Political Science

An introduction to crucial political issues of the day (e.g. globalization, migration, political violence, corruption, democracy, global justice, climate change, human rights, revolution, terrorism) and key concepts in Political Science. Students will develop techniques of critical reading and analytic essay writing. Topics will vary by semester and professor.

This course examines the institutional foundations and principles of Canadian government, and the social, cultural, and historical factors that shape its politics. Topics covered are the Canadian constitution, the executive, parliament, the public service, the federal system, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the courts, political parties, the electoral system, interest groups, social movements, Quebec nationalism, and aboriginal self-determination.
Area of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics

This course examines different approaches to international relations, the characteristics of the international system, and the factors that motivate foreign policies.
Area of Focus: International Relations

This course examines the historical and current impact of the international order on the development prospects and politics of less developed countries. Topics include colonial conquest, multi-national investment, the debt crisis and globalization. The course focuses on the effects of these international factors on domestic power structures, the urban and rural poor, and the environment.
Area of Focus: Comparative Politics

This course explores the origins of modern political institutions in Europe through an examination of revolutions, democracy, and authoritarianism in Europe since 1789. Specific case studies include the French Revolution, democratization in Britain and Spain, the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
Area of Focus: Comparative Politics

In this course, students learn to apply data analysis techniques to examples drawn from political science and public policy. Students will learn to complete original analyses using quantitative techniques commonly employed by political scientists to study public opinion and government policies. Rather than stressing mathematical concepts, the emphasis of the course will be on the application and interpretation of the data as students learn to communicate their results through papers and/or presentations.

Why do some citizens vote when others do not? What motivates voters? This course reviews theories of voting behaviour, the social and psychological bases of such behaviour, and how candidate and party campaigns influence the vote. By applying quantitative methods introduced in STAB23H3 or other courses on statistical methods, students will complete assignments examining voter behaviour in recent Canadian and/or foreign elections using survey data and election returns.
Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics; Comparative Politics

This course explores the structure, role and key issues associated with the Canadian judicial system. The first section provides the key context and history associated with Canada’s court system. The second section discusses the role the courts have played in the evolution of the Canadian constitution and politics – with a particular focus on the Supreme Court of Canada. The final section analyzes some of the key debates and issues related to the courts in Canada, including their democratic nature, function in establishing public policy and protection of civil liberties.
Area of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics

This course will explore how the world of criminal justice intersects with the world of politics. Beginning with a history of the “punitive turn” in the criminal justice policy of the late 1970s, this course will look at the major political issues in criminal justice today. Topics studied will include the constitutional context for legislating the criminal and quasi-criminal law, race and class in criminal justice, Canada’s Indigenous peoples and the criminal justice system, the growth of restorative justice, drug prohibition and reform, the value of incarceration, and white-collar crime and organizational liability. More broadly, the class aims to cover why crime continues to be a major political issue in Canada and the different approaches to addressing its control.

Area of focus: Comparative Politics

This course examines theoretical debates about the extent of moral and political obligations to non-citizens. Topics include human rights, immigration, global poverty, development, terrorism, and just war.
Area of Focus: Political Theory

This course examines the interaction between law, courts, and politics in countries throughout the world. We begin by critically examining the (alleged) functions of courts: to provide for “order,” resolve disputes, and to enforce legal norms. We then turn to examine the conditions under which high courts have expand their powers by weighing into contentious policy areas and sometimes empower individuals with new rights. We analyze case studies from democracies, transitioning regimes, and authoritarian states.

Topics will vary depending on the regional interests and expertise of the Instructor.
Area of Focus: Comparative Politics

This course examines relations between provincial and federal governments in Canada, and how they have been shaped by the nature of Canada's society and economy, judicial review, constitutional amendment, and regionalisation and globalization. The legitimacy and performance of the federal system are appraised. Lecture-seminar format.
Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics; Public Policy

This course examines intergovernmental relations in various areas of public policy and their effects on policy outcomes. It evaluates how federalism affects the capacity of Canadians to secure desirable social, economic, environmental and trade policies. Lecture-seminar format.
Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics; Public Policy

Who are we as a people today? What role have consecutive vice regals played in more than 400 years of shaping our nation and its institutions? This course examines how the vice regal position in general, and how selected representatives in particular, have shaped Canada’s political system
Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics

This course will investigate the development of Canadian constitutional law under the Constitution Act of 1982 and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Specific topics include criminal rights, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, equality rights, and aboriginal rights.
Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics; Public Policy

This course introduces students to central concepts in political theory, such as justice, rights, and the state. Readings will include classical and medieval texts, such as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics.
Area of Focus: Political Theory

The course investigates the concept of political liberty in various traditions of political thought, especially liberalism, republicanism, and Marxism.  The course will investigate key studies by such theorists as Berlin, Taylor, Skinner, Pettit, and Cohen, as well as historical texts by Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, Constant, Marx, and Mill.
Area of Focus: Political Theory

This course is a study of the major political philosophers of the twentieth century. The theorists covered will vary from year to year.
Area of Focus: Political Theory

This course examines the challenges and contributions of feminist political thought to the core concepts of political theory, such as rights, citizenship, democracy, and social movements. It analyzes the history of feminist political thought, and the varieties of contemporary feminist thought, including: liberal, socialist, radical, intersectional, and postcolonial.
Area of Focus: Political Theory

