Citizenship: Voting, Representation, and Parties

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This class is dedicated to helping you develop your views on some of the ethical issues related to citizenship in sovereign/territorial states. Our focus will be on representative democracies like the United States, but many of the issues we will analyze and discuss have broad application. We will have five debates, each focused on one of the following questions: 1. Should citizens vote? 2. Should it be relatively easy to become a citizen? 3. Are political parties good? 4. Which voting procedure should representative democracies deploy in their legislatures? 5. Should only public funds be used for political campaigns? Much of the class will be dedicated to exploring different answers to these questions. Since many great philosophers of the past give persuasive answers to these questions, and our current thinking is indebted to them in many ways, we will spend some of our time studying their views. For instance, we will consider the views of James Madison on the influence of political parties. Nonetheless, our focus will not be on history for its own sake.