Course Descriptions
POLI 5100 Research Methods and Design
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course provides an overview of some of the most common qualitative research methods and designs among political scientists. Its primary objectives are two-fold: First, it aims to equip graduate students to engage with the broad political science community about methodological debates. Second, it is designed to take students through the process of developing either an MA thesis proposal or a PhD dissertation proposal in a systematic way as well as to enable students to defend their research design and methodological choices vigorously.
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Permission of instructor.
RESTRICTIONS: Must be an MA or PhD student in political science
POLI 5207 Advanced Seminar in Canadian Politics
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This senior seminar will take an in-depth and critical look at the major issues and institutions in Canadian politics and government. Topics include: ‘responsible government'; Parliament (including the House of Commons and the Senate); the nature of the Canadian party system and elections; federalism; the courts; interest groups and social movements; municipal governance; colonialism and the relationship of Indigenous governments and peoples to the Canadian state; Canadian political culture; regionalism; Quebec nationalism; multiculturalism; structural racism; and gender.
FORMAT: Seminar
LECTURE HOURS PER WEEK: 3
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
EXCLUSIONS:
POLI 4204.06,
POLI 4207.03
POLI 5221 Canadian Parties in Comparative Perspective
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This is an advanced undergraduate/graduate course that explores the organization, role, functions, and decline (?) of political parties in modern democracies. Although we will spend considerable time exploring the Canadian case, debates surrounding Canadian parties will be situated in a broader comparative context. In doing so we will consider the extent to which Canadian parties are ‘unique’. Throughout the course we will consider whether and how the institutional features of the Canadian state (e.g., federalism) and the makeup of Canadian society (e.g., regionalism, multinationalism, etc.) effect the organization, character, and functions of our parties. The topics to be covered include party organization, party membership, personnel recruitment, and election campaigning. While in no way a prerequisite, students may find it beneficial to take
POLI 3224 prior to this class as it provides an introduction to Canadian parties.
FORMAT: Seminar
LECTURE HOURS PER WEEK: 3
LAB HOURS PER WEEK: 0
TUTORIAL HOURS PER WEEK: 0
PREREQUISITES: Recommended (but not required):
POLI 3224.03 or equivalent
EXCLUSIONS:
POLI 4221.03
POLI 5232 Urban Governance in Canada
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The objective of this course is to provide students with the empirical, analytical, theoretical, and methodological tools to understand and explain the politics and policy activities of Canada’s urban and suburban municipalities within their socio-economic, institutional, and constitutional contexts. A major concern is to evaluate how effectively and equitably city governments in Canada have responded to contemporary urban challenges. The course adopts a critical perspective on urban governance and engages with contemporary debates concerning municipal governance reform and the evolving nature of urban governance within Canadian federalism.
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the Instructor
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4232.03
POLI 5234 Canadian Urban Politics in Comparative Perspective
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course examines the politics and governance of Canadian cities from a comparative perspective. More specifically, the course uses comparative method in three ways: it asks what one can learn from comparing Canadian cities with each other (subnational comparisons), what cross-national comparisons of Canadian cities can teach as well as compares Canadian cities implicitly with other cities by applying to Canadian cities theories of urban politics and development that have been developed elsewhere. The objective of this course is to provide advanced political science students with the theoretical, empirical and methodological tools to understand and explain the political development of Canadian cities.
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the Instructor
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4234 03
POLI 5240 Introduction to Public Policy
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course covers the process of designing, implementing and monitoring public policies from a perspective that is endogenous to a political or administrative organization. This is a practical course, oriented towards developing the skills required by agents who contribute to the design and implementation of public policy. The course begins by introducing the vocabulary and concepts essential for thinking about public policy in a contemporary world. It then outlines the skills needed to develop and monitor public policy. Finally, it proposed putting into practice the skills acquired in the course and encouraging critical reflection on the limits of government intervention. This course aims to prepare students to intervene more effectively in the design,
implementation and monitoring of public policy within an administrative apparatus or organization
FORMAT: Lecture
FORMAT COMMENTS: Seminar, 3 hours
LECTURE HOURS PER WEEK: 3
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING:
BUSI 5120,
PUAD 5120
EXCLUSIONS:
POLI 4240
POLI 5241 Introduction to Policy Analysis
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course examines four aspects of policy analysis: 1) the role of the analyst in modern government; 2) the analyst’s working environment; 3) techniques used in carrying out research and preparing position papers; and 4) the analyst’s responsibilities to government and to the public in determining what information should reach decision-makers. Approved with Canadian Studies.
