Robert Luskin

Please check back for updates.

American Election Campaigns (GOV 370L)

            This course comes in four intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  One or more other sessions are usually given over to guest speakers who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another.  And, finally, since this is a Writing Flag course, several sessions will be devoted to discussions of writing and written assignments.

            Past semesters’ speakers have included Tom Craddick, a Texas State Representative and formerly Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar; Justice Bob Gammage, late of the Texas Supreme Court and before that a U.S. Congressman; the late Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser (and former Chair of the UT Board of Regents); Royal Masset, Political Director of the Republican Party of Texas; Dave MacNeely, a journalist covering state and national politics for the Austin-American Statesman; William P. Hobby, the former Lieutenant Governor; Susan Hendrix of H & C Media, a Democratic media consultant; Dean Rindy and Cynthia Miller of Rindy Miller Garcia Media, also Democratic media consultants; David Weeks and Suzanne Erickson of R & R Partners, a Republican media consultant who has worked for Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, among others; Blaine Bull of Public Strategies, Inc., a major consulting firm; Matthew Dowd, once of Public Strategies, Inc., more recently of the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Bush administration, and now a prominent national political commentator; Garry Mauro, a four-term Texas Land Commissioner and Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas; Mark MacKinnon, also once of Public Strategies, Inc., the principal media advisor to George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns and to John McCain’s 2008 nomination campaign, and now a prominent national political commentator and founder of the No Labels movement; Bill Emery and Peck Young of Emery and Young, a Democratic consulting firm; Dan Bartlett, an alumnus of this course who served as a spokesman for Governor Bush and the Bush 2000 campaign and later as Communications Director in the Bush White House; and Karl Rove, formerly of Karl Rove & Company, a Republican consulting firm, later the chief political strategist for the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Counselor to President Bush), and now a commentator for Fox News, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and principal of American Crossroads, a major Republican super-PAC.   

            There are no formal prerequisites beyond eligibility to take upper division Government courses.  The goal is for students to learn and think about contemporary American election campaigns—about both how they work and the ways in which that may be desirable or undesirable.  There will be no exams, but a heavy reading load and two papers drawing on the readings.  You will also be asked to provide written feedback on another student’s paper.  The papers, feedback, and contributions in class discussion will be the means of assessing how far individual students have met the course goal.

            Your grade will be based on your class participation and the two papers.  Class participation—including attendance, participation in class discussion, effort in the simulations, and your feedback on another student’s first-draft first paper—will count for 25%.  The papers—graded 55% on the basis of substance and 45% on the basis of writing—will count for 75%.  The course grades will include pluses and minuses, as merited. The substance grade rests heavily on your making generous, appropriate, and sensible use of the assigned readings.  Attendance is required, and there is a penalty (in the participation grade) for every unexcused absence beyond a quota of two.

            The reading load is unusually heavy, and, as noted, I shall ask students about their reactions to the readings.  So, even though the two papers are the only written assignments, and there are no exams, this is not a course for the faint-hearted.  Be warned!  It will be a lot of work.  But also, I believe, a lot of fun.

Public Opinion and Voting Behavior

            This is intended to serve as one half of a two-part American Politics core course (with the other half focusing on institutions).  Yet the course is also, in good measure, Comparative—and can also be counted toward Comparative Politics field requirements.  There is plenty of latitude for Americanists and Comparativists alike to focus on their particular interests.  I welcome weekly essays and term papers (see below) on the U.S., on given other countries, or on sets of countries.

            Thematically, the course is still broader than its title suggests.  We shall read and talk a great deal about public opinion and voting behavior but also about other aspects of mass politics:  political participation, political communication, and political psychology (which underlies almost everything else).  We shall talk about these phenomena in the U.S. but also elsewhere.  Our concern is with mass politics and with its similarities and differences across contexts. 

            I update the syllabus and readings every time I offer this course.  I think it important to be conversant with best and most influential recent research--which will also cite and thus acquaint you indirectly with the classics, of which I assign only a few.  Here are the topics from the most recent edition, in Fall of 2015 (subject to some revision for this coming Fall’s):

I           Orientation

II         Cognitive Engagement in Politics, Part I:  What Are we Talking about, and Who

                        Has How Much of It? 

III        Cognitive Engagement in Politics, Part II:  What Difference (if Any) Does It Make?

IV        Education, Interest, and Cognitive Ability

V         Public Opinion

VI        Partisanship and Polarization

VII      Personality and Culture  

VIII     Ideology

IX        Cognition, Perception, and Reasoning

X         Attitudes, Emotions, and Automaticity

XI        Media and Campaign Effects

XII      Discussion, Deliberation, and Their Effects

 XIII    Participation

XIV     Vote Choice

            Note that the topic on discussion, deliberation, and their effects intersects the political theory literature on “deliberative democracy” and the empirical literature on deliberation’s effects.  We shall read about and discuss the Deliberative Polling project, and there may be some possibility of using Deliberative Polling data for papers.

            There are no specific prerequisites.  It is not important to have taken any previous course in American (or Comparative) Politics, nor to have taken graduate statistics courses (although I do encourage you, for your general benefit, to do so).  First-year students are specifically welcome, and have usually done well in similar courses I’ve taught. 

            The course is a seminar, and students should come prepared to participate.  I shall assign a grade for class participation, based on attendance and the quantity and quality of contributions to the discussion. 

            The written assignments will consist of weekly short essays about the week’s assigned readings and a term paper, which should normally offer an empirical analysis or at least a detailed research design but may in some cases be centered on normative theory.  The short essays will count for 40% combined, class participation for 15%, and the paper for 45%^.

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

Please check back for updates.

American Election Campaigns (GOV 370L)

            This course comes in four intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  One or more other sessions are usually given over to guest speakers who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another.  And, finally, since this is a Writing Flag course, several sessions will be devoted to discussions of writing and written assignments.

