A Legislative Case Study Assignment

In an article entitled “Teaching the Congress and Legislative Process Courses,” L. Sandy Maisel found by examining the syllabi of such courses that about half of them involved legislative case study assignments. He suggested that further exploration of these assignments would be appropriate. Since students are so commonly required to do case studies of bills in legislative courses, a description of this type of assignment and discussion of how to implement it would be useful. In this paper, I will cover my use of this type of assignment in a course on the legislative process. In describing this legislative case study requirement, sections on background information, the case study assignment, and student reaction to the assignment, together with a brief conclusion, will be presented.

Teaching Campaign Finance with Federal Election Commission Resources

Many Political Science courses include sections on campaign finance activity. Courses on Congress and on the Presidency may include sections on the financing of elections for these offices, and courses on campaigns and elections will probably cover campaign finance. In addition, courses on interest groups and on parties may include sections that focus on the activities of these actors in financing campaigns for public office.The Federal Election Commission can provide an assortment of materials that may be useful in teaching about campaign finance. Some of these materials are most useful as sources of data for lecture preparation, while other offerings can be used as part of student projects or papers. In the sections below, these materials will be described, and some classroom uses will be suggested.

Using the Concept "Development" to Teach Contemporary Issues

Why don't political science teachers teach their students about many of the important policy issues that political systems face today? Why is it uncommon in undergraduate political science classes to find discussions of the population explosion and famine in the Third World, and of acid rain and toxic wastes in the First and Second worlds? Why aren't our students knowledgeable about the arguments for and against nuclear power and acquainted with the problems the world faces as it moves from a reliance on oil to a reliance on renewable fuels? And why do we often ignore such awesome issues as those connected with the greenhouse effect and nuclear war? I believe that the answer to these questions is that political science teachers often don't know how to deal with these subjects in a respected, scholarly way — in a manner that will prevent the class from just becoming a forum for the discussion of current events. I believe also that we have a concept — development — which can serve as the necessary tool we need to allow us to approach these issues in a responsible manner.

American Government

Most instructors burdened with the sometimes thankless task of teaching an introductory survey course in American government wince at the suggestion that their class is somehow a primer in current affairs. No wonder, for most of us who teach that introductory course expend a great deal of effort to ensure that our readings, our lectures, and our class discussion carefully delineate the difference between political science and political speculation.Yet I fear many of us are so cautious that we wind up throwing the baby out with the bath water. The vast majority of students in our survey courses will not go on to graduate school in political science; indeed, at many institutions, the majority of enrollees in the introductory class may not even be political science majors. Most will become bankers, lawyers, scientists, engineers — in short, “ordinary” citizens rather than full-time, professional observers of politics. In strikes me that the greatest legacy the survey course can provide these students is an inclination to think twice about politics —an appreciation that politics and political choices are rarely as simple or straightforward as they seem in headlines.

Simulating the Politburo

For the spring semester of 1986 I designed a seminar on the problems of contemporary Soviet society that would give students a different perspective on the dynamics of decision- making in the USSR. The class, which met once a week for fifteen weeks, culminated in a series of Politburo meetings during which students acted as key Politburo members and considered proposals for reform submitted to them by specialists from various branches of the soviet government.The idea for such an exercise came to me after reading Douglas W. Simon's recent article in News for Teachers of Political Science about a National Security Council simulation he conducted at Drew University. I felt the most crucial difficulty with a Politburo simulation as opposed to the NSC simulation would be the paucity of reliable and detailed information on sessions of the Politburo.

Clusters of Power and Influence in American Society

In teaching political science courses in American government, public policy, and public administration, students have considerable difficulty in conceptualizing the complexity of the two essential values of democratic capitalism.Those values are equality, espousing the values of democracy, and efficiency, depicting the rationale of capitalism.The purpose of this brief essay is to conceptualize more clearly the setting of the infrastructure of public and private relations in the United States. These clusters of power and influence will enable students to comprehend more easily the dynamics of political economy in the United States.

Introducing Students to Locke and Madison

The first half of my Introduction to Political Science course deals with normative theory, in particular the theories underlying the American method of organizing a polity. I agree with C.B. MacPherson that Locke's Second Treatise provided the “title deeds” of the liberal state and is a crucial part of American thinking on politics, the individual, and the state. Madison's Federalist #10 is an extension of Locke into the practical matters of organizing a new constitution. This essay describes the classroom use of games, lecture and discussion to introduce students to these theorists.The course begins with Madison, mainly because students can understand and apply the concepts of the entire argument much more quickly. The successful use of games and exercises in the classroom requires an immediate start to student participation, an active expectation of student roles in the course. Two hours of class time is sufficient to discuss and review Madison's argument. Time is spent on its implications for the role of the individual, the state, and the dynamics of politics.

A Note to Students About C-SPAN

The courses outlined below are designed to analyze various aspects of the American political process utilizing the capabilities of C-SPAN, the cable coverage of the U.S. Congress. Before exclaiming “Gee, goody, we get to watch T.V.,” a few words of explanation are necessary. Until recently, most students of public policy and particularly the Congress were limited to studying it from afar. Woodrow Wilson wrote his classic book Congressional Government (1888) without ever coming to Washington D.C. Many contemporary scholars and journalists interview the participants in the political process and rely on written records, but most cannot base their research on viewing Congress in action. The serious student has had to rely on selective and limited news coverage or wait for a number of years while a select group of events percolated through the academic publishing process to become part of “the literature”. Students often come away from political science courses with the impression that the discipline is solely retrospective and lack a feeling for how the tools of political science can be applied to the here and now.