Please note: At your instructor's discretion,
there may be minor alterations to the reading
assignments listed below. One of the major advantages to
providing you with an on-line readings archive is that
timely articles can be added or substituted when
appropriate. Opening documents downloaded from this
website will require that your computer have
Acrobat Reader . You will also need the
class-specific password to open individual files.
Course Unit 3
Some resources for the rest of the
term:
-
Citation instructions for papers
in Setzler courses (on-line handout).
Just familiarize yourself with this so that you are
aware of what will be expected of you in papers. For
example, as you are taking notes on reading or
summarizing readings for future use in papers, you
should note page numbers for ideas since you will be
asked to include page-specific citations in papers
(but not on tests, of course).
Topic 9-How
effective is violence for achieving legitimate and
illegitimate political ends?
March 24 (M)-The
unique power of violence
-
The focus questions and writing prompt
for this topic. Recall that you need to write
three papers this term, including two papers on
discussion topics. If you haven't written on a recent
topic, you can choose to write on this one. You will
have at least two more topic options (see the syllabus
for a full list of topics).
March 26 (W)-What are the main causes
and consequences of political violence within countries?
-
If you chose to
write an analytical essay on either of the last two
topics (whether different regime types should
possess nuclear weapons or political leadership), it
is due in electronic and hard copy by the start of
today's class. Remember that you must write one
discussion-topic paper after you have turned in your
self-assessment essay. We will most likely have three
more writing topics this term.
-
A textbook reading on political
violence (31pp). We will look at terrorism in
the next material block, so focus only on the textbook
sections on political violence and revolution for now,
leaving aside the sections on terrorism.
March 28 (F)-What is "terrorism" and why is its
use so widespread?
While you are being asked to complete a lot of readings
so that you see different perspectives and types of
evidence, note that the total reading load will less than
a textbook chapter if follow the reading directions.
- A textbook reading on political
violence (31pp). You should have already read most
of this chapter last week, so this time only focus only
on the textbook sections on terrorism.
-
The Economist, "Terrorist atrocities
in western Europe" (2017, 2pp).
-
The Economist, "Why white
nationalist terrorism is a global threat" (2019,
6pp)
-
The Economist, "Twenty years after
9/11, Americans give Joe Biden poor marks on
terrorism" (2021, 2pp)
-
The
Economist, "Terrorism, Learning to Live With It"
(2016, 2pp)
-
John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart,
"The Terrorism Delusion: America's Overwrought
Response to September 11" (International
Security 2012, 30pp). Skim this very quickly, spending
no more than 10 minutes to understand the methods the
authors use, what kind of evidence they use, and their
main conclusions.
March 31 (M)-Discussion session:
When is political violence within a country likely to
lead to positive political change? When can non-violent
resistance be the better option?
Topic 10-Why are
Americans politically equal? Why does it
matter?
April 2 (M)-What is political voice?
-
Read closely: A brief selection from Kay Lehman
Schlozman, Sidney Verba & Henry E. Brady,
Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of
American Democracy (2012, 28pp).
-
Sometimes, I assign Robert Reich's documentary Inequality
for All for this block of material, but I
dropped it this time around. Please watch this
short trailer for the film, so you can have some idea
what I am talking about when I reference Robert Reich:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCbAyk8aRxI.
-
Some economic inequality statistics
-
The Pew Foundation, Six Facts
about Economic Inequality:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/02/07/6-facts-about-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s/
-
One way that economic and political power reinforce
reproduce themselves: Raj Chetty, David J. Deming, John N.
Friedman, "Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The
Determinants and Consequences of Admission to Highly
Selective Colleges" (2023, 5pp). If your
interested in the study that led to these conclusions,
the full paper can be found here.
-
Another way that economic power translates into
political power is donations of "hard" money to
campaigns and "soft" donations to "outside" groups
that work on behalf of candidates without formally
"coordinating with the campaigns. How much money was
given by the top-10 spending individuals in the 2024
elections? How much did they give? Who did they give
to? (Just look at the top 10-15 people on this list):
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors
-
Another reason structural political and economic
inequality reproduce themselves over time: Pew
data on partisanship and beliefs about why some
people are rich or poor.
April 4 (F)-Why does it matter if
economic opportunities and political voice are
unequal?
-
Optional: PBS
Frontline: Whose Vote Counts?: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/whose-vote-counts/.
This 58-minute documentary looks at the growing number
of states and policies that have made it more
difficult for Americans to vote since 2008, a period
in which several protections of the Voting Rights Act
were reversed by 5-4 Supreme Court decision.
April 7 (M)-Discussion seminar:
How do we make political influence more equal, at least
at the voting booth?
-
The
focus questions and writing prompt for this topic.
Recall that you need to write three papers this term,
including two papers on discussion topics. If you
haven't written on a second discussion topic, you can
choose to write on this one. You probably will have
just one more topic option (see the syllabus
for a full list of topics). If you write on this topic, your paper will
be due at the start of class on Wednesday, April 16.