            Past semesters’ speakers have included Tom Craddick, a Texas State Representative and formerly Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar; Justice Bob Gammage, late of the Texas Supreme Court and before that a U.S. Congressman; the late Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser (and former Chair of the UT Board of Regents); Royal Masset, Political Director of the Republican Party of Texas; Dave MacNeely, a journalist covering state and national politics for the Austin-American Statesman; William P. Hobby, the former Lieutenant Governor; Susan Hendrix of H & C Media, a Democratic media consultant; Dean Rindy and Cynthia Miller of Rindy Miller Garcia Media, also Democratic media consultants; David Weeks and Suzanne Erickson of R & R Partners, a Republican media consultant who has worked for Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, among others; Blaine Bull of Public Strategies, Inc., a major consulting firm; Matthew Dowd, once of Public Strategies, Inc., more recently of the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Bush administration, and now a prominent national political commentator; Mark MacKinnon, also once of Public Strategies, Inc., the principal media advisor to George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns and to John McCain’s 2008 nomination campaign, and now a prominent national political commentator and founder of the No Labels movement; Bill Emery and Peck Young of Emery and Young, a Democratic consulting firm; Dan Bartlett, an alumnus of this course who served as a spokesman for Governor Bush and the Bush 2000 campaign and later as Communications Director in the Bush White House; and Karl Rove, formerly of Karl Rove & Company, a Republican consulting firm, later the chief political strategist for the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Counselor to President Bush), and now a commentator for Fox News, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and principal of American Crossroads, a major Republican super-PAC.   

            There are no formal prerequisites beyond eligibility to take upper division Government courses.  The goal is for students to learn and think about contemporary American election campaigns—about both how they work and the ways in which that may be desirable or undesirable.  There will be no exams, but a heavy reading load and two papers drawing on the readings.  You will also be asked to provide written feedback on another student’s paper.  The papers, feedback, and contributions in class discussion will be the means of assessing how far individual students have met the course goal.

            Your grade will be based on your class participation and the two papers.  Class participation—including attendance, participation in class discussion, effort in the simulations, and your feedback on another student’s first-draft first paper—will count for 25%.  The papers—graded 55% on the basis of substance and 45% on the basis of writing—will count for 75%.  The course grades will include pluses and minuses, as merited. The substance grade rests heavily on your making generous, appropriate, and sensible use of the assigned readings.  Attendance is required, and there is a penalty (in the participation grade) for every unexcused absence beyond a quota of two.

            The reading load is unusually heavy, and, as noted, I shall ask students about their reactions to the readings.  So, even though the two papers are the only written assignments, and there are no exams, this is not a course for the faint-hearted.  Be warned!  It will be a lot of work.  But also, I believe, a lot of fun.

Public Opinion and Voting Behavior

            This is intended to serve as one half of a two-part American Politics core course (with the other half focusing on institutions).  Yet the course is also, in good measure, Comparative—and can also be counted toward Comparative Politics field requirements.  There is plenty of latitude for Americanists and Comparativists alike to focus on their particular interests.  I welcome weekly essays and term papers (see below) on the U.S., on given other countries, or on sets of countries.

            Thematically, the course is still broader than its title suggests.  We shall read and talk a great deal about public opinion and voting behavior but also about other aspects of mass politics:  political participation, political communication, and political psychology (which underlies almost everything else).  We shall talk about these phenomena in the U.S. but also elsewhere.  Our concern is with mass politics and with its similarities and differences across contexts. 

            I update the syllabus and readings every time I offer this course.  I think it important to be conversant with best and most influential recent research--which will also cite and thus acquaint you indirectly with the classics, of which I assign only a few.  Here are the topics from the most recent edition, in Fall of 2015 (subject to some revision for this coming Fall’s):

I           Orientation

II         Cognitive Engagement in Politics, Part I:  What Are we Talking about, and Who

                        Has How Much of It? 

III        Cognitive Engagement in Politics, Part II:  What Difference (if Any) Does It Make?

IV        Education, Interest, and Cognitive Ability

V         Public Opinion

VI        Partisanship and Polarization

VII      Personality and Culture  

VIII     Ideology

IX        Cognition, Perception, and Reasoning

X         Attitudes, Emotions, and Automaticity

XI        Media and Campaign Effects

XII      Discussion, Deliberation, and Their Effects

 XIII    Participation

XIV     Vote Choice

            Note that the topic on discussion, deliberation, and their effects intersects the political theory literature on “deliberative democracy” and the empirical literature on deliberation’s effects.  We shall read about and discuss the Deliberative Polling project, and there may be some possibility of using Deliberative Polling data for papers.

            There are no specific prerequisites.  It is not important to have taken any previous course in American (or Comparative) Politics, nor to have taken graduate statistics courses (although I do encourage you, for your general benefit, to do so).  First-year students are specifically welcome, and have usually done well in similar courses I’ve taught. 

            The course is a seminar, and students should come prepared to participate.  I shall assign a grade for class participation, based on attendance and the quantity and quality of contributions to the discussion. 

            The written assignments will consist of weekly short essays about the week’s assigned readings and a term paper, which should normally offer an empirical analysis or at least a detailed research design but may in some cases be centered on normative theory.  The short essays will count for 40% combined, class participation for 15%, and the paper for 45%^.

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

American Election Campaigns (GOV 370L)

            This course comes in four intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  One or more other sessions are usually given over to guest speakers who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another.  And, finally, since this is a Writing Flag course, several sessions will be devoted to discussions of writing and written assignments.

            Past semesters’ speakers have included Tom Craddick, a Texas State Representative and formerly Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar; Justice Bob Gammage, late of the Texas Supreme Court and before that a U.S. Congressman; Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser (and former Chair of the UT Board of Regents); Royal Masset, Political Director of the Republican Party of Texas; Dave MacNeely, a journalist covering state and national politics for the Austin-American Statesman; William P. Hobby, the former Lieutenant Governor; Susan Hendrix of H & C Media, a Democratic media consultant; Dean Rindy and Cynthia Miller of Rindy Miller Garcia Media, also Democratic media consultants; David Weeks and Suzanne Erickson of Media Southwest, a Republican media consultant who has worked for Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, among others; Blaine Bull of Public Strategies, Inc., a major consulting firm; Matthew Dowd, once of Public Strategies, Inc., more recently of the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Bush administration, and now a prominent national political commentator; Mark MacKinnon, also of Public Strategies, Inc., the principal media advisor to George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns and to John McCain’s 2008 nomination campaign, and now a prominent national political commentator and founder of the No Labels movement; Bill Emery and Peck Young of Emery and Young, a Democratic consulting firm; Dan Bartlett, an alumnus of this course who served as a spokesman for Governor Bush and the Bush 2000 campaign and later as Communications Director in the Bush White House; and Karl Rove, formerly of Karl Rove & Company, a Republican consulting firm, later the chief political strategist for the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Counselor to President Bush), and now (does anyone not know all this?) a prominent national political commentator and principal of American Crossroads, a major Republican super-PAC.   

