Politics (POL-GA)

POL-GA 1100  Hist of Pol & Social Thought  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Major political thinkers of past and present. Special reference to enduring problems in political theory.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1110  Math for Political SCI  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered Fall  
Covers basic topics of mathematics?calculus, analytic geometry, matrix algebra, etc.?with wide application in political science.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1120  Intro Quant Pol Analys I  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered Fall  
Introduces elementary statistical analysis and prepares the student for G53.2127. Topics include probability theory, distribution theory, estimation of simple statistical models, and hypothesis testing.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1250  Intro to Quantitative Political Analysis I  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered Fall  
Introduces elementary statistical analysis and prepares the Ph.D. student for POL-GA 1251. Topics include probability theory, distribution theory, estimation of simple statistical models, and hypothesis testing
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1251  Intro to Quantitative Political Analysis II  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered Fall  
Provides working knowledge of some of the quantitative methods used in political science research. Emphasis is on using and critiquing the general linear model. Introduction to categorical data analysis and research methodology
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1260  Game Theory I  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered Fall  
Survey of the main concepts and findings of game theory that are relevant to the study of politics.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1300  American Politics Theories & Arguments  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
Overview of public policymaking process; political participation, organization, and structure; governmental institutions.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1301  Fund of Political Strat & Campaign Mgmt  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered Fall  
This course examines the role that media has played in the politics of the past - examines its ever-expanding influence on the present - and projects a future for its use in political campaigns. In this course we begin with an examination of how the electorate thinks and behaves in our heavily mediated society – and how at the intersection of ‘old’ media, ‘new’ media, and the ‘news’ media - new opportunities exist for combining classic propaganda techniques with contemporary campaign strategies. We will also look at the ‘real time’ campaign strategies being employed by various candidates, so that we may come to our own conclusions as to the success or failure of their approach.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1350  American Politics: The Domestic Pols of U.S. I  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered not typically offered  
Broad overview of important topics in the study of the domestic politics in the United States. Examines in depth the analysis and merits of a selection of contemporary research on political participation, mass opinion, elections, legislative politics, interbranch relations, bureaucratic politics, judicial politics, federalism, inequality, and the role of money in politics. Course goals are to (1) introduce students to important controversies in the study of American domestic politics and (2) encourage students to think rigorously about the process of conducting political research.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 1400  Political Economy  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Overview of the emerging field of political economy. Surveys three broad intellectual traditions prominent in the political economy literature: (1) the application of microeconomic, game theoretic, and public choice theory to politics, (2) a focus on institutions and the behavior of their related politics, and (3) Marxian and neo-Marxian approaches. The course requires an understanding of basic microeconomics.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 1450  Political Economy  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
Overview of fundamental contributions to the field of political economy. Covers topics in (1) social choice and collective aggregation of preferences; (2) electoral competition; the spatial model and theories of turnout; and (3) public choice, public economics, and comparative electoral systems. The course requires an understanding of mathematical background at the level of POL-GA 1110 or above.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 1500  Comparative Politics  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Basic approaches to comparative political inquiry and the application of these approaches to specific problems of political analysis. Understanding of political phenomena in a comparative perspective.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 1550  Comp Pols of Industrial Democracies  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Introduction to the comparative study of politics in different institutional and cultural settings. Themes covered include the role of institutional ?veto players?; presidential and parliamentary government; bicameral and unicameral legislatures; the institutional structuring of legislative decision making; electoral systems; social capital/civic culture; social and political cleavages; dimensions of policy and ideology; voting; party competition; and the making and breaking of governments.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 1551  Comp Pols of Developing Countries  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Introduction to the methodology and to some of the main themes in comparative politics of developing countries. Prepares students to do comparative research through an in-depth coverage of current debate in comparative politics of developing countries and an introduction to the main methodological approaches.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 1750  Int Rels: Cooperation & Political Economy  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Core course that covers two crucial areas in international relations: cooperation and political economy. Covers general theories of cooperation that are useful for understanding cooperation across issue areas including human rights, peacekeeping, and international trade and finance in international politics.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 1751  Int Relations: Conflicts  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Survey of modern approaches to the study on international conflict. Emphasis is placed on rigorous scientific approaches that use models to derive testable implication as to conflict relations.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2105  Formal Modeling Pol SCI  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Introduction to formal modeling and deductive theorizing. Main tools of analysis used are decision theory, game theory, andIntroduction to formal modeling and deductive theorizing. Main tools of analysis used are decision theory, game theory, and social choice theory.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2108  Game Theory & Politics  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Survey of the main concepts and findings of game theory that are relevant to the study of politics.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2127  Intro to Quantitative Political Analysis II  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered Spring  