FORMAT: Seminar
FORMAT COMMENTS: Seminar, 3 hours
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING: PUAD 5121.03
POLI 5242 Political Behaviour: Reason, Passion, Biology
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Political behavior is the study of the private roots of public action. To understand how and why people act politically, we delve into psychology, family life, sexuality, and genetics. In addition to these individual characteristics, the economy, geography, and class drive the political behaviour of individuals and organized groups. Topics include: public opinion, political polarization, culture wars, elections, modernization theory, populism, democratization, and the resource curse. The final unit considers big data and commercial applications of social science research in political practice. Although this material is comparative, we principally want to investigate how it applies to Canada.
FORMAT: Seminar
LECTURE HOURS PER WEEK: 3
LAB HOURS PER WEEK: 0
TUTORIAL HOURS PER WEEK: 0
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4242.03
POLI 5250 Canadian Public Administration
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course examines the organization and management of the executive-bureaucratic structures of government for the formation and management of public policy and public services. It considers the design and operation of the cabinet system and ministerial portfolios; relations between ministers and the career public service, policy and budgetary processes; and the structural designs of departments, agencies, crown corporations and regulatory commissions. A major focus will be the effects of the new public management on public administration, as governments in Canada, as elsewhere, seek to cope with budgetary restraints, increased demands for quality services and public participation, and greater effectiveness in securing results.
FORMAT:
FORMAT COMMENTS: Lecture and discussion 2 hours
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4250.03
POLI 5255 The Politics of Public Policy
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course is geared towards an exogenous understanding and evaluation of Canadian public policy. To this end, it engages with the power dynamics that guide policy from initial inception through to evaluation and assessment.
The first half of the course lays the foundations of the field of public policy through a focus on the policy cycle. Although, in reality, the policy process does not cohere to a neat cycle, this model continues to provide a useful heuristic to understand the relevant aspects of the often chaotic policy process and the theories and approaches that underlie it. The second half of the course is case driven, affording students opportunities to delve into the pressing policy issues of the day and assess policy responses to real world challenges. Themes in these weeks include: crisis response, climate change, creating inclusive policy, and housing policy.
FORMAT: Seminar
LECTURE HOURS PER WEEK: 3
LAB HOURS PER WEEK: 0
TUTORIAL HOURS PER WEEK: 0
EXCLUSIONS:
POLI 4255
POLI 5260 The Politics of Health Care
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Because of its nature as both a public institution and a political icon, the Canadian healthcare system is an inherently political institution which cannot be understood without a clear comprehension of both its composition and its relationship to the broader political landscape in Canada. This course will provide a survey of the political and theoretical debates within the area of healthcare in Canada, including investigations of federalism, funding, and governance.
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4260.03
POLI 5301 Comparative Theory
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course examines two levels of theory utilized in the study of politics in different nations: 1) the major paradigms or approaches to comparative political analysis, characterized by rationalist, structuralist and culturalist approaches to methodology and knowledge, and differentiated by “orthodox” and “radical” and post-modern worldviews; and 2) selected theoretical tools used to analyze themes like the political system, the nature of the state, institutions, group and class politics, social, corporatism and elitism, political culture and ideology, democratic and revolutionary regime change, political development and economic dependency, social movements and feminism, etc. The list of topics is subject to revision depending on the students' backgrounds and interests.