            There are no formal prerequisites beyond eligibility to take upper division Government courses.  The goal is for students to learn and think about contemporary American election campaigns—about both how they work and the ways in which that may be desirable or undesirable.  There will be no exams, but a heavy reading load and two papers drawing on the readings.  You will also be asked to provide written feedback on another student’s paper.  The papers, feedback, and contributions in class discussion will be the means of assessing how far individual students have met the course goal.

            Your grade will be based on your class participation and the two papers.  Class participation—including attendance, participation in class discussion, effort in the simulations, and your feedback on another student’s first-draft first paper—will count for 25%.  The papers—graded 55% on the basis of substance and 45% on the basis of writing—will count for 75%.  The course grades will include pluses and minuses, as merited. The substance grade rests heavily on your making generous, appropriate, and sensible use of the assigned readings.  Attendance is required, and there is a penalty (in the participation grade) for every unexcused absence beyond a quota of two.

            The reading load is unusually heavy, and I do sometimes ask students about their reactions to the readings.  So, even though the two papers are the only written assignments, and there are no exams, this is not a course for the faint-hearted.  Be warned! 

Likely Texts

            I may revise the syllabus and readings over the summer, but neither is likely to change radically.  I expect to assign:

Herbert B. Asher.  2010.  Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know (8th ed.).          Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

 Robert S. Erikson and Kent L. Tedin.  2014.  American Public Opinion (9th ed., updated).  New York, NY:  Longman.

William H. Flanigan, Nancy H. Zingale, Elizabeth A. Theiss-Morse, and Michael W. Wagner.       2014.  Political Behavior of the American Electorate (13th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ    Press. 

Paul S. Herrnson.  2011.  Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington       (6th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

Sasha Issenberg.  2013.  The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.  New           York, NY:  Broadway Books.

 Daniel M. Shea, Will Miller, and Michael John Burton.  2015.  Campaign Craft:  The       Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management (5th ed.).  Westport, CT:        Praeger.

John Sides, Daron Shaw, Matt Grossman, and Keena Lipsitz.  2013.  Campaigns and Elections: Rules, Reality, Strategy, Choice (2012 Election Update ed.).  New York, NY:  W.W.                     Norton. 

James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson (eds.).  2013.  Campaigns and Elections American Style (4th ed.)  Boulder, CO: Westview.

Darrell M. West.  2013.  Air Wars:  Television Advertising and Social Media in Election    Campaigns 1952-2012 (6th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White.  1995.  The Elements of Style (3rd ed.).  New York:  Allyn     and Bacon.

Robert’s Rules (a guide to writing), to be posted online.

Course packet, consisting of On the Campaign Trail (a manual to the simulation that also contains a great deal of information about real-world campaigns), to be available from Paradigm, and a supplementary set of instructions, to be posted online.

Political Sophistication

            This course is about cognitive engagement in politics—a dimension on which individual citizens vary enormously, from those who are walking New Republics or National Reviews or Guardians or Figaros to those who don't know who the President or Prime Minister is.  (There are some.)  This variation matters, in ways we shall explore. 

            Perhaps the broadest variable under this heading is political sophistication (a.k.a. awareness, cognitive complexity, and expertise):  a matter of both the quantity and the organization of political cognition (regardless of accuracy).  Closely related variables include political information (a matter simply of quantity, regardless of organization or accuracy), knowledge (the quantity of accurate cognition), and misinformation (the quantity of inaccurate cognition).

            We consider this whole family of variables:  how best to measure them, who, at the individual level, has how much of them and why, and to what extent and how they flavor individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.  Many of the readings and much of the discussion will focus on these variables’ effects—on the recognition and efficient pursuit of one's interests; policy and electoral preferences; attitude extremity; persuadability and the kinds of appeals most likely to be persuasive; political tolerance; the extent and direction of political participation; the weights given to candidate versus policy factors in voting; etc. 

            Deliberation, in the conventional sense of serious, open-minded discussion, is also related, since many of its effects presumably work through political sophistication.  Thus we shall also read about and discuss the Deliberative Polling project, which can be viewed as a quasi-experiment gauging political sophistication’s effects on policy and electoral preferences.   

            While many of the best data and much of the best work are on the U.S., it should be clear that these variables are at play, and their consequences felt, in every democratic polity.  The course thus straddles American and Comparative Politics (and counts toward either field).  It also draws a great deal from psychology. 

            There are no specific prerequisites.  It is not important to have taken the core or any other previous course in Political Behavior, Comparative Politics, or American politics, nor to have taken graduate statistics courses (although I do encourage you to do so).  First-year students are specifically welcome, and have usually done well.  Ad hoc tutoring in the rudiments of both software and statistics—enough to do and interpret some simple analyses—will be provided as needed. 

            The course is a research seminar.  It involves discussion, rather than lecture, and the research and writing of a term paper.  I expect most term papers to be empirical (though not necessarily statistically imposing).  Some may be theoretical or methodological.  Topics may concern the U.S., specific other countries, comparisons across countries, or general psychological mechanisms, as suits your interests.  Most of you will presumably draw on one or more archived datasets, but gathering or using your own data (as from an experiment) is also fine. 

            Students will also compose weekly short essays of no more than two single-spaced typed pages apiece.  These should center on the week's readings and culminate in a question suitable for class discussion.  These short essays will count for 40% combined, class participation for 10%, and the paper for 50%.

Likely Texts

            I expect to revise the syllabus and, especially, the readings over the summer.  I mostly assign readings that au courant as opposed to classic, which requires updating the selection every time I teach the course.  Past choices, to help give the flavor of the course, have included:

Arceneaux, Kevin and Martin Johnson.  2013.  Changing Minds or Changing Channels?:

            Partisan News in an Age of Choice.  Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press. 

Delli Carpini, Michael X. and Scott Keeter. 1996.  What Americans Know about Politics and

            Why It Matters.  New Haven: Yale University Press.

Ellis, Christopher and James A. Stimson.  2012.  Ideology in America.  New York, NY: 

            Cambridge University Press.

Kahneman, Daniel.  2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Nie, Norman H., Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry.  1996.  Education and Democratic

            Citizenship in America.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

Zaller, John R.  1992.  The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.  New York:  Cambridge

            University Press.

Again, I am likely substitute for one or more of these choices.  There will also be a good many journal articles.