This course examines the foreign policy of the United States by analyzing its context and application to a specific region, regions or contemporary problems in the world.
Areas of Focus: International Relations; Public Policy; Comparative Politics

Traditional International Relations Theory has concentrated on relations between states, either failing to discuss, or missing the complexities of important issues such as terrorism, the role of women, proliferation, globalization of the world economy, and many others. This course serves as an introduction to these issues - and how international relations theory is adapting in order to cover them.
Area of Focus: International Relations

This course explores the origins of Latin America's cycles of brutal dictatorship and democratic rule. It examines critically the assumption that Latin American countries have made the transition to democratic government.
Area of Focus: Comparative Politics

This course focuses on selected policy issues in the United States.
Areas of Focus: Comparative Politics; Public Policy

This course examines the origins of, and political dynamics within, states in the contemporary Middle East. The first part of the course analyses states and state formation in historical perspective - examining the legacies of the late Ottoman and, in particular, the colonial period, the rise of monarchical states, the emergence of various forms of "ethnic" and/or "quasi" democracies, the onset of "revolutions from above", and the consolidation of populist authoritarian states. The second part of the course examines the resilience of the predominantly authoritarian state system in the wake of socio-economic and political reform processes.
Area of Focus: Comparative Politics

The course explains why financial markets exist, and their evolution, by looking at the agents, actors and institutions which generate demand for them. We also consider the consequences of increasingly integrated markets, the causes of systemic financial crises, as well as the implications and feasibility of regulation.
Area of Focus: International Relations

This course provides an opportunity to design and carry out individual or small-group research on a political topic. After class readings on the topic under study, research methods and design, and research ethics, students enter "the field" in Toronto. The seminar provides a series of opportunities to present and discuss their unfolding research.

This course explores the internationalization of ethnic conflict and the international drivers of civil war. It covers diaspora politics, contagion and demonstration effects, regional security complexes, separatism and irredentism, and the use of sanctions and international interventions. The class involves discussions, problem-solving exercises, and teamwork.
Area of Focus: International Relations

This course examines how law both constitutes and regulates global business. Focusing on Canada and the role of Canadian companies within a global economy, the course introduces foundational concepts of business law, considering how the state makes markets by bestowing legal personality on corporations and facilitating private exchange. The course then turns to examine multinational businesses and the laws that regulate these cross-border actors, including international law, extra-territorial national law, and private and hybrid governance tools. Using real-world examples from court decisions and business case studies, students will explore some of the “governance gaps” produced by the globalization of business and engage directly with the tensions that can emerge between legal, ethical, and strategic demands on multinational business.

Area of Focus: International Relations

Topics and area of focus will vary depending on the instructor, and may include global perspectives on social and economic rights, judicial and constitutional politics in diverse states and human rights law in Canada.

This seminar based course examines how legal institutions and legal ideologies influence efforts to produce or prevent social change. The course will analyze court-initiated action as well as social actions “from below” (social movements) with comparative case studies.

Area of Focus: Comparative Politics

This course examines the interrelationship between organized interests, social movements and the state in the formulation and implementation of public policy in Canada and selected other countries.
Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics; Public Policy

Immigration has played a central role in Canada's development. This course explores how policies aimed at regulating migration have both reflected and helped construct conceptions of Canadian national identity. We will pay particular attention to the politics of immigration policy-making, focusing on the role of the state and social actors.
Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics; Public Policy

This seminar provides an in-depth examination of the politics of inequality in Canada, and the role of the Canadian political-institutional framework in contributing to political, social and economic (in)equality. The focus will be on diagnosing how Canada’s political institutions variously impede and promote equitable treatment of different groups of Canadians (such as First Nations, women, racial and minority groups) and the feasibility of possible institutional and policy reforms to promote goals of social and economic equity.
Area of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics

This course examines the recent rise of ethnic nationalism in western liberal democracies, with a particular focus on the US, Canada, UK and France. It discusses the different perspectives on what is behind the rise of nationalism and populism, including economic inequality, antipathy with government, immigration, the role of political culture and social media.

Areas of Focus: Canadian Government and Politics

This course critically examines the relationship between politics, rationality, and public policy-making. The first half of the course surveys dominant rational actor models, critiques of these approaches, and alternative perspectives. The second half of the course explores pathological policy outcomes, arrived at through otherwise rational procedures.
Areas of Focus: Comparative Politics; Political Theory; Public Policy

This seminar course is intended for students interested in deepening their understanding of methodological issues that arise in the study of politics or advanced research techniques.

Examines the challenges faced by humanity in dealing with global environmental problems and the politics of addressing them. Focuses on both the underlying factors that shape the politics of global environmental problems - such as scientific uncertainty, North-South conflict, and globalization - and explores attempts at the governance of specific environmental issues.
Area of Focus: International Relations

This course examines contentious politics from a comparative perspective, beginning with the foundational theories of Charles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow, and Doug McAdam. It explores questions such as why people protest, how they organize, and the outcomes of contention. The second half of the course challenges students to examine popular contention across a range of states in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. It asks students to interrogate the applicability of the dynamics of contention framework to illiberal states in a comparative context.
Area of Focus: Comparative Politics

Topics vary according to instructor.
Area of Focus: Comparative Politics