Admission requirements
Prerequisites for participation in the Bachelor Seminars are successful completion of the propaedeutic phase of the programme (first year). There are no other course or background requirements.
Description
In this course, we will discuss seminal accounts of the modern national state’s historical origins and long-term evolution. Students interested in economic development, political violence, and criminality will find this course of interest, as the “state” and its institutional capabilities have substantial consequences for nations’ economic trajectory and governments’ ability to guarantee peace within their territories.
We will analyse scholarly work around questions like the following. Why are Western states generally more capable of fostering development and guaranteeing domestic security than the states of the Global South? When did these cross-regional differences appear and why have they remained almost unchanged since then? What is “state capacity”, and under what circumstances do political leaders build it? What are the main dysfunctionalities of state organizations in developing countries? What trade-offs do leaders face when creating state institutions? Why did a few Asian countries assemble highly effective state organizations during the twentieth century?
The syllabus focuses on seminal discussions and agenda-setting publications in the study of “how temporal processes and events influence the origin and transformation of institutions that govern political and economic relations” in Europe and the Global South. The syllabus draws from the "historical institutionalism": tradition in political science, and especially "Comparative Historical Analysis":
The latter refers to “historically contextualized comparisons explicitly aimed at producing causal arguments” about macro-political processes. These traditions are mostly qualitative but are increasingly in dialog with more quantitatively oriented political science, like the political economy of development. Thus, students interested in qualitative and quantitative research might find this seminar useful.
The students will not only learn how to engage with historically oriented comparative politics. They will also practice “thinking like social scientists”. They will refine a research question about a topic of their interest with the instructor’s assistance, and then write a report about possible answers in the form of scientific hypotheses based on existing research.
Course objectives
At the end of the course, the student will be able to:
1. Understand how political scientists think about the origins and development of modern state institutions, the kinds of questions they ask, and how scholars from the Comparative Historical Analysis tradition address these questions.
2. Recognise questions amenable to research, search and identify relevant social sciences publications, and stylise alternative answers to a question into scientific hypotheses.
Mode of instruction
Seminar discussions and short lectures.
Assessment method
The final grade is a weighted combination of the following elements:
15% Weekly brief discussion points or questions about the assigned readings
35% Plan document for the final report
50% Final report
Once a week, before the session, the students are expected to post (in Brightspace) a brief point or question to guide the discussion on the session’s assigned readings. The instructor will provide a schedule. The students are expected to attend most sessions; they may be excused to miss at most two.
The final report will be completed in three steps. First, the students will refine a question based on a topic of their interest. Second, the students will write a short plan for the final report. Third, the final report consists of three possible answers to the question, based on existing research. The students will stylise the alternative answers into scientific hypotheses for explaining the phenomenon at hand. The instructor will provide guidelines and assistance in each step of the process. Given that the final report comprises 50% of the grade, a retake is allowed.
Reading list
The reading list consists of articles or book chapters available through the library or that will be provided in Brightspace.
Registration
See 'Practical Information'
Timetable
See 'MyTimetable'