Outline

            This too may change, though probably, in this case, not by much.

I     Organizational (first class meeting)

II    Meet the Family:  Political Sophistication, Knowledge, Misinformation, et al.

            A.   Definition, Measurement, Distribution

            B.   Measurement Issues:  Hidden Knowledge?  Veiled Ignorance?

            C.   Neither Knowledge nor Ignorance:  Misinformation

            D.   Cross-National and Longitudinal Variations

            E.   Individual Differences (including the Gender Gap)

III   Antecedents

            A.   Education, Cognitive Ability, and Interest

            B.  Media Consumption

            C.   Discussion and Deliberation

IV    Effects

            A.    Does It Really Matter?

            B.    Policy Preferences

            C.    Reasoning and Information-Processing

            D.    Extremity and Ideology

            E.    Voting and Elections 

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

American Election Campaigns (GOV 370L)

            This course comes in four intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  One or more other sessions are usually given over to guest speakers who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another.  And, finally, since this is a Writing Flag course, several sessions will be devoted to discussions of writing and written assignments.

            Past semesters’ speakers have included Tom Craddick, a Texas State Representative and formerly Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar; Justice Bob Gammage, late of the Texas Supreme Court and before that a U.S. Congressman; Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser (and former Chair of the UT Board of Regents); Royal Masset, Political Director of the Republican Party of Texas; Dave MacNeely, a journalist covering state and national politics for the Austin-American Statesman; William P. Hobby, the former Lieutenant Governor; Susan Hendrix of H & C Media, a Democratic media consultant; Dean Rindy and Cynthia Miller of Rindy Miller Garcia Media, also Democratic media consultants; David Weeks and Suzanne Erickson of Media Southwest, a Republican media consultant who has worked for Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, among others; Blaine Bull of Public Strategies, Inc., a major consulting firm; Matthew Dowd, once of Public Strategies, Inc., more recently of the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Bush administration, and now a prominent national political commentator; Mark MacKinnon, also of Public Strategies, Inc., the principal media advisor to George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns and to John McCain’s 2008 nomination campaign, and now a prominent national political commentator and founder of the No Labels movement; Bill Emery and Peck Young of Emery and Young, a Democratic consulting firm; Dan Bartlett, an alumnus of this course who served as a spokesman for Governor Bush and the Bush 2000 campaign and later as Communications Director in the Bush White House; and Karl Rove, formerly of Karl Rove & Company, a Republican consulting firm, later the chief political strategist for the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Counselor to President Bush), and now (does anyone not know all this?) a prominent national political commentator and principal of American Crossroads, a major Republican super-PAC.   

            There are no formal prerequisites beyond eligibility to take upper division Government courses.  The goal is for students to learn and think about contemporary American election campaigns—about both how they work and the ways in which that may be desirable or undesirable.  There will be no exams, but a heavy reading load and two papers drawing on the readings.  You will also be asked to provide written feedback on another student’s paper.  The papers, feedback, and contributions in class discussion will be the means of assessing how far individual students have met the course goal.

            Your grade will be determined on the basis of your class participation, the papers, and your feedback on another student’s paper.  Class participation will count for 35% (20% for attendance/discussion, 10% for effort in the simulations, and 5% for the feedback you give other students on their papers), and the papers for 65%.  The papers will be graded 65% on the basis of substance and 35% on the basis strictly of writing. 

The substance grade rests heavily on your making generous, appropriate, and sensible use of the assigned readings.  Attendance is required, and there is a penalty (in the participation grade) for every unexcused absence beyond a quota of two.

            The reading load is unusually heavy, and I do sometimes ask students about their reactions to the readings.  So, even though the three papers are the only written assignments, and there are no exams, this is not a course for the faint-hearted.  Be warned!  It will be a lot of work.  But also a lot of fun.

Likely Texts

            I may revise the syllabus and readings over the summer, but neither is likely to change very much.  I expect to assign:

Herbert B. Asher.  2010.  Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know (8th ed.). Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

 Robert S. Erikson and Kent L. Tedin.  2014.  American Public Opinion (9th ed., updated).  New York, NY:  Longman.

William H. Flanigan, Nancy H. Zingale, Elizabeth A. Theiss-Morse, and Michael W. Wagner. 2014.  Political Behavior of the American Electorate (13th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ    Press. 

Paul S. Herrnson.  2011.  Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington (6th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press

Sasha Issenberg.  2013.  The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.  New York, NY:  Broadway Books.

 Daniel M. Shea, Will Miller, and Michael John Burton.  2015.  Campaign Craft:  The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management (5th ed.).  Westport, CT: Praeger.

John Sides, Daron Shaw, Matt Grossman, and Keena Lipsitz.  2013.  Campaigns and Elections: Rules, Reality, Strategy, Choice (2012 Election Update ed.).  New York, NY:  W.W. Norton. 

James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson (eds.).  2013.  Campaigns and Elections American Style (4th ed.)  Boulder, CO: Westview.

Darrell M. West.  2013.  Air Wars:  Television Advertising and Social Media in Election Campaigns 1952-2012 (6th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White.  1995.  The Elements of Style (3rd ed.).  New York:  Allyn and Bacon.

Robert’s Rules (a guide to writing), to be posted online.

Course packet, consisting of On the Campaign Trail (a manual to the simulation that also contains a great deal of information about real-world campaigns), to be available from Paradigm, on 24th St., just off Guadalupe, and a supplementary set of instructions, to be posted online.

            NB:   I strongly urge you to purchase your textbooks online, being sure to get the most recent edition (except for Strunk and White, of which I am assigning the 3rd edition), as listed above.

Public Opinion and Voting Behavior

            This is one half of the two-part American Politics core course, required of students selecting American Politics as a field.  The other half, focused on institutions, will be offered in Spring, 2016.

            The course is broader than its title suggests.  We shall read and talk a great deal about public opinion and voting behavior but also about other aspects of mass politics:  political participation, political communication, and political psychology. 

            The content is not only American but Comparative—and indeed the course is also listed and countable under Comparative Politics.  Our concern is with mass politics—and with its similarities and differences across contexts—a domain that is thematically, not geographically, defined.  There is plenty of latitude for both Americanists and Comparativists to focus on their particular interests.  I welcome weekly essays and term papers (see below) on the U.S., given other countries, or sets of countries. 

