FUNDAMENTALS OF POLITICAL ANALYSIS
Political Science D01-1

Fall, 1978
Mr. Janda

This course is required of all first-year graduate students in the department. It serves as an orientation to political science as a discipline and to our program of advanced study for the Ph.D degree at Northwestern. More concretely, the course will survey the major approaches to the study of political phenomena, examine the basic information sources available to aid research, inquire into the salient issues confronting political science as a social science, review basic principles in the philosophy of science in the context of political research, and--primarily--stress the construction of political theory.

Naturally, it is impossible to treat all the above topics thoroughly in a one-quarter course, but it is a glorious challenge which should repay its takers in direct proportion to their vigor in pursuing it. Without doubt, some students will be better prepared for this course than others, and the topics will certainly vary in familiarity for all of you. In the past, virtually every student has had some problem with one or more aspects of the course during the quarter. Unless you are singularly gifted and need no special help from me, I will expect you to seek me out in my office whenever you encounter trouble.

A special function of this course is to stimulate and structure your thinking about fulfilling the departmental requirement for an original paper from all first-year students. The three brief papers (described below) to be submitted in the course will be assigned with this end in view. There will also be an exam on November 15.

The required texts are available only at the Great Expectations bookstore, 911 Foster Street. They are:

Hempel, Carl G. Philosophv of Natural Science. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

 

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Collier Books, 1962. (Any other edition with Parts I and II will be satisfactory.)

 

Frohock, Fred M. Normative Political Theory. Englewood Cliffs: New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

 

Burnstein, Richard J. The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978.

 

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

 

Meadows, Donella H. et al., The Limits to Growth. New York: New American Library, 1974.

 

Chafetz, Janet Saltzman. A Primer on the Construction and Testing of Theories in Sociology. Itasca: Illinois: Peacock, 1976

 

Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley Interscience, 1970

 

Greenstein, Fred I. and Nelson W. Polsby (eds.), Handbook of Political Science, Volume I: Political Science: Scope and Theory. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1975.

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