University Bulletin
Undergraduate Degree Programs
PL SC 554
The Politics of Development (3) The course explores the origins of modernity, its proliferation globally, and problems associated with initiating and sustaining development.
PL SC 554 The Politics of Development (3)
This graduate seminar is intended to provide a long-term and in-depth guide to questions of development in a global perspective. It begins with a consideration of the rise of modernity in political, economic, and social terms in the West. It then looks at how modernity proliferated globally through interstate conflict, reform and revolution across the great powers and then via colonization to other non-western areas of the globe. It then turns to several central topics in research about development in the social sciences. It begins with large statistical models about the sources of growth from economics. The next topic is how the political system affects economies by considering the impact of regime and state policies. A series of the topics are geared toward understanding non-mainstream conceptions of development including alternative ways of thinking about development (human capital, capabilities, freedom), does economic dependence matter, the role of gender in development, and post-modernity. The course concludes with a discussion of the current period of neoliberal globalization, exploring how it creates a more integrated world economy, but with consideration of certain negative externalities (inequality, vulnerability to external shocks, social disintegration, and institutional ). The course has been designed to expand the substantive, thematic offerings available to students studying comparative politics. This is a graduate course intended for majors and minors in the field of comparative politics. It is intended to develop competence in the literature to help students develop their own research questions and competence in the area, and to allow students whose primary research focus is elsewhere to integrate a developmental perspective into their other work. Student evaluation will be on a research paper.
Note : Class size, frequency of offering, and evaluation methods will vary by location and instructor. For these details check the specific course syllabus.