Note that the topic on discussion, deliberation, and their effects intersects the political theory literature on “deliberative democracy” and the empirical literature on Deliberative Polling.  We shall read about and discuss the Deliberative Polling project.  There may be some possibility of using Deliberative Polling data for papers. 

There are no specific prerequisites.  It is not important to have taken any previous course in Comparative (or American) Politics, nor to have taken graduate statistics courses (although I do encourage you, for your general benefit, to do so).  First-year students are specifically welcome, and have usually done well in similar courses I’ve taught. 

            The course is a seminar, and students should come prepared to participate.  I shall assign a grade for class participation, based on attendance and the quantity and quality of contributions to the discussion.  One set of written assignments will be a weekly short essay of 1-2 single-spaced typed pages about the week's readings.  The essay should culminate in a question suitable for class discussion.  In addition, there will be a term paper, which should be empirically oriented, offering at minimum a detailed research design and preferably some analysis.  Students may consult with me about their choice of topic and data and about other questions relating to their papers as necessary.  Ad hoc tutoring in the rudiments of software and statistics—enough to do and interpret some simple analyses—will be provided as needed.  The short essays will count for 40% combined, class participation for 15%, and the paper for 45%.  (The first week’s essay will count toward your grade only if it helps your average.)

Possible-to-Likely Texts 

            I’ll be revising the syllabus over the summer (to keep the discussion abreast of current debates) but expect it to include some (not all) of the following books, along with journal articles:

Bartels, Larry M.  2010. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded   Age.     Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press. 

Kahneman, Daniel.  2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Nisbett, Richard.  2004. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think   Differently ... and Why.  New York, NY:  Free Press.

Ellis, Christopher and James A. Stimson.  2012.  Ideology in America.  New York, NY:     Cambridge University Press.

Rolfe, Meredith.  2013.  Voter Turnout: A Social Theory of Political Participation.  New    York,   NY:  Cambridge University Press.

Bendor, Jonathan, Daniel Diermeier, David A. Siegel, and Michael M. Ting.  A Behavioral            Theory of Elections.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Arceneaux, Kevin and Martin Johnson.  2013.  Changing Minds or Changing Channels?:

            Partisan News in an Age of Choice.  Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press. 

Lenz, Gabriel S.  2012.  Follow the Leader?: How Voters Respond to Politicians'    Policies and

            Performance.  Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press.

Sniderman, Paul M. and Edward H. Stiglitz.  2012.  The Reputational Premium: A Theory of         Party Identification and Policy Reasoning.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

American Election Campaigns

            This course comes in four intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  One or more other sessions are usually given over to guest speakers who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another.  And, finally, since this is a Writing Flag course, several sessions will be devoted to discussions of writing and written assignments.

            Past semesters’ speakers have included Tom Craddick, a Texas State Representative and formerly Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar; Justice Bob Gammage, late of the Texas Supreme Court and before that a U.S. Congressman; Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser (and former Chair of the UT Board of Regents); Royal Masset, Political Director of the Republican Party of Texas; Dave MacNeely, a journalist covering state and national politics for the Austin-American Statesman; William P. Hobby, the former Lieutenant Governor; Susan Hendrix of H & C Media, a Democratic media consultant; Dean Rindy and Cynthia Miller of Rindy Miller Garcia Media, also Democratic media consultants; David Weeks and Suzanne Erickson of Media Southwest, a Republican media consultant who has worked for Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, among others; Blaine Bull of Public Strategies, Inc., a major consulting firm; Matthew Dowd, once of Public Strategies, Inc., more recently of the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Bush administration, and now a prominent national political commentator; Mark MacKinnon, also of Public Strategies, Inc., the principal media advisor to George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns and to John McCain’s 2008 nomination campaign, and now a prominent national political commentator and founder of the No Labels movement; Bill Emery and Peck Young of Emery and Young, a Democratic consulting firm; Dan Bartlett, an alumnus of this course who served as a spokesman for Governor Bush and the Bush 2000 campaign and later as Communications Director in the Bush White House; and Karl Rove, formerly of Karl Rove & Company, a Republican consulting firm, later the chief political strategist for the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Counselor to President Bush), and now (does anyone not know all this?) a prominent national political commentator and principal of American Crossroads, a major Republican super-PAC.   

            There are no formal prerequisites beyond eligibility to take upper division Government courses.  The goal is for students to learn and think about contemporary American election campaigns—about both how they work and the ways in which that may be desirable or undesirable.  There will be no exams, but a heavy reading load and two papers drawing on the readings.  You will also be asked to provide written feedback on another student’s paper.  The papers, feedback, and contributions in class discussion will be the means of assessing how far individual students have met the course goal.

            Your grade will be determined on the basis of your class participation, the papers, and your feedback on another student’s paper.  Class participation will count for 35% (20% for attendance/discussion, 10% for effort in the simulations, and 5% for the feedback you give other students on their papers), and the papers for 65%.  The papers will be graded 65% on the basis of substance and 35% on the basis strictly of writing. 

The substance grade rests heavily on your making generous, appropriate, and sensible use of the assigned readings.  Attendance is required, and there is a penalty (in the participation grade) for every unexcused absence beyond a quota of two.

            The reading load is unusually heavy, and I do sometimes ask students about their reactions to the readings.  So, even though the three papers are the only written assignments, and there are no exams, this is not a course for the faint-hearted.  Be warned!  It will be a lot of work.  But also a lot of fun.

Texts

            Herbert B. Asher.  2010.  Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know (8th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

            Robert S. Erikson and Kent L. Tedin.  2010.  American Public Opinion (8th ed., updated).  New York, NY:  Longman.

            William H. Flanigan and Nancy Zingale.  2009.  Political Behavior of the American Electorate (12th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press. 

            Paul S. Herrnson.  2011.  Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington (6th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

            Sasha Issenberg.  2013.  The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.  New York, NY:  Broadway Books.

            Daniel M. Shea and Michael John Burton.  2010.  Campaign Craft:  The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management (4th ed.).  Westport, CT:  Praeger.

            John Sides, Daron Shaw, Matt Grossman, and Keena Lipsitz.  2011.  Campaigns and Elections: Rules, Reality, Strategy, Choice.  New York, NY:  W.W. Norton. 

            James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson (eds.).  2013.  Campaigns and Elections American Style (4th ed.)  Boulder, CO: Westview.

            Darrell M. West.  2013.  Air Wars:  Television Advertising and Social Media in Election Campaigns 1952-2012 (6th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

            William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White.  1995.  The Elements of Style (3rd ed.).  New York:  Allyn and Bacon.

