DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

OLMA Graduate Course Offerings

Spring 2007

Course No.	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Day/Time
5115	14713	Research Methods	Monroe	ONLINE COURSE
* The purposes, problems, and strategies of political science research, emphasizing concept and hypothesis formulation, operationalization, research design, data collection techniques, data processing, and multivariate data analysis.
5324	16083	The Executive Branch	Nickel	ONLINE COURSE
This seminar will explore executive branch actors (e.g., chief executives, political appointees, career officials) as they participate in governing.Its focus will be on the national and, to a lesser extent, the state levels of U.S. government, although other national settings also will be considered.Among the topics covered will be presidential and gubernatorial strategies for pursuing their political and policy goals; relationships among chief executives, their political appointees, and career officials; the interplay among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches; and the permeability of the Executive branch to interest groups, the media, and public opinion. Although considerable attention will be paid to untangling and making sense of empirical relationships and effects, the implications for key values like government capacity, responsiveness, and accountability also will be highlighted.Students will be encouraged to focus on specific issues of their choice.
5334	16084	The Judicial Branch	Atkins	ONLINE COURSE
* The American judicial system including recruitment of personnel, uses of the courts, judicial policy, relations with other branches, judicial behavior, and the impact of court decisions. (3H,3C).
5364	14716	Public Ecology	Robertson	ONLINE COURSE
Each year millions of people worldwide participate in thousands of public ecology projects. Public ecology is a distinctive approach to understanding and managing human ecosystems. It includes the theory and practice of civic environmentalism, community-based conservation, collaborative natural resource management, and related innovations in participatory environmental governance and sustainable development. Public ecology exists at the confluence of three major currents shaping the contemporary environmental arena: 1) the need for local communities to coalesce and use local knowledge and local action to address local concerns; 2) the need for dialogue and collaboration across the many disciplinary, professional, political, cultural, and other institutional boundaries that divide environmentally concerned scientists, policy-makers, and citizens; and 3) the need for a common vision of nature and human society that encourages people to create healthy human ecosystems and sustainable, livable communities at local, regional, and global scales. This course examines the history, current status, and future prospects of public ecology. In addition, this course has a service-learning component in that it will help 1) advance the art and science (theory and practice) of public ecology and 2) unify and empower public ecologists and public ecology projects worldwide.
5374	14717	Electronic Governance	Seifert	ONLINE COURSE
E-government is often described as the future of governance.For some this means improved efficiency and better services.For others it represents the erosion of citizenship and the commodification of government.With these competing perspectives in mind, and everything in between, this course will examine e-government as one of the most central tools of government reform today.We will look at e-government from both the point of view of governments as well as citizens.We will also look at e-government as an activity that is taking place at the local, state, and national levels, both in the United States and abroad. The course will begin with a review of e-government's origin in the efforts to "reinvent government" in the mid-1990s and considers what constitutes e-government today. This will be followed by a survey of topics including the relationship between e-government and e-democracy, government management techniques, and the blurring roles of government and business in society. We will also examine a variety of public policy issues related to e-government including privacy, the digital divide, information security, Internet voting, and others. Course assignments include participating in weekly online, asynchronous class discussions; writing a brief (5-7 pages) position paper on a current issue provided by the instructor; and writing an in-depth analysis/research paper (20 pages). Students are encouraged to contact the instructor with any questions at seifert@vt.edu
5484	14722	Contemporary American Foreign Policy	Pourchot	ONLINE COURSE
This course is an introduction to the fundamental themes in U.S. foreign policy after World War II.Between the physical survival of the nation to the preservation of "the American Way" and its economic well being.American foreign policy after World War II displays remarkable continuity in the pursuit of "the national interest".The course is designed to identify: l. basic assumptions held by U.S. policymakers about the country's national and international interests at various historical junctures; 2. policy strategies in pursuit of perceived interests; 3. domestic influences on the conduct of foreign policy; 4. policy implementation and resulting effects on the national and international arenas.A parallel goal of the course is to sensitize students to the differences between what the country's policy makers believed in and acted upon, and what critics thought the country's policy makers believed in and acted upon.Memoirs and official documents offer a wealth of research materials that point to important and sometimes fundamental differences in the interpretation of American foreign policy goals domestically, and abroad. The course covers U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, the stalemate with the Soviet Union, armament and arms control, containment and deterrence, detente and Reaganism, and the end of the Cold War.Events between 1989 to the present day will be briefly discussed, while foreign policy after 9/11 will be the subject of an advanced American Foreign Policy course.The course is designed for students with an interest in foreign policy and global affairs.
5514	14723	Global Security	Pourchot	ONLINE COURSE
"Security" in general and "global security" in particular are two essentially intertwined and contested concepts in international relations. They are intertwined because in an interdependent global society, we cannot speak about local or national security without speaking of global security. Indeed, the linkages of state and civil society, economy and environment, government and marketplace raise fundamental issues about what is being "secured," and then where, how,and by whom? One need to think beyond traditional spatial registers, and look across a broader spectrum of "threats" at systemic techno-economic issues, like "personal security," "environmental security," "civil security,"or "bio-security." Events occurring in countries on the other side of the globe affect American security as much as events occurring in the United States affect the security of people all over the world.The concepts are contested because there is no single definition of either national security or global security that academics and practitioners agree on.As such, policy is often times the result of heated debates and few areas of agreement.In a world where one's "freedom fighter" is another's "terrorist", an act of self-defense is also an attack, and where the fight for scarce resources has not fully started, national and global security need to be conceptualized as two intertwined, mutually dependent concepts. This course is an advanced introduction to local, national and global security in the 21st century. It addresses traditional and modern threats and missions, including threats arising from poverty, discrimination, environmental degradation and lack of human rights.The course takes the perspective that understanding "the other side's story" is as crucial to security as it is to designing the appropriate response to a security threat. The assigned readings therefore cover an ample cultural gambit in an attempt to give students of security studies various perspectives over 21st century threats and missions.

5894	14725	Final Examination	Luke	ONLINE COURSE
5974	14727	Independent Study	Luke	ONLINE COURSE
5994	14730	Research and Thesis	Luke	ONLINE COURSE

* Description taken from the Graduate Catalogue.