POL 4403W is also offered in Spring 2025
POL 4403W is also offered in Spring 2023
Spring 2025 | POL 4403W Section 001: Constitutions, Democracy, and Rights: Comparative Perspectives (64895)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Class Attributes:
UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement
- Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
Tue,
Thu 02:30PM - 03:45PM
UMTC, West Bank
- Enrollment Status:
Open (0 of 58 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Around the world, fundamental political questions are often debated and decided in constitutional terms, and in the United States, the constitution is invoked at almost every turn to endorse or condemn different policies. Is adhering to constitutional terms the best way to safeguard rights and to achieve a successful democracy? When and how do constitutions matter to political outcomes? This course centers on these questions as it moves from debates over how constitutional drafting processes should be structured and how detailed constitutions should be, to the risks and benefits of different institutional structures (federal v. unitary, and the distribution of powers between the executive, legislature, and judiciary), to which rights (if any) should be constitutionalized and when and why different rights are protected, closing with a discussion of what rules should guide constitutional amendment and rewrite. For each topic, we compare how these issues have been resolved in the U.S. with alternative approaches in a wide variety of other countries around the globe. The goal is not only to expose students to the variety of ways, successful or unsuccessful, that other political communities have addressed these issues, but also to gain a more contextualized and clearer understanding of the pros and cons of the U.S. model, its relevance for other democratic or democratizing countries, whether and how it might be reformed, and, generally speaking, when/how constitutions matter for democratic quality and stability.
- Class Description:
- Around the world, fundamental political questions are often debated and decided in constitutional terms, and in the United States, the constitution is invoked at almost every turn to endorse or condemn different policies. Is adhering to constitutional terms the best way to safeguard rights and to achieve a successful democracy? When and how do constitutions matter to political outcomes? This course centers on these questions as it moves from empirically-informed debates over how constitutional drafting processes should be structured and how detailed constitutions should be, to the risks and benefits of different institutional structures(federal v. unitary, and the distribution of powers between the executive, legislature, and judiciary), to which rights (if any) should be constitutionalized and when and why different rights are protected in practice, closing with a discussion of what rules should guide constitutional amendment and rewrite. For each topic, we compare how these issues have been resolved in the U.S. with alternative approaches in a wide variety of other countries around the globe, paying particular attention to how constitutional design matters for women, indigenous peoples, and racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. The goal is not only to expose students to the variety of ways, successful or unsuccessful, that other political communities have addressed these issues, but also to gain a more contextualized and clearer understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. model, whether and how it might be reformed, and, generally speaking, when/how constitutions matter for democratic quality and stability.
- Grading:
50% Reports/Papers
10% Final Group Activity
20% Class Participation
20% Quizzes
Other Grading Information: Some quizzes will be in the form of take-home questions. All quizzes will check for reading/reading comprehension.
- Class Format:
- 50% Lecture
30% Discussion
20% Small Group Activities
- Workload:
- 15 Pages Writing Per Term
1 Exam(s)
1 Paper(s)
10 Quiz(zes)
Other Workload: The paper assignment will be cumulative, with the various steps in the research and writing process due across the term, and the final, polished version due during finals week.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/64895/1253
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 29 April 2022
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2025 Political Science Classes