            Robert’s Rules (a guide to writing), to be posted on Blackboard.

            Course packet, consisting of On the Campaign Trail (a manual to the simulation that also contains a great deal of information about real-world campaigns), to be available from Paradigm, on 24th St., just off Guadalupe, and a supplementary set of instructions, to be posted on Blackboard.

            NB:   I strongly urge you to purchase your textbooks online, being sure to get the most recent edition (except for Strunk and White, of which I am assigning the 3rd edition instead of the fourth), as listed above.

Flag: Writing

            This course is about "regression models," roughly and broadly defined as statistical models to explain some single dependent variable.  This domain includes nonlinear as well as linear models and models for qualitative as well as quantitative dependent variables.  The course outline, below, is ambitious, and we may well not get all the way though it, but I do hope to get at least through Topic XV.  The goal is to help and train both aspiring methodologists and aspiring practitioners.

            There will be computer-based exercises to provide concrete examples, but the lectures and readings will focus on general questions of modeling, estimation, inference, and interpretation:  What sorts of models imply and reflect what sorts of relationships between explanatory and dependent variables?  What assumptions must we make, and what do they mean?  How likely are the assumptions to be violated, and with what consequences?  How can we tell when violations occur?  What alternative assumptions might we make, what alternative estimators do they sustain, and what might we hope to (re)gain by turning to them?  What quantities should we be focusing on estimating?  What estimators provide statistically desirable estimates?  Where several different estimators might serve, what are their advantages and disadvantages?  What do the estimates tell us, and how certainly? 

            The lectures and readings will treat these questions practically but abstractly, referring more to x's and y's than to substantive variables.  There will be much mathematical notation and mathematically phrased argument and some modest proof and derivation.  The goal is to convey a good, relatively deep understanding of the how’s and why’s of constructing, estimating, and interpreting the estimates of these models. 

            There will be extra sessions, yet to be scheduled, of approximately two hours per week, to review the mathematical and statistical background, go over questions and assignments, and discuss concrete applications.

Prerequisites

            The course requires a decent knowledge of descriptive and inferential statistics—as covered in the Government Department’s Statistics I or equivalent—and a reasonable facility with ordinary algebra.  I encourage you to consult me if you are unsure whether this is an appropriate course for you to take. 

Texts

            The texts, selected for simplicity without simplism, are:

Damodar Gujarati. 2003.  Basic Econometrics (4th ed.).  New York:  McGraw-Hill

Jan Kmenta. 1997.  Elements of Econometrics (2nd ed.).  Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press. 

A.H. Studenmund. 2000. Using Econometrics:  A Practical Guide (4th ed.).  Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley.

Studenmund is the simplest, Kmenta the most sophisticated.  You should read Gujarati and at least one of the other two.  You should prefer Kmenta to Studenmund, if you can handle it.  Everyone should read Kmenta’s chapters 1-6, under “Statistical Review.”  I also strongly recommend:

Jeffrey M. Wooldridge.  2002.  Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach (2nd ed.).  Mason, OH:  South-Western College Publishing,

at approximately the same level as Gujarati.

Assignments and Grading

            There will be two exams, a series of exercises, and, optionally, a term paper.  The exams will be in-class, closed-notes, and closed-book.  The exercises will be a mix of  pen-and-paper and computer-based, the former to help cement the math, the latter to provide a taste of actual modeling and analysis. You’ll be asked to write and analyze your own models, rooted in your own substantive interests (and will get help in finding a suitable dataset, if you don’t have any you are already working on or interested in).   There will also be an optional term paper, which should propose, justify, detail, estimate, and interpret the results from a regression model of your devising, using data of your choosing.  It may build on but must go well beyond the exercises.

            For students not writing a term paper, each exam will count for 30% of the course grade, and the exercises collectively for 40% (thus each exercise for 2/5n, where n is the number of exercises).  For students writing a term paper, the paper will count for 20% of the course grade, and exams for 24% each, and the exercises collectively for 32% ( (thus each exercise for 8/25n).

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

See syllabus

See syllabus

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

This course comes in four intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  Another few sessions will be given over to guest panelists who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another.  And, finally, several sessions will be devoted to discussions of writing and written assignments.

    This semester’s panelists have not yet been slated, but panelists in semesters past have included Tom Craddick, a Texas State Representative and formerly Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar; Justice Bob Gammage, late of the Texas Supreme Court and before that a U.S. Congressman; Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser (and former Chair of the UT Board of Regents); Royal Masset, Political Director of the Republican Party of Texas; Dave MacNeely, a journalist covering state and national politics for the Austin-American Statesman; William P. Hobby, the former Lieutenant Governor; Susan Hendrix of H & C Media, a Democratic media consultant; Dean Rindy of Rindy Media, another Democratic media consultant; David Weeks of Media Southwest, a Republican media consultant who has worked for Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, among others; Blaine Bull of Public Strategies, Inc., a major consulting firm; Matthew Dowd, once of Public Strategies, Inc., more recently of the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Bush administration, and now a prominent national political commentator; Mark MacKinnon, also of Public Strategies, Inc., the principal media advisor to George W. Bush’s 200 and 2004 campaigns and to John McCain’s 2008 nomination campaign, and also now a prominent national political commentator; Bill Emery and Peck Young of Emery and Young, a Democratic consulting firm; Dan Bartlett, an alumnus of this course who served as a spokesman for Governor Bush and the Bush 2000 campaign and later as Communications Director in the Bush White House; and Karl Rove, formerly of Karl Rove & Company, a Republican consulting firm, later the chief political strategist for the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Counselor to President Bush), and now (does anyone not know all this?) a prominent national political commentator.    

    There are no formal prerequisites beyond eligibility to take upper division Government courses.  The goal is for students to learn and think about contemporary American election campaigns—about both how they work and the ways in which that may be desirable or undesirable.  There will be no exams, but a great deal of reading and two papers drawing on the readings.  You will also be asked to provide written feedback on another student’s paper.  The papers, feedback, and contributions in class discussion will be the means of assessing how far individual students have met the course goal.

