Introduction
The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
--T.S. Eliot
This course is about looking at what is obvious and seeing something new. We are surrounded by news about American politics, but we get so bogged down in the details, the stuff that is ultimately not very important, that we often cannot see the big picture. We do not often ask ourselves, "How does the system really work?" or "How could the system work better?" This course will look at American politics from a new perspective. One way for us to understand how the American system works will be to look at the roads not taken, at the ways in which other countries structure their politics. This course will hold the American system up to the mirror of the world to show us how our own system works and, perhaps, to show us ways in which we might make it work better. This course is for you if you have an interest in politics, and if you want to gain a better understanding of how societies organize themselves and how power is wielded and controlled for good and for ill. You probably should not take this course if you cannot devote a reasonable amount of time and energy to reading carefully, thinking deeply, and writing well.
Goals
The course is designed to help you achieve the following four objectives:
- To learn basic factual details about American politics that you can use to amaze (or bore) your friends and family and hopefully also to understand the system well enough to cast a moderately intelligent vote.
- To understand the conceptual basis of the American political system in light of alternative political systems from abroad, from U.S. history itself, and from realm of hypothetical possibilities (some serious, some funny).
- To be able to apply the concepts you learn in class to understand what is happening (or could hypothetically happen) outside of class.
- To write well. This includes both a clear, engaging writing style and organization that gets to the point yet does not oversimplify.
- To learn how to learn. This includes an ability to research a topic and find out what you need to know from all available sources, direct or indirect, printed or electronic.
Methods
Every class period will be fully interactive. Occasionally I may offer brief lectures to clarify points that you cannot be expected to know, but even then I will rely heavily on you to connect the dots and draw the necessary conclusions that you can share with the class. The writing assignments will challenge you to think more deeply about particular topics covered in the course and to apply what you have learned to new situations. They will also help you develop your ability to conduct research, construct cogent arguments and write with clarity and precision.
Assignments
The following list of assignments and expectations should give you an idea of what you will need to do in this course and how I will evaluate your work:
| Category | Method of evaluation | Assignment | Due | Value | |
| Each | Sum | ||||
| Facts and Concepts | I will add results from weekly tests into a single numerical score and grade it on a curve in line with the distribution of paper grades. | Weekly take-home tests, approximately
with 10-20 questions on each |
Every Monday class |
0.1% per question (or about 2% per test) | 20% |
| Application, Writing, and Research | I will grade papers for responsiveness to question, quality of thesis statement, argument, evidence, organization, and grammar and syntax! See more on how I grade. | Two-page diagnostic reflection paper | Sept. 18 | 5% | 70% |
| Three-to-four page guided paper | Oct. 30 | 15% | |||
| Three-to-four page guided paper | Dec. 4 | 15% | |||
| Six page research paper or Wikipedia entry | Dec. 19 | 30% | |||
| Research presentation | Dec. 19 |
5% | |||
| Participation and Attendance | I will evaluate your responsiveness classroom discussion | Attend and participate in every class. | All semester long | 10% | |
| Overall | Failure to complete any of the above assignments during the course will result in a grade of F. | 100% | |||
The following paragraphs should help to clarify my expectations in these categories:
Weekly Tests. At the end of each Wednesday class, you will receive a one-page, 20 question take-home test for the following week. They are due on at the beginning of class on the following Monday. These will ask not-very-difficult questions about lectures from the previous week and about the readings for the coming week. These will make sure that we begin each week with a common basis for discussion.
The first of these weekly tests will test your ability to locate the following countries on a blank map of the world.
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Click here for a world maps identical to the blank map you will be using in .pdf format (566KB searchable) or jpg format (154KB, not searchable) or a slightly different set of maps including including, another world map in .jpg format (50KB, not searchable) and more detailed maps of Africa and Europe, Asia and North and South America. There are also several helpful on-line geography quizzes to be found online that will test your knowledge well beyond the limited list of countries below.
