Political Science

This course provides logic and tools that can be utilized to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of public policies and programs. The most important logic behind the policy and program evaluation is the causal relationship, a process of evaluating whether the proposed policy or program is the real cause of the observed effects. This process requires basic knowledge of causality, evaluation design, and statistical testing. The objectives of this course are 1) to learn the basic concept of causality to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of policies and programs, 2) to learn how to apply the logic of causality for the evaluation design, 3) to learn statistical tools for the causal analysis in policy and program evaluations.

The course provides the latest methodological and theoretical tools for understanding the politics of urbanization and urbanism. The course takes the politics of urbanism as a transdisciplinary arena. It encourages thinking across disciplinary boundaries to address the environmental and social challenges of the present. The question of how cities act politically on the global scale is widely discussed and receives diverse answers from researchers. The course suggests that the study of the political agency shall be grounded in urban studies and empirically tested on different layers of policymaking, allowing for hybrid combinations. An urban studies approach addresses the spatial and temporal specificity of urban processes, in contrast with the "methodological nationalism" of large parts of the social sciences. It focuses critically on spatialized social processes and socio-material assemblages, combinations of objects and agencies that affect how cities are organized and, to some extent, governed.

This course studies U.S. foreign policy from within. It examines how policy is made: by whom, under what constraints, and to what ends. U.S. foreign policy making is shaped both by American political culture and the peculiarities of American democracy. Conversely, the imperatives of statecraft can strain democratic principles. Over the term, the course traces how this tension has evolved and how it is managed (or not). The topic is approached through the lens of truth and publicity: What do U.S. leaders keep from the public? Why? Does secrecy pay off and at what cost to democratic accountability? One pedagogical component is a role-play simulation in which students collectively reconstruct a U.S. presidential election around a foreign policy issue.

On the basis of current debates in Germany, this course forms a picture of the state of German debate culture. The course addresses questions in this seminar including: How factual or polarizing are debates in different media? Where do the boundaries lie between free expression of opinion and punishable speech? How do parliamentary debates in Germany formally proceed and what influence does federalism have on political debates and decision-making processes? As a concrete example of debate, the course discusses, among other topics, the current debate on Corona measures such as compulsory vaccination.

The German social system has long been considered the archetype of the conservative welfare state. Germany introduced a far-reaching social security system as early as the 1880s, which has shown amazing durability despite wars and across forms of government. But has the social security system remained true to its conservative reputation, or has it moved away from this ideal type in recent decades? And what are the effects of these changes on the social impact of social policy? In this seminar students consider these questions.