FORMAT: Seminar
FORMAT COMMENTS: Seminar, 3 hours
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
POLI 5302 Governance and Administration in Developing Countries: Issues and Controversies
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Some analytical and normative issues of public administration in developing countries are examined including the scope of development administration as a sub-field of public administration; public sector organization and management including public services, public enterprises, decentralization and rural development, financial systems, human resources management, aspects of state economic management with African countries and Asian Tigers case studies; and institutional aspects of aid administration with CIDA and World Bank cases.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4302.03
POLI 5303 Human Rights and Politics
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will examine the evolving place of human rights in politics, both comparative and international. We begin by examining the historic emergence of human rights as an issue in world politics, principally since the Second World War and their conceptual foundations. We then focus on a number of specific topics and controversies concerning human rights in world politics, including: the sources of and struggle to end human rights abusive regimes; the multilateral politics of human rights; human rights in national foreign policies; the rights of indigenous peoples; genocide; humanitarian intervention, and the responsibility to protect; the relationship between globalization and human rights; and the 'Global War on Terrorism' and human rights. Finally we look at the role of human rights in domestic politics, focusing on the issues of women’s rights and sexual orientation.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4303.03
POLI 5322 The EU as a Global Actor
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The aim is to enable the student to analyze and understand the international roles played by the EU in both economic and political areas. Why has the EU been better able to speak with one voice in economic areas than political areas? To what extent can the member states control the foreign policies of the EU? The introductory part will include an overview of the EU governance systems in the area of external economic relations (first pillar) and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (second pillar) and analyses of the main achievements in both areas. Specific topics to be selected for analyses during the second part will include the EU and the WTO, the EU and the US, the EU and East Asia, and the EU and developing countries. Finally, in the third part of the course students study recent efforts to develop a European Security and Defense Policy.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4322.03
POLI 5340 Approaches to Development
CREDIT HOURS: 3
A survey of theories of and policies about dependence, underdevelopment and peripheral social formations. Particular emphasis on modernization, materialist, and alternative modes of analysis, and on orthodox and radical strategies of development. Topics treated include social contradictions (e.g. class, race and ethnicity), debt, structural adjustment, human development, human security, gender, technology, civil society, informal sectors, democratization and ecology.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
POLI 5345 Politics of Southern Africa
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course focuses on political change in the Southern African region since the end of colonialism. It compares the experience of the various countries in the region to development and security pressures related to the legacies of colonialism, persistent economic problems and recent structural adjustments, environmental degradations and threats, ethnic, class and gender cleavages, strategic and social problems related to first apartheid and later post-apartheid transitions, issues of governance and regional conflict as well as more positive trends that towards abatements in civil wars and a surge of democratization. As well as country comparisons, the course will look at the region as a political unit, exploring the opportunities for and constraints against formal regional cooperation on economy or security as well as informal processes that constitute the basis of “new” regionalism forces.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING: POLI 4345.03
POLI 5355 Comparative Perspectives on the Development State
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course examines development in a broad regional comparative context to determine whether endogenous or exogenous conditions account for the success with which the North/Southeast Asian economies have been transformed vis-a-vis Latin America and Africa. The course compares the "developmental state" model across the developing world, by briefly focusing on three distinct cases - South Africa, Malaysia and Brazil - as "upwardly mobile" late industrialisers.
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING: Poli 3355
POLI 5380 Politics of Climate Change
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course examines interactions between politics and a changing climate. Topics include: the role of science and economics in climate politics; the new ‘climate capitalism’ and non-capitalist alternatives; Canada’s difficulties in addressing climate change; climate politics at the personal level; international climate negotiations; and climate as a security issue.
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES:
POLI 3385.03 or POLI 3585.03 highly recommended, but not required or Permission of the Instructor
EXCLUSIONS:
POLI 4380.03
POLI 5403 Human Rights: Philosophical Issues
CREDIT HOURS: 3
An examination of the historical and conceptual development of human rights, this course looks specifically at normative and political issues involved in the emergence of human rights from the 13th century to the present. It covers the shift from natural law to natural right, the emergence of states’ rights to sovereign governance, and the development of specific classes of rights (including freedom of conscience, property rights, women’s rights, cultural rights, animal rights, and socioeconomic rights).
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Permission of the instructor.
CROSS-LISTING:
POLI 4403.03, PHIL 3470.03