Papers. Good writing is good thinking. Writing is one of the most important things you can learn while you are at Wayne State. Although this is a large class you will still have two good opportunities to practice and refine your writing. These will determine fully half of your grade.
Content and Style. Good writing is good thinking. Writing is one of the most important things you can learn at university. Therefore, papers will be marked and graded as if this were an English class. If you are having problems, please take the opportunity to talk with me about possible remedies and I will do whatever I can to help. You can find on-line guides to writing in the English language at the Grammar and Style resources website and at Wayne's Academic Success Center on the second floor of the Undergraduate Library. There is also a very good website called "The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing" which is a companion to Michael Harvey's book of the same name, and has excellent coverage on a variety of writing questions including paper arguments, style, organization and plagiarism. I have also received the permission from a few former students to post some examples well-written student essays that I have received in the past at Wayne, in the hope that these may offer some guidance.
If your ambition extends beyond writing correctly to writing well (and I hope it does), you cannot ask for better guides than the following two authors:
- William Zinsser, On Writing Well, Chapters 2 through 4.
- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language
Citing your sources. In our information-based society, ideas are as precious as the gold of earlier eras. Stealing someone else's ideas is no more acceptable than stealing someone else's possessions, and it will get you in a lot of trouble. But why steal something that is already free? The only cost to you as a student for using somebody else's ideas is that you must give them appropriate credit and that is very easy to do. If you get any idea from any source, you must cite that source, even if you do not use the same wording. In other words, you must cite the source even if you rewrite it in your own words. Furthermore, if you use an author's specific wording for more than three words in sequence ("In the beginning...", you must put the words in quotation marks. For more guidance, I have adapted guidelines written Dr. Noel Parker of the University of Surrey on when and why to cite others' words. In general, please simply follow the adage: 'when in doubt, cite your source'" (Cason 1998). The previous sentence is a case in point. I found the quotation on the web-site of Prof. Jeffrey Cason at Middlebury College. If this syllabus had a section for Literature Cited, it would contain the following entry:
Cason, Jeffrey. 1998. Course Requirements. Available WWW:
http://cweb.middlebury.edu/ps103a-s98/requirements.html [Accessed 17 August 1999].For the sake of clarity, I will require you to follow a particular format for citations. My choice is the author-date method as defined in the Chicago Manual of Style, which I have used in the example above. The format consists of a parenthetical reference within the text (Author Year of Publication, Page Number) and a full elaboration of the reference in a Literature Cited section at the end of your paper. I have put full guidelines for citation on-line, but I would also be happy to give you a printed copy.
If you have any questions or doubts about what to cite, you must contact me before you hand in a paper with questionable references. It is better to use up a grace day or two to come up with your own ideas and properly cite those that you take from others than to risk your grade--perhaps even your college career--by needlessly using somebody else's ideas and failing to credit them. Of course the most serious problems with citation are not accidental omissions but intentional efforts to save thought and effort by simply copying what somebody else has already done.
The consequence of plagiarism is automatic failure
The paper assignments in this course cannot be answered by anything you can buy or copy whole from the internet or fellow students, and I have become extremely adept at identifying the sources of plagiarism. Unfortunately, there have been enough attempts (none successful) that I must now subject papers to a random screening process involving test-based search engines and the surprisingly discerning services of the university's web-based plagiarism detector. In the unlikely event that a student still finds it necessary to plagiarize, I will deal with such incidents in accordance with the provisions of the Student Due Process Statue specified in the university's Academic Integrity statement, which you can obtain online at: http://www.otl.wayne.edu/pdf/2006_july_aibrochure.pdf.
Format. Unless you have prior approval from me, you must prepare your papers and take-home exams on a word processor in one of four formats: text (.txt), rich text (.rtf), Microsoft Word (.doc) or Word Perfect (.wpd). Papers must be double spaced, with reasonable font size (10-12) and margins (1 inch), and within the specified length guidelines. All these guidelines are there for your benefit as well as for mine. A paper that is too long bears evidence of inability to be concise and organized. A paper that is too short suggests that something is missing. Finally, think for at least a moment about aesthetics. Before submitting a paper that is messy, crammed together or otherwise unreadable, think about how it will affect the mood of your instructor--upon whose evaluation depends your grade.
