Political Systems

Key Features

Today's international student finds themselves embedded in an electronic universe composed of everything from social media to streaming movies and VOIP communications with friends and family. To capture and maintain students attention teaching must compete within that universe. This means that classes offered must use clever presentation techniques, encourage classroom student to student, students to teacher interaction, and deploy multimedia presentation and teaching.

Study tips

Attend the lectures, read the course text, engage in the class discussion and ask questions!

Aim of class

Its first aim is to familiarize students with the basic concepts in the field of political science. The second aim is to build the capacity of students for comparing political systems in the advanced developed democracies. The third aim of the class is to cultivate critical thinking among students as to the benefits and drawbacks of a particular political model.

Textbook

Robert Hislope and Anthony Mughan, Introduction to Comparative Politics: The State and its Challenges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Lecture Handouts

Session #1

• Political science: origins of the field

Session #2

• Constitutions and

Session #3

• Institutions, models of democracy, political party systems

Session #4

• Democratic and electoral systems: let the

Session #5

• Social movements, social class, interest groups and political parties

Session #6

• Ideology: the

Grading

• Class participation........10%
• Mid-term test......10%
• Short take home essay......10%
• Short final essay......30%
• Final exam......40%
• TOTAL......100%

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