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Course syllabus

Introduction to Political Science — Syllabus

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Introduction to Political Science is a 3-unit, lower-division undergraduate course offered at [Institution] in [Term]. The class meets in person twice a week for about 75 minutes each time: [Meeting days/times].

This syllabus is the governing document for the course. It tells you what the course is, how your grade is built, what happens each week, and the policies you can count on. Weeks are numbered from Week 1 to Week 16; your instructor's course site gives the due date for each item.

Instructor and Contact

  • Instructor: [Instructor name]
  • Contact: [Contact info]
  • Office hours: [Office hours]

Bring a specific question to office hours, such as a claim you cannot sort as empirical or normative, or a thinker whose argument keeps sliding into another's, and reach out early: a question asked in the week it comes up is far easier to answer than one saved for exam week. Check the course announcements at the start of each week.

Course Description

This is the one-semester survey of the whole discipline, open to students in every major with no prerequisite. It introduces political science's five subfields (political theory and philosophy, comparative politics, international relations, American government, and political methodology) and teaches you to think like a political scientist: applying a defined concept to a case, taking an argument apart into its claim, premises, and assumptions, asking what a document or a dataset shows and what it does not, comparing cases on defined dimensions, and keeping empirical claims (what is) apart from normative claims (what ought to be).

The course moves in a clear arc. It opens with the discipline and its tools, then the core concepts of power, authority, legitimacy, and the state, including Weber's types of authority and the social-contract answers of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Next come the ideas people argue over: the major ideologies, and the normative theories of justice, liberty, and equality, with Mill's harm principle and the contrasting accounts of Rawls and Nozick. The course then turns to the forms government takes, from regime types to constitutions and the rule of law, and to the machinery of legislatures and executives, with the midterm as a checkpoint in Week 8. The second half takes up judiciaries and judicial review, the United States as one case of the survey's concepts, parties, elections, and voting systems, public opinion and the media, the comparative method, and the world stage: international relations, political economy, and global issues.

Two habits carry the whole course. Every applied example ends by naming the kind of each claim, empirical or normative, and, for an institution, the layer it is on: design (what the rules say), practice (what actually happens), or verdict (what ought to happen). Every time you read a figure, you ask what is measured, over what population and period, what it shows and does not show, and whether it is a correlation or a cause. You work from real, pinned sources: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, The Federalist, the U.N. Charter, short excerpts from classic works of political theory, three landmark court cases, and real election, polling, governance, and poverty data, each with its source and year.

This is a broad survey, not an American Government, International Relations, Political Theory, or Comparative Politics course; those are the follow-on courses it prepares you for. It is also not a statistics course. The data work is conceptual, with arithmetic no harder than dividing a vote count by a divisor or estimating a poll's margin of error.

A note on contested questions

Political science is full of questions on which thoughtful people disagree. Where they do, the course presents the strongest case for each position, attributes it to the people who hold it, and hands the conclusion back to you. Well-documented facts, such as an institution's design, the text or holding of a court case, a completed election's official result, or a published index value, are stated plainly and are not treated as matters of opinion. No living politician, current officeholder, or current candidate appears in any example, and no material advocates a party, an ideology, or a policy. The course's perennial questions include these:

  • Is democracy always best? Defenders argue that democracy rests on the consent of the governed, makes rulers answer to the people, lets a society remove its leaders without violence, and protects the rights that make free debate possible. Skeptics ask by what measure "best" is judged, and point out that majorities can err or override minorities, that decisions can be slow, and that voters have limited time to inform themselves.
  • How should liberty and equality be balanced? Rawls argues that justice permits social and economic inequalities only when they are attached to positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity and work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. Nozick answers that a distribution is fair when everything in it was acquired and transferred justly, and that only a minimal state protecting life, liberty, property, and contract can be justified. Both start from individual rights; they split on whether justice is judged by outcomes or by process.
  • Parliamentary or presidential? The case against presidential systems holds that a fixed term makes government rigid, that a separately elected president and legislature can each claim a democratic mandate, and that winner-take-all stakes raise the cost of losing. The reply holds that a presidential system makes responsibility identifiable and adds checks on power.
  • Does judicial review strengthen or weaken democracy? Defenders see a constitution as a precommitment the people made in advance and the courts as protectors of minorities against passing majorities. Critics see unelected judges overriding laws passed by elected representatives, which the field calls the counter-majoritarian difficulty.
  • Plurality or proportional representation? Plurality rules give each district its own representative and tend to produce single-party governments that voters can identify and hold to account. Proportional rules give parties seats roughly in line with their shares of the vote and let smaller parties win representation, at the cost of coalition bargaining after the election.
  • Realism or liberalism? Realists argue that, with no authority above states, each state must look to its own security and power, and order comes from the balance of power. Liberals argue that institutions, economic interdependence, and regime type make lasting cooperation possible. Constructivists add that anarchy does not dictate self-help on its own, because what it means depends on the ideas and identities states form in interaction.
  • Has globalization been a net good? Supporters point to the documented aggregate gains from trade and specialization. Critics point to the documented costs that fall hard on particular industries, regions, and workers. Both findings are real; the disagreement is over how to weigh them.

