This is the Moodle page for PR1520: Classic Readings in Politics and International Relationsn and for PY1104: Introduction to Political Philosophy.
What explains the success of political outsiders and how best can mainstream parties respond? Why have recent results been so unpredictable? And how can we better track public opinion and analyse voting behaviour?
In this course we will answer these questions. More generally, this course examines the relationship between voters and political parties, and considers the theory and practice of how electors decide whether to vote (or not) and for whom to vote.
The course contains both a theoretical and an empirical component. Students will be encouraged to assess the evidence for competing explanations of voting behaviour through readings drawn from research on countries across Western Europe and North America. Besides an understanding of the main theories and main questions in the field of voting behaviour, the course will provide students with a thorough understanding of how to conduct systematic empirical research and critically appraise it.
PR1000 focuses on the practical issues of research in Politics and International Relations: the principles that guide scholars in Politics and International Relations as they conduct research, the kinds of questions they ask, and the variety of decisions that they must make in order to answer them. Analysing these issues will provide a strong platform to judge the merits of different arguments presented in academic literature and help students to be able to distinguish the good from the bad or unconvincing.
There are no pre-requisites for this course. The module overlaps with two other first year modules (Classic and Contemporary Readings in Politics and International Relations [PR1520] and Introduction to Research Methods in Politics and International Relations [PR1000]), but we welcome students who are not taking these modules.
PR2000 is the second of three full-year modules – PR1000,
PR2000 and PR3000 – which Politics and International Relations students take
during each of their undergraduate years. PR1000 and PR2000 together provide an
introduction to a range of approaches and methods commonly used in the study of
Politics and International Relations and equip you with the skills to
successfully study and analyse a wide range of political phenomena.
The course is made up of 20 weekly sessions. You can expect each session to take up to 3 hours, in in-person activities. The key elements of each 3-hour session will be: a lecture (between 1-2 hours) and a lab session/seminar.
The first part of the course deepens our understanding of quantitative methods, and how we can test different explanations with quantitative data. In this part of the course we will spend time in the labs and get hands-on practical experience of how to analyse quantitative data. In the second half of the course, we will go even deeper into learning about data analysis and visualisation. Together, we go through the different stages of developing a research project and how these relate to each other.
Students taking the course will gain knowledge of the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the political system. You will learn about how and why the system operates in the way it does, the quality of contemporary democratic governance and key features of political behaviour in Britain. Students studying PR2480 will be encouraged throughout the course to be mindful of the relationship between theory and evidence.
The first half of the module will focus on Britain’s ‘traditional’ democratic system, including its origins, development and institutions. The second half will focus on dynamic elements of British democracy, including political parties and party competition, political and especially voting behaviour, and attitudes towards democracy.
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a broad overview of how citizens, politicians and the media interact across Western democracies during both electoral and governing periods. While the course will cover key aspects of political communication in the United Kingdom, the focus will be mostly comparative.
There will be weekly, one hour lectures and weekly, one hour seminars.
Each student will be expected to attend the lectures and prepare for the seminars by reading from among and beyond the suggested reading. Seminars will be based upon individual student presentations and specific practical activities and exercises. Some course materials will be provided via the Internet.
In the third year of your degree course you are required to write a dissertation of 8,000 words. This dissertation is equivalent to one full course unit. It is expected that you put 200 hours of work into researching and writing your dissertation.
The dissertation is an opportunity for you to examine, in greater depth, an area of interest to you. You will have a member of staff to act as a supervisor. The role of the supervisor is to help and guide you with your dissertation. The choice of dissertation topic, the research strategy, and the actual work are up to you. The dissertation is assessed on the basis of the originality and quality of the ideas explored in it, together with evidence of scholarship.
To help you with your dissertation, we provide a series of dissertation workshops on the selected topics of your choice.
This course is designed to introduce advanced undergraduates to the major themes of contemporary Latin American politics and, consequently, democracy and political development. While the course stresses the political aspects of the developmental process, its objective is to show the linkages between economic, social, cultural, and political phenonema--both at national and international levels. The first half of the course discusses formal political institutions – democracy, executives and legislatures, courts, and party systems – and the second half discusses bottom-up political topics. For example, we will discuss vote buying, informality, drug violence, protest, and revolution.
The course is made up of 10 weekly sessions. You can expect each session to be about 2 hours. The key elements of each 2 hour session will include an in-person lecture and an in-person one-hour seminar.
What explains the success of political outsiders and how best can mainstream parties respond? Why have recent results been so unpredictable? And how can we better track public opinion and analyse voting behaviour?
In this course we will answer these questions. More generally, this course examines the relationship between voters and political parties, and considers the theory and practice of how electors decide whether to vote (or not) and for whom to vote.
The course contains both a theoretical and an empirical component. Students will be encouraged to assess the evidence for competing explanations of voting behaviour through readings drawn from research on countries across Western Europe and North America. Besides an understanding of the main theories and main questions in the field of voting behaviour, the course will provide students with a thorough understanding of how to conduct systematic empirical research and critically appraise it.
This course will examine Young People’s (15-25 year olds) Politics in UK but also from a comparative perspective. The course will look at recent trends in young people’s engagement with electoral and non-electoral politics, and in the values and democratic experiences that define their politics. Drawing on existing theoretical literature and empirical research, the course will, in particular, investigate how young people ‘conceive’ of politics, how and why they engage (or do not) in politics and civil society, what their values are and the issues that particularly concern them, and how these differ to the population as a whole (e.g. are we witnessing a new depoliticised generation, or a generation that defines politics differently, or are these differences more reflective of the life-cycle effect).
PR3720 is a final-year half unit that offers you the opportunity to develop your knowledge and understanding of the British prime ministership, its place in British government and its academic study.
The module covers both the institutional characteristics and development of the office of prime minister, the organisation and structure of Britain's political executive and prime ministers' relationships with other key actors, such as ministers, parliament, the media and voters.
The module will encourage you to engage with a more focused range of literature and the political-science research process. You will be expected to confront issues of conceptualisation and measurement through class activities and assessed coursework.