Electronic Paper Submission. Papers are due by 4:30 p.m. on the specified due date. Unless you have discussed alternatives with me, you should submit each paper electronically through the Digital Drop Box that is available under the "Tools" section of the course page on Blackboard (http://blackboard.wayne.edu). This will provide a formal record of the paper's submission including a time and date stamp. It also allows you to submit your papers from home or work. Unless we have agreed ahead of time I will not accept papers sent solely by email because there is no way to verify claims that papers have been sent.
Deadlines. Students will have a total of three days (72 hours, to be precise) of grace which can be applied in any combination to any of the first four assignments (but not to the final because I have a limited time in which to submit grades). You may allot your 72 hours among the papers in any way you want. (You can, for example, submit one 72 hours late and all of the rest on time. Or you can submit one 10 hours late, one 20 hours late and one 42 hours late. Any combination is acceptable as long as the total does not exceed 72 hours). Plan ahead, because in exchange for this flexibility, I will hold you to high standards of punctuality. Once grace time is used up, grades for late assignments immediately drop by a full letter (making a B into a C, for example) and continue to drop by one grade for each 24 hour period of lateness. There will be no exceptions, barring written evidence of trauma or tragedy. Be forewarned that papers handed in late may not be handed back to you as promptly as those handed in on time.
Evaluation. An excellent paper must demonstrate a strong argument expressed in a coherent thesis statement and developed in an organized fashion using appropriate argument and evidence. Grammar and syntax are also crucial. I will grade papers as if this were an English class. An abundance of grammatical and usage errors can have a severely negative effect on your grade. If you have questions, I have prepared an extremely detailed account of how I grade written work.
Speaking Assignments. It is essential that you acquire the ability to talk about what you have learned without putting others to sleep, bewildering them, or insulting them. Those of you who have spent any time in the business and academic worlds will know that this skill is insufficiently widespread. As part of this course, I will therefore require you to give a formal presentations at the end of the semester. Your presentation should follow the model used in business and academic settings. If you are not familiar with that format, do not worry. We will discuss it at great length.
Participation and Attendance. Class attendance is mandatory. More than three absences can result in a penalty of one full letter grade. Habitual lateness is indistinguishable from absence and will incur the same penalty. While you are in class, I expect you to be fully engaged. This means that you must have a willingness to respond to my questions (which will be constant) and to ask questions of your own. Unprepared rambling, stony silence, or regular absence can reduce your grade. You must also demonstrate a respect for the comments and questions of others.
Final Grades. These depend on you, but you should know that I am a difficult grader and award grades of "A" only to work that could be regarded as exceptional in any university in the country. I regard grades of A- and B+ as appropriate for work that is very good but not exceptional. No student can receive a passing grade without completing all required assignments; it is not enough simply to do well on most assignments and leave one or two undone.
Accessibility
Every student should have the best possible chance to engage in learning. If you are registered with the Educational Accessibility Services office, please see me during the first week of class so that we can determine how I can help you. Please bring your paperwork from EAS to our meeting.
Books and materials
This course will use a combination of printed and web-based material. You can purchase these at Marwill's bookstore, at Cass and Warren 313-832-3078. The two book you will be using are: |
American Government: Political Change and
Institutional Development by Cal Jillson, 2004 (third edition). Wadsworth Publishing.
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Patterns of Democracy by Arendt Lijphart, 1999, Yale University Press. An excellent book designed for college students but not a textbook per se. It does not appeal to the lowest common denominator and therefore will require some careful reading. |
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While I will not require it, I also recommend as a companion piece another textbook-like item: |
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America: A Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart et al, 2004, Warner Books. If you or members of your family hold concerns about the decline of moral values in America, you may wish to have the bookseller remove the naked pictures of Supreme Court justices (page 99) and blacken any offensive words (pp. vii-xi, 1-227). By that point, however, there won't be much of the book left to read. |
There will be a few other minor readings that will be available on Blackboard and on the reading list below. You are responsible for downloading the on-line material one week before it is due. If you cannot download it, contact your teaching assistant so that we can find some way to get you a copy that you can read before class.