    The class is a seminar, and I expect students to participate in the discussion.  Not just to talk for the sake of talking, of course, but to make sensible, insightful contributions.  Please keep up with and be prepared to discuss the readings.  That will also make writing the paper less of a painful rush.  I’d suggest taking note, as you read, of facts and arguments you find particularly interesting, important, or questionable.  A tentative course schedule, indicating when we shall do what, is given below.  The class will use the UT Blackboard website, on which I shall post some course materials, and through which I shall send emails as necessary.  Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259, http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/

    The course also carries a Writing Flag, which means that there will be written assignments, on which there will be feedback from your fellow students and me, and that those assignments will constitute a significant portion of your course grade.  

    The reading load is unusually heavy, and I do sometimes ask students about their reactions to the readings.  So, even though the two papers are the only written assignments, and there are no exams, this is not a course for the faint-hearted.  Be warned!  It will be a lot of work.  But also a lot of fun.

Texts

    Herbert B. Asher.  2007.  Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know (7th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

    Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Steven E. Schier (eds.).  2009.  The American Elections of 2008.  Lanham, MD:  Rowman & Littlefield.  

     Robert S. Erikson and Kent L. Tedin.  2010.  American Public Opinion (8th ed., updated).  New York, NY:  Longman.

    Paul S. Herrnson.  2007.  Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington (5th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

    Costas Panagopoulos (ed.).  2009.  Politicking Online:  The Transformation of Election Campaign Communications.  New Brunswick, NJ:  Rutgers University Press.  978-

    William H. Flanagan and Nancy Zingale.  2009.  Political Behavior of the American Electorate (12th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.  

    Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber.  2008.  Get Out the Vote:  How to Increase Voter Turnout (2nd ed.).  Washington, DC:  Brookings.

    Daron R. Shaw.  2006.  The Race to 270:  The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

     Daniel M. Shea and Michael John Burton.  2010.  Campaign Craft:  The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management (4th ed.).  Westport, CT:  Praeger.

    James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson (eds.).  2009.  Campaigns and Elections American Style (3rd ed.)  Boulder, CO: Westview.

    Darrell M. West.  2009.  Air Wars:  Television Advertising in Election Campaigns 1952-2008 (5th ed.).  Washington, DC:  CQ Press.

    William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White.  1995.  The Elements of Style (3rd ed.).  New York:  Allyn and Bacon.

    Robert’s Rules (a guide to writing), to be posted on Blackboard.

    Course packet, consisting of On the Campaign Trail (a manual to the simulation that also contains a great deal of information about real-world campaigns), to be available from Paradigm, on 24th St., just off Guadalupe, and a supplementary set of instructions, to be posted on Blackboard.

This course is about "regression models," roughly and broadly defined as statistical models to explain some single dependent variable.  This domain includes nonlinear as well as linear models and models for qualitative as well as quantitative dependent variables.  The course outline, below, is ambitious, and we may well not get all the way though it, but I do hope to get at least through Topic XV.  The goal is to help and train both aspiring methodologists and aspiring practitioners.

There will be computer-based exercises to provide concrete examples, but the lectures and readings will focus on general questions of modeling, estimation, inference, and interpretation:  What sorts of models imply and reflect what sorts of relationships between explanatory and dependent variables?  What assumptions must we make, and what do they mean?  How likely are the assumptions to be violated, and with what consequences?  How can we tell when violations occur?  What alternative assumptions might we make, hat alternative estimators do they sustain, and what might we hope to (re)gain by turning to them?  What quantities should we be focusing on estimating?  What estimators provide statistically desirable estimates?  Where several different estimators might serve, what are their advantages and disadvantages?  What do the estimates tell us, and how certainly?  

The lectures and readings will treat these questions practically but abstractly, referring more to x's and y's than to substantive variables.  There will be much mathematical notation and mathematically phrased argument and some proof and derivation.  The goal is to convey a good, relatively deep understanding of the how’s and why’s of constructing, estimating, and interpreting the estimates of these models.  

There will be extra sessions, yet to be scheduled, of approximately two hours per week, to review the mathematical and statistical background, go over questions and assignments, and discuss concrete applications.

Prerequisites

The course requires a decent knowledge of descriptive and inferential statistics—as covered in the Government Department’s Statistics I or equivalent—and a reasonable facility with ordinary algebra.  I encourage you to consult me if you are unsure whether this is an appropriate course for you to take.  

Texts

The texts, selected for simplicity without simplism, are:

Damodar Gujarati. 2003.  Basic Econometrics (4th ed.).  New York:  McGraw-Hill

Jan Kmenta. 1997.  Elements of Econometrics (2nd ed.).  Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press.  

A.H. Studenmund. 2000. Using Econometrics:  A Practical Guide (4th ed.).  Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley.

Studenmund is the simplest, Kmenta the most sophisticated.  You should read Gujarati and at least one of the other two.  You should prefer Kmenta to Studenmund, if you can handle it.  Everyone should read Kmenta’s chapters 1-6, under “Statistical Review.”  I also strongly recommend:

Jeffrey M. Wooldridge.  2002.  Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach (2nd ed.).  Mason, OH:  South-Western College Publishing, at approximately the same level as Gujarati.Assignments and Grading

    There will be two exams, a series of exercises, and, optionally, a term paper.  The exams will be in-class, closed-notes, and closed-book.  The exercises will be a mix of  pen-and-paper and computer-based, the former to help cement the math, the latter to provide a taste of actual modeling and analysis. You’ll be asked to write and analyze your own models, rooted in your own substantive interests (and will get help in finding a suitable dataset, if you don’t have any you are already working on or interested in).   There will also be an optional term paper, which should propose, justify, detail, estimate, and interpret the results from a regression model of your devising, using data of your choosing.  It may build on but must go well beyond the exercises.

    For students not writing a term paper, each exam will count for 30% of the course grade, and the exercises collectively for 40% (thus each exercise for 2/5n, where n is the number of exercises).  For students writing a term paper, the paper will count for 20% of the course grade, and exams for 24% each, and the exercises collectively for 32% ( (thus each exercise for 8/25n).

see syllabus

Decription from FALL 2009: (new description coming soon)

This course is about cognitive engagement in politics—a dimension on which individual citizens vary enormously, from those who are walking New Republics or National Reviews or Guardians or Figaros to those who don't know who the President or Prime Minister is.  (There are some.)  And this variation matters, in ways we shall explore.  

    Perhaps the broadest variable under this heading is political sophistication (a.k.a. aware-ness, cognitive complexity, and expertise):  a matter of both the quantity and the organization of political cognition (regardless of accuracy).  Closely related variables include political informa-tion (a matter simply of quantity, regardless of organization or accuracy), knowledge (the quan-tity of accurate cognition), and misinformation (the quantity of inaccurate cognition).

