PSC 129 Syllabus

PSC 129
American Government and Politics (Honors)
Spring 2006


Instructor: Gavan Duffy
Office: 100E Eggers Hall
Phone: 443-5764
Home Page: http://web.syr.edu/~gavan/
Office Hours: Th 3:00-5:00 and by appointment.
Email: gduffy@syr.edu

Course Description

This course introduces students to the processes and institutional contexts of political competition in the United States. It places primary emphasis on the Constitution, institutions (e.g., the Congress, the Presidency, the Judiciary, the bureaucracy), modes of competition (e.g., elections, policymaking, direct action), and mechanisms of interest aggregation (e.g., political parties, interest groups, the mass media, public opinion).

For the first three weeks of the semester, the instructor will lead discussions on readings in the main course text. Afterward, our Thursday sessions will be devoted to discussions on the contents of scholarly works on American politics and government that appear in Political Science Department's graduate reading list in American politics. Each student will prepare two reviews, and all students will read every other students review plus, if available, a published critical review. By the end of the semester we will have been exposed to a broad range of intellectual issues pertaining to American politics and governance.

Although the reading list also includes journal articles, book chapters, and edited volumes, we will restrict ourselves to books. Students will seek approval of the instructor before embarking on a review, to ensure that no two students review the same work. Although the published review may have appeared anywhere across a wide variety of venues, many of these works will have been reviewed in the American Political Science Review (APSR). The APSR is available in the stacks of Bird Library, or (except for the past five years) online at http://www.jstor.org/.

Review essays should assess the arguments of both the book author and the author of the published review. Do their arguments cohere logically? Do their judgments follow from the evidence they present? Do they consider the relevant evidence? Do they weight the strength of their evidence appropriately? Students' review essays will be graded on these same criteria, except that the fullness of the review, the quality of the writing, and the care taken in crafting essays will also be considered.

Review Mechanics

Each student will prepare her essay as a web page, which should be available on-line no later than the (Tuesday) class period prior to the session during which it will be discussed. This syllabus will link to those pages, in the course schedule below. If the published review is online (e.g., an APSR review obtained through JSTOR), students may link to it from their review page. Please use the stable URL that JSTOR provides. Alternatively, students can distribute photocopies of the published review, if these are available by the session prior to the discussion of the student's review. All students are expected to read every other student's essay and the corresponding published review. Students should come to class prepared to discuss their contents.

Experience shows that everything works best if we post web pages on the SUnix system, on which all SU students have accounts. Commercial venues, like AOL, MSN, etc., often add annoying advertisements and prevent pages from printing gracefully. Saving Word documents as web pages adds tons of IE-specific nonsense that make pages unreadable under other browsers. Since we'll all be printing out the page you post, it's important that they print properly.

Students who do not already know how to author simple web pages (and that's most or all of you) will want to consult Computer and Media Services' instructions at http://cms.syr.edu/web/. Also, Eric A. Meyer of Case Western Reserve University has created an Introduction to HTML that provides all you will need to know about HTML to create web pages for this course. As noted on the schedule below, we will hold a brief workshop on HTML on Thursday, January 15.

Students should use the references (or bibliography) form of the Turabian Citation Style.

Text

Because each student will read two books from the graduate reading list, only one general text is assigned for this course. It is: Thomas E. Patterson, We the People. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Students may find useful the web-site associated with the Patterson text, as it contains chapter outlines, practice quizzes, and other study aids.

Additional readings may be placed on reserve at Bird Library or distributed in class, as appropriate.

Grading Criteria

Fifty percent of final grades will be assigned on the basis of performance on two of three examinations. The lowest of these three grades will be dropped. Review essays will count for 30% of final grades. The remaining 20% will be assessed on the basis of attendance and the quantity and quality of participation in seminar.

On the last regular class day, April 30, the instructor will announce the names of students who need not take the third examination, as they will receive an A grade no matter their performance on that examination. The instructor considers this a just reward for the demonstration of excellence. It is not necessarily the case that all students required to take the third examination will not receive an A grade. Often, a student's strong performance on the final examination frees her from the albatross of a poor grade earlier in the semester. Because the instructor drops the lowest grade, there will be no make-up examinations. Students who fail to appear for an examination, for whatever reason -- legitimate or otherwise -- will receive a zero grade.

Course Schedule

Because students cannot be expected to produce completed reviews for the first few weeks, we focus on the Berman and Murphy readings during most of January, with a brief HTML workshop on January 19. We will begin our reviews on February 9.

The schedule below includes blank slots. As students sign up for reviews, their names and the titles of the books they are reviewing will be added to this schedule. When a student's review is ready, she will submit its URL to the instructor, who will then make the student's name and book title mouse-sensitive. Other students will then be able to point and click to access reviews prior to their classroom discussion.

January 17
Course Introduction
January 19
Basic Political Concepts
Patterson, Chapter 1.
We will devote much of this class to a workshop on producing web pages in HTML.
January 24
The Founding
Patterson, Chapter 2.
January 26
Federalism
Patterson, Chapter 3.
January 31
Civil Liberties
Patterson, Chapter 4.
February 2
Equal Rights
Patterson, Chapter 5.
February 7
Public Opinion and Participation
Patterson, Chapters 6-7.
February 9
Student Reviews
February 14
Political Parties and Interest Groups
Patterson, Chapters 8-9.
February 16
Student Reviews
February 21
News Media
Patterson, Chapter 10.
February 23
Student Reviews
February 28
First Examination
March 2
Student Reviews
March 7
The Congress
Patterson, Chapter 11.
March 9
Student Reviews
March 11-19
Spring Break
March 21
The Presidency
Patterson, Chapter 12.
March 23
Film, State of the Union.
March 28
The Bureaucracy
Patterson, Chapter 13.
March 30
Student Reviews
April 4
The Judiciary
Patterson, Chapter 14.
April 6
Student Reviews
April 11
Second Examination
April 13
Student Reviews
April 18
Economic and Environmental Policy
Patterson, Chapter 15.
April 20
Student Reviews
April 25
Mayfest -- no classes
Why is Mayfest in April?
April 27
Welfare and Education Policy
Patterson, Chapter 16.
Student Reviews
May 2
Foreign and Defense Policy
Patterson, Chapter 17.
The names of students who need not take the final examination will be announced in class this day.
Student Reviews
May 4: Final Examination
Exam will be held in BH 306A from 7:15pm to 9:15pm.
This document lives at http://web.syr.edu/~gavan/psc129s06.html.