Seminar in Political Economy

3 units

This research seminar will introduce the student to recent work on the political economy of democracy. We shall start with a historical account of the development of democratic institutions in Britain and the United States, and then continue with recent work on modeling elections. We shall compare elections in countries that make use of proportional electoral systems, such as Israel, with those like the United States and Britain that are highly majoritarian. Finally we shall discuss the forces of democratization and globalization. The required work for the seminar is a research paper approximately 20pp (double spaced) in length.