No grade depends on which view you hold. Your grade depends on stating each side accurately, stating the strongest opposing view charitably before you argue your own, keeping empirical claims apart from normative ones, and supporting what you conclude with evidence and reasons.

Required Materials

You buy no textbook and pay nothing for course materials. Every reading and video is a link to an external resource, opened from the week's page so you always reach the version the course teaches from. Beyond a web browser, you need:

  • Free archives and data sources: the weekly Political Analysis Workshop links the authoritative source it uses, such as the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, and Our World in Data. You open each one from its link; none costs anything.
  • A spreadsheet: Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet, for the Workshop steps that ask you to build a seat-allocation table or work out a poll's margin of error.
  • A free account with one approved AI chatbot, from the list in the AI-Use Policy below. A free tier is enough for everything in this course, and every AI-based activity also has a route that needs no AI at all.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course you will be able to:

  • Outcome A. Political analysis and source/data evaluation — source, place in its setting, close-read, and cross-check a political text (a founding document, theory excerpt, court case, treaty, or charter) and read and evaluate political data (polls, election results, governance indices), distinguishing what the evidence shows from what it does not.
  • Outcome B. Evidence-based political argument — construct and support a political thesis with relevant evidence and reasoning, distinguishing empirical from normative claims, while engaging the strongest opposing view with intellectual charity.

The eight course objectives below build toward those two outcomes. Each week's Start Here page names the objective that week serves and turns it into a short checklist of what you should be able to do by the end of the week.

  1. Describe the subfields and methods of political science — political theory and philosophy, comparative politics, international relations, American government, and political methodology — and analyze a political text or dataset with the discipline's core tools: concept application, argument analysis, evidence evaluation, the comparative method, and the empirical/normative distinction.
  2. Explain power, authority, legitimacy, and the state — Weber's types of authority, the criteria of statehood, sovereignty, and the social-contract answers of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau — and apply these concepts to real and hypothetical cases.
  3. Compare the major political ideologies and normative theories evenhandedly — liberalism, conservatism, socialism and its family, and the smaller families; justice, liberty, equality, and rights; the harm principle; Rawls and Nozick — stating each position in its strongest form and distinguishing empirical from normative claims.
  4. Compare regime types and constitutional structures — direct and representative, electoral and liberal democracy; authoritarian and totalitarian rule; democratization and backsliding; what constitutions do; the rule of law, separation of powers, and checks and balances.
  5. Analyze political institutions — legislatures, executives, and judiciaries — including the parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential designs, government formation and removal, judicial review and judicial independence, and the counter-majoritarian debate.
  6. Explain American government and political participation — federalism, separation of powers, and the U.S. Constitution as one case of the survey's concepts; parties, elections, and voting systems and their effects; public opinion, polling, political behavior, and the media — reading election and polling data for what it documents and what it does not settle.
  7. Apply the comparative method to political systems and political development — most-similar and most-different designs, state capacity, and the competing explanations of democratization — and read comparative-governance indices critically, with their edition and year.
  8. Explain the major theories of international relations — realism, liberalism, and constructivism — and the basics of the international system, international organizations and law, and global political economy, presenting competing theories and contested global questions evenhandedly and reading global data for what a measure and a line mean.

How this course works

Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so you can choose how to take it in. Each module's lecture page carries the week's explanation as one spoken-style walk-through as well.