This looks like a lot of reading, but notice that
the articles are all short. Collectively, today's
reading load is the size of a smaller textbook
chapter. And I've divided up the reading into a series
of topics:
Why are some states so
interested in making harder to vote while others are
trying to make it easier?
-
In the big picture, voting has been
getting easier over time: Miles Parks, "New data
shows it's gotten easier to vote in the U.S. since
2000" (PBS 2024, 4pp). Just skim, but take a
close look at the three figures.
What factors
explain why voter participation is so low in the US?
-
Pew Research, "Voters’ and nonvoters’ experiences
with the 2024 election" (2024, 4pp). Skim the analysis
quickly. Carefully review the figures about how easy
it was to vote for different types of Americans and
why people said they didn't vote:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/12/04/voters-and-nonvoters-experiences-with-the-2024-election/
-
Just look at the figures: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/non-voters-poll-2020-election/
(538.com, 2020, 4pp or so). Contrary to what most
progressives believe, ballot access is not a major
issue in why some types of people are a lot less
likely to vote. Also, most non-voters and rare voters
are not citing gerrymandering (i.e., my vote doesn't
matter because of where I live) as major obstacles to
voting.
What
non-voters used to want:
-
Sean
McElwee, "Why Non-Voters Matter" (The
Atlantic, 2015, 12pp)
-
The
Party of Nonvoters (Pew Foundation, 2010, 4p)
-
The
Economist, "The silent near-majority" (2019,
1pp)
Today's non-voter
may be different:
-
David Graham, “The Republican
Party’s Irrational War on Voting Rights” (The
Atlantic 2021, 4pp)
-
Mark Murray and Katherine Koretski,
"Meet the sporadic voters who could decide the 2024
election" (NBC News, 2024, 2 pages)
Should we require
voting?
Topic 11- How are a society's core political
values and behaviors communicated across
generations? Is there anyway to short-circuit the
transmission of values within a culture in ways
that favor democracy?
April 9 (W)-Where
do our most deeply held political beliefs and values
come from?
-
The week's focus questions and
writing topic. Remember,
you need to write a second paper that focuses on one
of the discussion topics (you wrote the first one
during the first unit of this class). IF YOU HAVE
NOT SUBMITTED A DISCUSSION PAPER after the mid-term
break, you MUST write on this topic. It is the last
paper topic of the term. If you are writing this
paper, it is due Friday April 25. As that date
is after the last day of classes, you will submit it
only by email; read the instructions carefully, which
include the requirement that the paper must be
submitted as an attachment rather than as a link to a
document somewhere on a cloud-based server.
-
Francis Fukuyama, "The Primacy of
Culture" (Journal of Democracy, 6 pp). 20
years after this article was written, it looks like
the author underestimated the ability of culture to
change more rapidly than he thought and the resurgence
of nationalism. Welzel and Inglehart will help to
explain this.
April 14 (F,
M)-How must culture change over time for democracy to
endure?
-
Patrick Basham, "Can Iraq be
Democratic?" (Policy Analysis which is a
publication Cato, the country's leading libertarian
think tank, pp. 1-17). This article was written in
2004 at a time when many American political leaders
were arguing that democracy would be arriving in Iraq
very shortly and at little additional cost in lives.
Basham pointed to political culture as making any
positive outcome unlikely.
April 16 (W)
Discussion session: Why is support for democracy falling
and support for undemocratic politics increasing in the
US and elsewhere?
No classes on Good Friday or Easter Monday
Topic 12-What is your next professional step?
April 16 (W)-Last day of class:
Using your political science skills to think about
professional development and opportunities:
For reasons discussed in class, we will not meet for
the last class period of the semester. I will post an
online lecture covering these materials. It will be
less than 30 minutes.
Review the materials your instructor has compiled at
the webpage. Your Professional Next Steps. This
is a collection of resources--including typical salaries,
employment patterns, and graduate school information--that
you should be closely familiar with as you think about how
your time at HPU is going to fit into your professional
ambitions going forward. At a minimum, please closely read
an assignment or two in each of these sections:
-
Why does developing a career these days seem tougher
than what your parents experienced as young adults?
-
Beyond building solid professional skills and
experience, what are some of the other factors that
can most influence in launching a rewarding
professional career? Hint: Start thinking about these
issues right now!
Final examination:
-
Your final exam will be held at the time specified in
the University's final exam schedule (this is a
requirement to avoid overlapping with other class's
exams): https://www.highpoint.edu/registrar/final-exam-schedule/.
Our testing time is: Tuesday, April 29,
8-11am.
-
The final exam will have two components. Half of it
will be it will be a true-false question test covering
only material from the third part of the course. The
second part will ask you to respond with an essay to a
question you have been given in advance. That question
and the instructions for preparing to write your long
essay are explained in an assignment sheet that will
be placed in the PPTs/Assignment folder.
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