As part of the course, I will also ask you to follow contemporary political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. To keep you up to date, you may find it helpful to subscribe to the New York Times Online and to The Economist weekly political review. These are free and they are not mandatory, but they are perhaps the best way to spend your precious media-time. And while you are at it, throw your TV out of the window (after checking first to make sure that no one is standing below).
Schedule
This list represents a minimum set of readings for the course. I reserve the privilege of making additions over time, but I promise to inform you about any such changes well in advance.
| Theme | Week | Dates | Readings | |
| You are responsible for reading the sections
before the first class of the week! Click on highlighted words
for related websites. | ||||
| Jillson Textbook | Lijphart Book and other sources | |||
| Chapter # and name | Chapter # and name | |||
| 1 | September 6 | None | None | |
| 2 | September 11, 13 | 1. Political Principles | 1. Introduction. List of countries for map quiz. | |
| 3 | September 18, 20 | 2. The Revolution and the Constitution | 2. The Westminster model of democracy; 3. The consensus model of democracy | |
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Two-page paper due in the
Digital
Drop Box on Blackboard by 4:30 p.m., September 18. Click here to find out how I grade and the 10 commandments of grammar and syntax. |
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| II. Players Political Culture and Structure (download slides) | 4 | September 25, 27 | 4. Political Socialization and Public Opinion | 4. Thirty-six democracies |
| 5 | October 2, 4 |
7. Political Parties | 5. Party systems: Two-party and multiparty patterns | |
| 6 | October 9, 11 |
8. Voting, Campaigns and Elections | 8. Electoral systems: Majority and plurality methods versus proportional representation | |
| 7 | October 16, 18 |
5. The Mass Media and the Political Agenda; 6. Interest Groups and Social Movements | 9. Interest groups: Pluralism versus corporatism | |
| III.
Rules Political Institutions (download slides) | 8 | October 23, 25 |
9. Congress | 11. Parliaments and congresses: concentration versus division of legislative power |
| 9 | October 30, November 1 |
10. The Presidency | 6. Cabinets: Concentration versus sharing of executive power; 7. Executive-legislative relations: patterns of dominance and balance of power | |
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First
Three-to-four page paper due in the
Digital
Drop Box on Blackboard by 4:30 p.m. on October 23 Click here to find out how I grade and the 10 commandments of grammar and syntax.
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| 10 | November 6, 8 |
12. The Federal Courts | 12. Constitutions: amendment procedures and judicial review; 13. Central banks: Independence versus dependence | |
| 11 | November 13, 15, 20 |
3. Federalism and the Growth of Government; 11. The Bureaucracy | 10. Division of power: The federal-unitary and centralized-decentralized contrasts | |
| 12 | November 27, 29 |
14. Government, the Economy and Domestic Policy | 14. The two-dimensional conceptual map of democracy | |
| 13 | December 4, 6 |
13. Civil Liberties and Civil Rights | 15. Macro-economic management and the control of violence: does consensus democracy make a difference? | |
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Second
Three-to-four page paper due in the
Digital
Drop Box on Blackboard by 4:30 p.m. on November 27 Click here to find out how I grade and the 10 commandments of grammar and syntax. |
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| 14 | December 11, 13 |
19. America's Place in a Dangerous World (Foreign Policy) | 16. The quality of democracy: consensus democracy makes a difference | |
| V. Conclusions | 15 | December 19, 8 a.m. |
Ten-minute presentation on research
results at 8:00 a.m. on December 19. Five-page paper due in the Digital Drop Box on Blackboard by the 4:30 p.m. on December 19. Click here to find out how I grade and the 10 commandments of grammar and syntax. |
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