Builds on G53.1120. Provides working knowledge of some of the quantitative methods used in political science research. Emphasis is on using and critiquing the general linear model. IntroduBuilds on G53.1120. Provides working knowledge of some of the quantitative methods used in political science research. Emphasis is on using and critiquing the general linear model. Introduction to categorical data analysis and research methodology.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2175  Mathematics and Democracy: The Design of Institutions  (4 Credits)  
The focus of this course is on two essential features of democracy: (1) how individual preferences can be aggregated to give a social choice or election outcome that reflects as accurately as possible the preferences of the electorate; (2) how public and private goods can be divided in a way that is fair, respects due process, and is consonant with the rule of law. Democracy is taken to mean representative democracy, in which citizens vote for representatives, from a president on down, who represent different constituencies. But referendums, in which citizens vote directly for leaders or in support or opposition to propositions—just as they did in assemblies in ancient Greece—will also be analyzed. So will special institutions, like the Electoral College, and practices like gerrymandering.  Emphasis will be given to procedures or algorithms—the rules of play of games—that produce outcomes. By making precise properties that one wishes a voting or fair-division procedures to satisfy and clarifying relationships among these properties, mathematical analysis can strengthen the intellectual foundations on which democratic institutions are built. But because there may be no procedure or institution that satisfies all the properties one might desire, tradeoffs among the properties will be studied. In the case of procedures that have actually been used, practical problems of implementation will be discussed.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2251  Quantitative Methods III  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Builds on POL-GA 1250 and 1251. Concentrates more specifically on political science research methods. Emphasis is on problems of research design, data collection, statistical solutions, data analysis, and statistical theory.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2252  Introduction to Causal Analysis in Political Science  (2 Credits)  
Builds on POL-GA 2127. Provides students the skills necessary to conduct their own independent quantitative research, with a focus on understanding the causal implications of their analyses. By the end of course, students should be comfortable conducting their own independent research using observational or experimental data.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2260  Game Theory II  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Advanced analysis of the concepts and findings of game theory as relevant to the study of politics.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2262  Topics in Game Theory  (2 Credits)  
The topics will vary from year to year, but may include strategic models of communication, conflict, and elections.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2334  Topics in Urban Management  (4 Credits)  
Criminal justice; environmental health; drug policy; rapid urbanization; mobility; job creation; fiscal sustainability: these are a few of the pressing challenges faced by cities around the globe. This course, led by the principal scholars at the Marron Institute of Urban Management, will enable students to develop informed opinions about urban policy, to defend those opinions with good analysis, and to understand the logic behind differing perspectives.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2337  Urban Transportation Revolutions  (4 Credits)  
This course examines the role of transportation technologies on the changing shape of cities. With each new mode, from streetcars to private automobiles, the city has undergone a dramatic reordering by enabling people to access new swaths of undeveloped land on the periphery and fill in vacant sites in existing cities. By tracing these transportation revolutions, we can see new settlement patterns and behaviors emerge.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2371  Public Policy  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Advanced-level study of policymaking process in federal politics and research issues raised by it. Emphasis is on interaction of policy analysis and political institutions. Some prior knowledge of public policy is assumed.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2410  The Political Economy of Policy-Making  (4 Credits)  
Conducts a systematic analysis of the ways through which preferences of individuals and groups are transformed into policies in democratic societies. Surveys models of politics and illuminates paradoxes and puzzles from a rational choice perspective. Focuses on the incentives and constraints faced by political actors when choosing public policies.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2566  Planet of Cities: Evidence Based Policy Responses to Global Urbanization  (4 Credits)  
The aim of this course is to provide students with an international perspective on urbanization and to introduce them to the theory, the evidence, and the practical tools necessary to formulate and put into practice effective policies that can respond to rapid urbanization in countries the world over, policies that can ensure that cities grow in a productive, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient manner in the decades to come
