department's Lower Division requirement through a course in comparative politics should consider, among others, Politics 50 ("Democratic Politics", a course combining discussion of general issues of democratic theory and moral principles with comparative institutional analysis of parliamentary and presidential democratic regimes in their traditional homelands of America and Western Europe and their breakdown and emergence in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South and East Asia), which I shall offer in the first Summer School session (June 21-July 23) immediately following this class. As I arranged in 1994 to take voluntary early retirement after five years so as to have a cleared field for scholarship and other activities in the new millennium, these two courses in Comparative Politics will not be offered again by the Politics Department under these headings or, if offered, will almost certainly differ greatly in their approach and syllabi from their current versions.
For this reason, and because I have been away from campus for well over a year on a Fulbright Lectureship in Political Science and American Studies at Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic), a sketch of Politics 140B beyond its catalog description may be more than ordinarily useful to those considering taking it. When I offered it once again last spring, I also made some changes in its structure that limit the validity of earlier syllabi as a guide to its approach.

As its title suggests, Politics 140B offers a broad overview of the dynamics of change in political systems extending from Latin America across sub-tropical Africa and the Middle East to the Asian Far East. Nearly 80% of humanity currently lives within this zone. That percentage is certain to increase sharply within a few decades. Most of the battles of the Cold War were fought by proxy in the Third World. Most of the social conflicts and political upheavals in the post-Cold War world have likewised occurred there. By all indications, this pattern will extend well into the next century.

Students of politics have therefore strong reason to familiarize themselves with the politics of the Third World. Yet most American citizens, tourists, media outlets, and politicians show little familiarity with "Third" World societies beyond a few highly selective aspects of their cultures. They likewise show little disposition to move beyond these stereotypes except during brief periods when the American military becomes drawn into Third World conflicts. If anything, survey evidence suggests that much of the Third World is now less well known to the American public than it was some thirty or forty years ago. This indifference persists despite the fact that this region encompasses the sites of nearly all the great civilizations of the past, much of the world's most remarkable architecture, all of its great religions. Its peoples have experimented with the full range of political regimes in this century; and its ecological, economic, and ethnic identity crises promise to set the agenda for much of the next. Amid general levels of squalor and misery most Americans most fortunately cannot imagine, some sectors of the Third World have experienced an almost equally unimaginable surge of sudden wealth; and communal tensions, radical inequalities, and civic violence have not precluded the rise in their midst of some of the most shining political leaders of this century.

The extraordinary variety of topographies, climates, ethnicities, languages, religions, social structures, and political traditions within the Third World makes generalizations concerning its politics inherently suspect. And this problem is compounded by an extreme instability of Third World political regimes such as render cross-sectional descriptions of many of its contemporary governments of little validity beyond the year in which they are offered. The very features that make the Third World of exceptional value as a laboratory for students of comparative politics thus create special challenges in an introductory presentation.

This course will attempt to overcome these problems in four ways. Since it does not presuppose familiarity with or previous courses on the region, I shall make extensive use of my own slides and those of the World History collection to provide a visual context for the readings. I shall also concentrate on certain "core" nations in each region--China and Japan in the Asian Far East; India in South Asia; Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East; Nigeria and Tanzania in Africa; Brazil and Mexico in Latin America--so as to permit an adequately complex tracing of the intertwining ecological constraints, cultural traditions, patterns of economic growth, religious values, leadership strata, and contrasting encounters with the West that together have shaped these countries' differing degrees of political stability and their differing political agendas. Systematic comparison--most often, as the above list may suggest, paired comparisons and eventual triangulations--will be used as controls on explanations that may appear to fit individual cases. They will also be used to generate new or reformulated propositions to try out in the next case. Finally, since this course focuses on societal change, institutional development, and the search for a viable political community in contexts where military coups, regime collapse, and revolutionary reorientations are not exceptional events but the norm, it will freely employ long-term perspectives to identify persisting parameters and profoundly conditioning historical memories amid the often quite evanescent state structures and policies that happen to characterize these countries' governments in any particular year.

