SEMINARS FALL 2009
HONR209J Why Is It So Hard To Have Good Government?
Tuesday/Thursday 11 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Professor Joe A. Oppenheimer, Department of Government and Politics
Professor Oppenheimer is a recipient of the Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award and the Departmental Excellence in Teaching Award: "My courses attempt to help students differentiate between justified arguments which can be corrected, and the propagandistic claims which surround the student of politics. My aim is to help students stand as independent judges of their political environment: armed with reason, some comprehension of the necessary tools of analysis, and a willingness to implement their values critically. To do this, I place a strong emphasis on my work with individual undergraduate students." Joe A Oppenheimer
In most corners of the globe, people are downtrodden and their politicians prosper. People everywhere with sufficient money are usually able to satisfy their private needs quite easily: just go to the super market and plop down your credit card. Not so for their collective needs: security, good schools, and clean environments. What makes politics such a hard and deadly game for the people to win? Must it be so, and if not, what can we do about it? That is the pursuit of this course.
We will examine in depth just a few small puzzles which have been solved since, and in part because of, John Nash's contributions to game theory (A Beautiful Mind). We will complement these with readings about the political and the specific questions we will explore include: Why do we need political institutions at all? What is the responsibility of a citizen? How do property rights and the distribution of income and wealth limit what we can expect as outcomes from our political institutions? Can we achieve social justice, and if so, how? What problems exist when we apply our normal notions of ethics to politics?
The course involves two types of reading: theoretical and case oriented.
The theoretical readings cover material that has won a number of Nobel
Prizes in Economics over the last 20 years; and our approach includes
materials from political science, economics, sociology, and political
philosophy, which will help us obtain general answers to questions about
politics and government.
CORE: Behavioral & Social Science [SB]
