Do legal rules really affect international politics? This course explores why international law has the form and content it does, and its role in shaping how states and other actors behave. It combines law and social science to examine important issues of the day, including security policies, human rights, and economic relationships.

Do legal rules really affect international politics? This course explores why international law has the form and content it does, and its role in shaping how states and other actors behave. It combines law and social science to examine important issues of the day, including security policies, human rights, and economic relationships.

Do legal rules really affect international politics? This course explores why international law has the form and content it does, and its role in shaping how states and other actors behave. It combines law and social science to examine important issues of the day, including security policies, human rights, and economic relationships.

Do legal rules really affect international politics? This course explores why international law has the form and content it does, and its role in shaping how states and other actors behave. It combines law and social science to examine important issues of the day, including security policies, human rights, and economic relationships.

Borders are increasingly contested in global order, yet function as distinct markers of statehood and sovereignty. How states control their borders physically is an important manifestation of their sovereign rights. In this course, we explore the meaning attached to international borders for two allies in very different regions of the world, Turkey and the United States. We inquire into the role that national territorial and international borders shave come to play in their national identities. We will place these two countries in the context of their "neighborhoods" to understand the threats and opportunities seem to attend border spaces. With their extensive coastlines and land boundaries, these states are subject in different ways to external influences. Both have extensive trade relations with the rest of the world, as well as extensive illicit economies along their borders. The United States is "a nation of immigrants" currently questioning the value of immigration. Turkey is host to the largest number of refugees in the world. Each state faces its own version of an ontological crisis, as they decide how to engage, filter or deflect extraterritorial flows and influences. These developments raise intense issues of identities and boundaries - in particular the question of how different societies engage in border protection. This seminar focuses on the comparative experiences of Turkey and the USA in their methods of maintaining borders and dealing with anxiety about uncontrolled transnational flows of products and people across their borders. The seminar explores how security and insecurity are understood, produced, and implemented in the form of border security policies. The comparative study of American and Turkish border control will uncover both similarities in the framing of border policies, but also distinct differences on how these two countries deal with border security. The international focus will enable students to appreciate the global aspect of border security issues, and research multiple questions on the extent to which what is facing the USA in terms of border security is not unique on its own. This course will be co-taught with a professor and students at Sabanci University. We will overlap with their classroom for roughly half of out three hour seminar meeting, and the professors will co-teach the course. Common readings will be discussed each week, but each Professor will assign additional readings of her choice to complement the common discussions. In the Penn seminar, we will aim to produce a research paper, so in addition to discussing the substantive readings, we will concentrate on formulating interesting research questions,

Survey research is a small but rich acadmic field and discipline, drawing on theory and practice from many diverse fields including political science and communication.This course canvasses the science and practice of survey methods,sampling theory, instrument development and operationalization, and the analysis and reporting of survey data. Major areas of focus include measurement and research on survey errors, application to election polling, new frontiers in data collection, overall development of data management and introductory statistics.

This seminar is taught in Washington D.C. for students enrolled in the Washington Semester Program. It includes an orientation to observation and research in the Washington Community and a major independent research project on the politics of governance.

"Diplomacy in the Americas" an academically based community service course in which students work with Philadelphia and Norristown public school students to explore solutions to critical problems facing the Americas. Entrenched political, economic, and social inequality, combined with environmental degradation, weak institutions, pervasive health epidemics, weapon proliferation, and other issues pose formidable hurdles for strengthening democratic ideals and institutions. The Organization of the American States (OAS), the world's oldest regional organization, is uniquely poised to confront these challenges. "Diplomacy in the Americas" guides students through the process of writing policy resolutions as though the students were Organization of the American States (OAS) diplomats, basing their research and proposals on democracy, development, security, and human rights - the four pillars of the OAS. Students will also read literature about what it means to educate for a democracy and global citizenry, and they will have the opportunity to turn theory into practice by creating and executing curriculum to teach and mentor the high school students through interactive and experiential pedagogies.

What does it take to get elected to office? What are the key elements of a successful political campaign? What are the crucial issues guiding campaigns and elections in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century? This class will address the process and results of electoral politics at the local, state, and federal levels. Course participants will study the stages and strategies of running for public office and will discuss the various influences on getting elected, including: Campaign finance and fundraising, demographics, polling, the media, staffing, economics, and party organization. Each week we will be joined by guest speakers who are nationally recognized professionals, with expertise in different areas of the campaign and election process. Students will also analyze campaign case studies and the career of the instructor himself. Edward G. Rendell is the former Mayor of Philadelphia, former Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and former Governor of Pennsylvania. A note if you are not able to gain a seat in this course: Please write to Professor Fay Walker (listed in the Penn Directory) with your name, year of study, and major in order to be added to a waitlist. The professors will be able to register many waitlisted students in the first week of the semester, but only after the first class session on Monday Sept. 9th, 6pm, in Cohen Hall Room 402. Waitlisted students are encouraged not to miss the first class.

This course explores the creation and transformations of the American constitutional system's structures and goals from the nation's founding through the period of Progressive reforms, the rise of the Jim Crow system, and the Spanish American War. Issues include the division of powers between state and national governments, and the branches of the federal government; economic powers of private actors and government regulators; the authority of governments to enforce or transform racial and gender hierarchies; and the extent of religious and expressive freedoms and rights of persons accused of crimes. We will pay special attention to the changing role of the Supreme Court and its decisions in interpreting and shaping American constitutionalism, and we will also read legislative and executive constitutional arguments, party platforms, and other influential statements of American constitutional thought.