    We consider this whole family of variables:  how best to measure them, who has how much of them and why, and to what extent and how they flavor political attitudes and behaviors.  Many of the readings and much of the discussion will focus on these variables’ effects—on the recognition and efficient pursuit of one's interests; on policy and electoral preferences; on atti-tude extremity; on persuadability and the kinds of appeals most likely to be persuasive; on politi-cal tolerance; on the extent and direction of political participation; on the weights given to candi-date versus policy factors in voting; etc.  

    Deliberation, in the conventional sense of serious, open-minded discussion, is also, if a shade more distantly, related, since many of its effects operate through political sophistication.  Thus we shall also read about and discuss the Deliberative Polling project, which can be viewed as a quasi-experiment gauging political sophistication’s effects on policy and electoral prefer-ences.    

    While many of the best data and best work are on the U.S., it should be clear that these variables are at play, and their consequences felt in every democratic polity.  The course thus straddles American and comparative Politics (and is listed in both fields).  It also draws a great deal from psychology, relevant to both.  

This course comes in three intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share of our meetings will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  Another few sessions will be given over to guest panelists who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another.   

This course does not have a writing flag.

This course comes in four intermingled parts.  The bulk of our meetings will be as a seminar, meaning that we, not I, shall discuss the readings (see below).  The next largest share of our meetings will be devoted to a computer simulation of a U.S. Senate election.  Your candidate may make personal appearances, produce and air campaign commercials, make appeals by direct mail, fund-raise, conduct polls, and so on, and the outcome will depend on the choices you and your opponents make.  Another few sessions will be given over to guest panelists who have been involved in election campaigns in one capacity or another. 

    This semester’s panelists have not yet been slated, but by way of example past panelists have included State Representatives Tom Craddick (now Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives), Henry Cuellar, and Todd Hunter; Justice Bob Gammage, late of the Texas Supreme Court and before that a U.S. Congressman; Bernard Rapoport, a longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser (and former Chair of the UT Board of Regents); Royal Masset, Political Director of the Republican Party of Texas; Dave MacNeely, a journalist covering state and national politics for the Austin-American Statesman; William P. Hobby, the former Lieutenant Governor; Susan Hendrix of H & C Media, a Democratic media consultant; Dean Rindy of Rindy Media, another Democratic media consultant; David Weeks of Media Southwest, a Republican media consultant; Blaine Bull of Public Strategies, Inc., then a Democratic consulting firm; Matthew Dowd, then of Public Strategies, Inc., but more recently of the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Bush administration. and now a prominent national political commentator; Bill Emery and Peck Young of Emery and Young, a Democratic consulting firm; Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for Governor Bush and the Bush 2000 campaign (and an alumnus of this course), later Communications Director in the Bush White House; and Karl Rove, then of Karl Rove & Company, a Republican consulting firm, more recently the chief political strategist for the Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns and Counselor to President Bush), and now (does anyone not know all this?) a prominent national political commentator.    

     There will be no exams, but a great deal of reading, and you will be required to write three papers drawing on the readings.  The first, of five to six pages, will be about how the characteristics of the electorate affect the nature, strategies, and outcomes of election campaigns.  The second, also of five to six pages, will be about the ways in which your experiences in the simulation illustrate or fail to capture the realities Senate elections.  The third, of six to seven pages, will be a book review.

Political Behavior

    For purposes of this course, and as most commonly used in the relevant subdisciplines, political behavior (an inapt but conventional term) means the politics of ordinary citizens—their political and politically relevant thoughts and feelings, as well as their overt political behaviors.  Major subtopics include public opinion, political participation, voting behavior, and political psychology.  

    The course is about equally Comparative, American, and (especially in the portions devoted to political psychology) both and neither.  I intend it to be useful to both Comparativists and Americanists, and I welcome weekly essays and term papers (see below) on the U.S., given other countries, or sets of countries.  The course’s domain is thematically, not geographically, defined.  Our concern is with mass politics, wherever they occur—and with their similarities and differences across contexts.  There is plenty of latitude for both Americanists and Comparativists to focus on their particular interests.  

Note that the topic on discussion, deliberation, and their effects intersects the literature in political theory on “deliberative democracy” and the research based on Deliberative Polling.  We shall read about and discuss the Deliberative Polling project, and there may be some possibility of using Deliberative Polling data.  

There are no specific prerequisites.  It is not important to have taken the core or any other previous course in Comparative (or American) Politics, nor to have taken graduate statistics courses (although I do encourage you, for your general benefit, to do so).  First-year students are specifically welcome, and have usually done well in similar courses I’ve taught.  Ad hoc tutoring in the rudiments of both software and statistics—enough to do and interpret some simple analyses—will be provided as needed.  

    The course is a seminar, and students should come prepared to participate.  I shall assign a grade for class participation, based on attendance and the quantity and quality of contributions to the discussion.  One set of written assignments will be a weekly short essay of 1-2 single-spaced typed pages about the week's readings.  The essay should culminate in a question suitable for class discussion.  In addition, there will be a term paper, which should be empirically oriented, offering at minimum a detailed research design and preferably some analysis.  Students may consult with me about their choice of topic and data and about other questions relating to their papers as necessary.  I shall arrange for statistical computing tutorials if necessary.  The short essays will count for 40% combined, class participation for 15%, and the paper for 45%.  (The first week’s essay will count toward your grade only if it helps your average.)

Likely Texts (subject to change)

Brader, Ted.  2006.  Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work.  Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press.

Berinsky, Adam J.  2006.   Silent Voices.  Public Opinion and Political Participation in America.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press.  

Franklin, Mark N.  2004. Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945.  New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press.  

    Mutz, Diana C.  2006.  Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy.  New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press.

Nie, Norman H., Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry.  1996.  Education and Democratic Citizenship in America.  Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press.

    Nisbett, Richard.  2004. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why.  New York, NY:  Free Press.

Prior, Markus.  2007.  Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections.  New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press.

    Stimson, James A.  2004.  Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics.  New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press.

    Thomassen, Jacques (ed.).  2006.  The European Voter.  Oxford, U.K.:  Oxford University Press.

Zaller, John R.  1992.  The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.  New York:  Cambridge University Press.

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Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

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Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

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Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

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Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

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Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

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Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.

Please check back for updates.

Prerequisite: Six semester hours of lower-division coursework in government.