Advanced topics in US Political System 4219-AW106-A
Advanced Topics in American government - THE POWER GAME IN WASHINGTON
Course description: the purpose of this class is to examine in some depth the process of policy making in Washington. We shall see public policy as a product of dynamic interplay of numerous actors (people and institutions) who compete for access and influence inside the beltway. In the process, we shall focus on a variety of “games”: the agenda game, the media game, the coalition game. We will look at the roles played by elected and the unelected actors. In short, the course will try to explain how power flows, where it is located, how it manifests, and what forms it takes in modern day Washington.
Type of course
Learning outcomes
Educational purpose: upon completing the course students should become familiar with basic methodologies of analyses of written text and audiovisual meterials and be able to apply these methodologies to a chosen area of American political culture. It is expected that they should also be able to recognize fundamental and secondary determinants of the behavior of various actors in American politics and, by applying a chosen methodology, be able to explain these phenomena.
Assessment criteria
Requirements: final exam (in the examination period, 50%), term paper (20%), presentation OR policy review (20%), class participation (10%). The paper should be a 5-7 page long ( 12,000 characters) analytical piece which demonstrates the APPLICATION of one of the key concepts/theories/approaches to policy making to the current American political situation
Bibliography
Hedrick Smith, Power Game, Random House
T. Reid, Congressional Odyssey, Freeman and Co
Bartholomew Sparrow, Uncertain Guardians, Johns Hopkins
James Thurber, Divided Democracy, CQ Press,
Suzanne Garment, Scandal, Anchor Books,
Norman Orenstein, The Permanent Campaign, AEI
Benjamin Ginsberg, Politics by Other Means, Achor Books
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: