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Maxwell / Department of Political Science

  • Department of Political Science

    The Department of Political Science is devoted to the study of politics and government, domestically and abroad. This includes the study of political institutions that exercise government authority, including legislatures, courts, and administrative agencies; political organizations through which individuals and groups seek to reshape the political landscape, including parties, interest groups, and social movements; public policies that reflect governmental efforts to regulate the actions of individuals and corporations, including civil rights, immigration, and environmental policy; and the interactions between and among nation-states and transnational organizations that shape patterns of trade and development, conflict and cooperation, war and peace.

    At the undergraduate level, political science majors will be exposed to political inquiry across a broad array of substantive topics, while also concentrating in one of the following areas: American Politics & History, Law & Politics, Political Economy, Political Participation & Mobilization, Global Governance & Foreign Policy, Political Violence & Conflict, Public Policy, Parties & Elections, Comparative Politics, Citizenship & Democracy, or Political Thought & Philosophy.

    At the graduate level, doctoral students receive broad training in quantitative and qualitative methods of social science research, while also concentrating in two of the following substantive fields: American Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Theory, Public Administration & Policy, Law & Courts, or Security Studies.

  • Commitment to Inclusion

    The Maxwell School stands in support of all who are demanding change in the face of racism, violence, and hate speech. We are committed to making our school, our university, and our communities more inclusive and just for all.

    There is absolutely no place for behavior or language that degrades any individual or group’s race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability, or religious beliefs.

  • Upcoming Events RSS Feed

    Due to public health concerns around COVID-19, all in-person public events are postponed or canceled until further notice.

  • Political Science News

    Gadarian speaks to ABC News about partisanship and people's behaviors

    "We've been talking to the same [3,000] Americans since early March, every six weeks or so," says Shana Gadarian. "We had a sense that people would vary on policy beliefs based on their partisanship. What was unexpected was the big, huge difference in health behaviors — like the change in how much they're washing their hands and whether or not they stopped going to social events and whether they were staying home more," she says. Read more in the ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) article, "Coronavirus is the 2020 US election issue. But it's not changing the way Americans see Donald Trump."

     

    Keck comments on priority of the Supreme Court in 2020 election in SBG

    "The Republican base has been more focused on that issue [Supreme Court] than the Democratic base has from Reagan forward, roughly," says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics. "There’s some evidence that that’s shifting." Keck was interviewed for the Sinclair Broadcast Group article, "As Trump spotlights judicial nominations, Biden offers little insight on his plans."

     

    Jackson discusses forced sterilizations, criminalization via Truthout

    News reports on Monday revealed that gynecologists in an immigrant jail in Georgia have performed high rates of hysterectomies, often without the full awareness of the immigrant women themselves. "The United States’s commitment to eugenics, medical abuse and forced sterilizations depicts the complex nature of perceived criminality in this country," writes Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science. "By marking certain people’s bodies as inherently evil, anti-patriotic and outside of the community of citizenship, the state casts a veil over the grave human rights infringements and institutional abuses it enacts against nonwhite, non-wealthy, non-male, non-normative people." Their article, "Forced Sterilization Is Nothing New to Criminalized People in the US," was published on Truthout.org.