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2774  Pol Econ of Pacific Bsn  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Evaluates recent trends in East Asian and Pacific economic and political developments. The character of economic growth, the nature of the political systems, and implications of recent dynamism. Overall trends are analyzed with discussion focused on three distinct regions: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 2900  International Law  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Rules that govern in the legal relationship and current development of law among nations, based on the study of cases. The use of the law for the regulation of international behavior and environment.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 3100  Political Theory Seminar  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
General seminar in political philosophy. The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced seminar that assumes extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3101  Political Theory Seminar:  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
General seminar in political philosophy. The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced seminar that assumes extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3150  Political Theory Subfield Workshop  (2 Credits)  
This subfield workshop is a 2-credit (pass/fail) subfield workshop, intended to aid students in developing presentation and workshop participation skills that are crucial for scholarly participation in political theory, a subfield of political science focused on the normative and philosophical analysis of politics. The course consists of weekly research presentations in the field of political theory and political philosophy. Some weeks are research presentations by outside, invited speakers who are doing cutting edge work in the subfield. Other weeks are research presentations by NYU Politics PhD students and visiting PhD students (the latter when space permits). The course is open to Ph.D. students in the Politics Department in years 2 through 4 for enrollment, and to students in year 1 and year 5 for auditing. Visiting PhD students and PhD students in other departments may audit with permission of the instructor.
Grading: GSAS Pass/Fail  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3200  Political Method Seminar  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced seminar requiring extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3250  Quantitative Methods Workshop  (2 Credits)  
Presentations and extended discussions of current cutting research projects in the subfield by internal students in the program and a mix of internal and external faculty.
Grading: GSAS Pass/Fail  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3275  Scope and Methods  (2 Credits)  
Focuses on the issues in philosophy of science, ethics of research, and methodology to lay the foundation for how to do effective social science research.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 3300  Seminar in American Government and Politics  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
General seminar in American government. The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced seminar requiring extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3350  American Politics and Political Economy Workshop  (2 Credits)  
Presentations and extended discussions of current cutting research projects in the subfield by internal students in the program and a mix of internal and external faculty.
Grading: GSAS Pass/Fail  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3400  Political Economy Sem:  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
General seminar in political economy. The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced seminar that assumes extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3500  Seminar Comparative Politics:  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
General seminar in comparative politics. The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced seminar requiring extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3501  Sem Comparatve Politics:  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
General seminar in comparative politics. The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced seminar requiring extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3550  Comparative Politics Workshop  (2 Credits)  
Presentations and extended discussions of current cutting research projects in the subfield by internal students in the program and a mix of internal and external faculty.
Grading: GSAS Pass/Fail  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3700  Seminar in Int'l Relations:  (4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
General seminar in international politics. The specific topic of the seminar varies, but this is an advanced course requiring extensive background.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3750  International Relations Workshop  (2 Credits)  
Presentations and extended discussions of current cutting research projects in the subfield by internal students in the program and a mix of internal and external faculty
Grading: GSAS Pass/Fail  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3951  Dissertation Research  (1-4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Individual research related to the doctoral dissertation.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3955  Workshop in Political Science Research  (2 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
Continues the student?s education in how to do political research and is seen as a key aspect in helping students to complete in a timely manner, and improve the quality of, their dissertation (and related) research.
Grading: GSAS Pass/Fail  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3991  Reading & Research  (1-4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
Tutorial for students whose individual needs are not met by formal courses. A substantial research paper or final examination is required.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3992  Reading & Research  (1-4 Credits)  
Typically offered occasionally  
Tutorial for students whose individual needs are not met by formal courses. A substantial research paper or final examination is required.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3993  Reading & Research  (1-4 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
Tutorial for students whose individual needs are not met by formal courses. A substantial research paper or final examination is required.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes  
POL-GA 3995  Internship Seminar  (2 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
Required course for students in the M.A. and M.A. international affairs programs completing their internship requirement.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No  
POL-GA 4000  Master's Thesis Seminar  (2 Credits)  
Typically offered all terms  
Required capstone course for students in the M.A. and M.A in international affairs programs. Support for thesis-writing process.
Grading: GSAS Graded  
Repeatable for additional credit: No