Spring Semester, 1998
Instructor: Maria Chan Morgan

Sample Student Assignment

Course Objectives:

The primary objective of this course is to provide students, especially the non-politics majors, with the basic concepts, analytical frameworks, and vocabulary so that they may better understand the political culture, institutions, and process which frame public debate over policies and issues, and shape the political economy of many foreign countries. The idea is to increase students' political literacy, so that they can make sense of the headlines in the newspapers they read, and understand the political events that unfold daily in other parts of the world that have important impact on our lives as well as others. (Note for instance, reports of the Asian economic crisis' impact on U.S. agriculture, tourism, higher education enrollment, manufacturing jobs, and foreign policy). But most importantly, the objective is develop critical and analytical thinking by helping students ask intelligent questions about the world around them, and identifying the logical relations in politics.

From the readings, I hope students will learn to bridge the gap between theory and factual information, and to differentiate between fact and opinion, recognize different authors' biases and rhetoric, determine cause-and-effect relationships, determine the accuracy of information, compare and contrast information and points of view, develop inferential skills, and make judgments and draw logical conclusions. The readings will present some common vocabulary or conceptual tools political scientists use to analyze public policies or political risks for decision-makers or the informed public. These analytical tools will allow students of politics to compare "apples with oranges" in the field of politics. After all, how can one meaningfully compare Nigeria with Indonesia, China with Russia, South Africa with Mexico, for instance? But more importantly still, what intelligent or important questions do we ask when we make such comparisons? Only by comparison can we have intelligent things to say about why political systems perform so differently, or why governments do what they do even though some of the things they do make no economic sense.

The countries chosen in our readings are not random. Apart from providing appropriate illustrations for the conceptual materials, they will provide the needed background information for many Earlham off-campus study programs (e.g. in England, France, Spain, Germany/Austria, Kenya, Japan, Mexico). For politics majors, this intro course will build the foundation for the more advanced level politics courses such as POLS 52: Politics of the European Union, POLS 51: Modernization and Democratization, POLS 55: Political Economy of the Pacific Rim, POLS 59: Politics of Market Reform, POLS 74: The U.S. and Asia, and POLS 77: Multinationals and International Relations.