The reading for this course has been chosen in light of these ends. Samuel Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies , with its explicit focus on the problems of constructing stable and effective governments in deeply divided societies in which the traditional foundations of social order have begun to shift, has long been recognized as the single most comprehensive, provocative, and analytically ambitious text in the field,. We shall use and criticize it in this course to develop an agenda of questions. Thereafter, we shall be looking at the cases listed above, always with emphasis on the formation and disintegration of political authority and community. However, we shall do so at three levels. In a course in comparative politics, it is appropriate to focus on the problems of constructing and maintaining collectively binding authority at the level of what are still the fundamental building blocks of international order--the nation states. We shall therefore begin with politically sophisticated histories by John K. Fairbank and Kenneth Pyle that emphasize the distinctive challenges of modernization and the contrasting responses thereto by the Chinese and Japanese imperial regimes and their successors. Thereafter, we shall make use of several explicitly comparative country studies in a collective volume edited by Larry Diamond et. al., The Politics of Developing Countries.

Concurrently, however, we shall be traveling with prize-winning reporter Robert D. Kaplan, whose The Ends of the Earth documents a world of the 1990s extending from West Africa through Anatolia, Central Asia, India, and Indo-China in which exploding populations, decaying public facilities, pervasive corruption, pullulating diseases, communal violence, and a collapsing public authority of road blocks and armed gangs suggest the unreality of national boundaries and capital cities in this region as symbols of political community. While Kaplan, from his position at the grass roots, sees anarchy--or at least the parcelized sovereignty of neo-feudalism--as the coming political disorder of the Third World, Samuel Huntington, whose theses in his recent Clash of Civilizations I found discussed in Riyadh, Tokyo, Prague, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires, now argues in that book that in the post-Cold-War era national authorities are becoming consolidated and polarized around the "core" states of eight civilizational blocs. Searching for possible reconciliation of these conflicting theses concerning the critical tiers of public authority in the Third World will provide the final organizing focus of this course.

In addition to attending the three scheduled M-W-F lectures a week, members of Politics 140B will be expected to participate regularly and actively in a weekly discussion section. Written requirements for the class will consist of an introductory exercise and mid-term and final take-home examination essays. Because I am ending my regular (and happy) teaching association with the Politics Department with the Spring Quarter and expect to be frequently out of town for prolonged periods after mid-summer, you would be unwise to take this course if you have a past history of failing to complete the required work for a course within the time frame of the Quarter in which it is offered.

Time: Tuesday-Thursday 12-1:45

Instructor: Ronnie Lipschutz
Phone: 9-3275
E-Mail: rlipsch@ucsc.edu

This course addresses the problem of the making and taking of foreign policy. What is it? Who makes it? What do they do? Why? We shall analyze, discuss, and replicate cases through in-class simulations in an effort to answer these questions. By studying how countries, organizations and people perceive and respond to the kinds of situations inherent in these two cases, we should gain a better understanding of how national security, interests, norms and goals are defined, how policies are formulated, and why things don't always turn out as the planners might have hoped.

Students will organize into policy groups of 6 that will represent national and subnational actors in each of the two cases. Each group will undertake research on the actors in order to play specific roles, in a realistic fashion, in the two in-class simulations. Each group is expected to do all of the assigned reading, whether or not it deals with your actor, and groups will be assigned specific readings to present and discuss in class.

There will be a take-home mid-term exam on the lectures and readings, and a final paper that is a written analysis of the simulations, composed in light of readings and practice. A research draft will be due prior to the beginning of the simulations; this will be discussed in class. Course evaluations/grades will be based on: class participation and presentations (1/3), papers (1/2) and exam (1/6).

Time: Tuesday-Thursday 4-5:45

Instructor: Ronnie Lipschutz
Phone: 9-3275
E-Mail: rlipsch@ucsc.edu

This is an upper division course focused on the global environmental "problematique" and the ways in which it is being played out in a var-iety of political and policy arenas. The course will provide students with insights into:

(1) The political structure and context of transnational environmental issues;

(2) The intergovernmental mechanisms established for addressing problems in the atmospheric "global commons," such as ozone depletion and climate change;

(3) The treatment of environmental problems that occur in many different places but are not necessarily linked, such as biodiversity;

(4) Transnational environmental activity, including that through social movements, non-governmental organizations, and corporate actors around the issue of environmental justice;

(5) Domestic environmental politics in a comparative context in several different countries.

Course requirements include a one take home mid-term and a focused research paper. Students will be organized into groups for the purposes of reading and discussing course mater-ials. Each group will choose a topic within one of the five areas listed above. and each student will contribute to collaborative research within the group presentation. Course evaluations will be based on the mid-term, research paper, in-class participation, and atten-dance. No background in the technical aspects of environmental issues is assumed, but students should be prepared to do "catch-up" reading where necessary.

http://www.learnworld.com/COURSES/P179/

http://www.learnworld.com/COURSES/P190B/ 

Revised 8/3/04.