Pol 491: Advanced Undergraduate Research Seminar

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Pol 491 Advanced Undergraduate Research Seminar

• The Comparative Politics and Policy of Social
  Group Disadvantage
• S. L. Weldon

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Instructor

• S. Laurel Weldon
• PhD Pittsburgh 1999
• Research interests Comparative Social Policy,
  Violence Against Women, Feminist and Democratic
  Theory, anti-poverty policies
• weldon_at_polsci.purdue.edu
• BRNG 2232, MW 1130-1230

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What is Comparative Politics?

• Comparative political science seeks to examine
  variation in political outcomes across political
  units, through both empirical investigation and
  theory-building (developing an account or story
  about how politics happens)
• Comparative political analysis uses many
  different kinds of methods (case study, studies
  of large numbers of countries)

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What is Politics?

• "the activity through which relatively large and
  permanent groups of people determine what they
  will collectively do, settle how they will live
  together, and decide their future, to whatever
  extent this is within their power." (Pitkin)
• "the struggle over the resources and arrangements
  that set the terms of our practical and
  passionate relations. Preeminent among these
  arrangements is the formative institutional and
  imaginative context of social life." (Unger)

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What is Public Policy?

• Public policy is whatever governments choose to
  do or not to do (Dye, 1998, p.2)
• Public policy is a projected program of goals,
  values and practices (Lasswell et al)
• "a course of action or inaction pursued under the
  authority of government" (Heclo).
• Policy silences are policy

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What is a social group?

• Social group Structural social group A
  collective of people who are grouped together by
  the broader society because of ascriptive
  characteristics, a set of practices or way of
  life they are differentiated from at least one
  other group by these cultural forms

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What is social group disadvantage?

• Groups have historically been discriminated
  against in some arena
• systematically worse off across multiple arenas
  socially, economically, politically
• this condition persists into present
• negative meanings are assigned to group
  membership by broader society

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The Substance of The Class

• READ THE SYLLABUS
• pedagogical approach
• Books- copymat reader CQ reader
• Assignments
• reading and class participation
• comment cards
• tests (4)
• group research presentation
• policy research presentation and paper

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For next time

• Readings on Gender (See schedule)
• Start CORE modules
• Question?