A typical week runs in this order:

  1. Start Here. Open the week's module overview. It lists the week's items in order with time estimates and names the week's checkpoint, the one thing you should be able to do by the end of the week.
  2. Chapter (about 40 to 50 minutes). The week's primary reading. Read it first.
  3. Lecture page and slide deck (about 15 to 20 minutes for the lecture, plus time with the deck). The same ideas, explained aloud and in slides.
  4. Readings and videos. An optional go-deeper menu; every video has captions.
  5. Lecture tutorial (60 to 90 minutes). A one-on-one session with your chatbot that teaches, gives practice, and ends with a summary you submit.
  6. Practice set (about 20 minutes). Ungraded practice with a coach, at your own pace.
  7. Political Analysis Workshop (about 90 minutes). The week's idea put to work on one real source: you close-read a founding document, theory excerpt, court case, or charter, read a real dataset in a spreadsheet, or map an argument and state the strongest opposing view, and then catch and correct a slip your chatbot makes on the same analysis.
  8. Discussion (about 45 minutes) and assignment (60 to 90 minutes). Where you put the week's ideas to work on a real question.
  9. Quiz. A short auto-graded check of what you now know, taken on your own.

Week 8 is lighter: the chapter, lecture, slides, readings, practice set, and discussion, then the study guide, exam-prep tutorial, practice exam, and midterm. Its one piece of new material is the three-layer read: asking whether a claim about an institution is about its design (what the rules say), its practice (what actually happens), or a verdict (what ought to happen). Week 16 has no new module; it holds the final exam and its study guide, practice exam, and exam-prep tutorial.

Grading

Your course grade is the weighted average of the six groups below. The weights sum to 100%.

Grading weight by assessment group
Component Weight
Tutorials & Practice 10%
Quizzes 10%
Workshops 20%
Assignments 25%
Discussions 15%
Exams 20%
Total 100%

What each group holds

  • Tutorials & Practice: the 14 weekly lecture tutorials, 5 points each. The practice sets sit beside them and are ungraded.
  • Quizzes: 14 weekly quizzes, 10 points each, in every module except Week 8.
  • Workshops: the 14 weekly Political Analysis Workshops, 50 points each, in every module except Week 8.
  • Assignments: 14 weekly assignments, 100 points each, in every module except Week 8.
  • Discussions: 15 weekly discussions, 10 points each, one in every module from Week 1 to Week 15.
  • Exams: the midterm in Week 8 (50 points) and the cumulative final in Week 16 (100 points).

Each week's discussion and assignment ship in two versions. The adaptive version is published and graded by default. A traditional version that uses no AI is also in the module, unpublished; your instructor may publish it instead. An unpublished version does not appear to you and does not count. A published traditional version takes the adaptive one's place in the same group, for the same points.

Letter grades follow the standard scheme:

Letter grade by final course percentage
Letter Percentage range
A 90–100
B 80–89
C 70–79
D 60–69
F below 60

Weekly Schedule

The course runs for sixteen weeks: fifteen weeks of modules and a finals week. Every module from Week 1 to Week 15 holds the same materials: the Start Here page, the chapter, the lecture page (titled "Lecture:" followed by the module's title), the slide deck, the readings and videos page, and the practice set. Every module also ships both an adaptive discussion and a traditional no-AI alternative, and every module except Week 8 ships both an adaptive assignment and a traditional no-AI alternative. The adaptive versions are graded and published; the traditional alternatives are unpublished by default and count only if your instructor publishes them instead.

Weekly focus, lecture page, published graded work, and unpublished traditional alternatives by week
Week Focus Lecture page Graded and published Traditional alternative (unpublished)
1 What Is Political Science? Subfields, Concepts & Methods Lecture: What Is Political Science? Subfields, Concepts & Methods Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
2 Power, Authority, Legitimacy & the State Lecture: Power, Authority, Legitimacy & the State Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
3 Political Ideologies Lecture: Political Ideologies Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
4 Political Theory & Philosophy Lecture: Political Theory & Philosophy Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
5 Forms of Government & Regime Types Lecture: Forms of Government & Regime Types Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
6 Constitutions, Constitutionalism & the Rule of Law Lecture: Constitutions, Constitutionalism & the Rule of Law Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
7 Political Institutions I: Legislatures & Executives Lecture: Political Institutions I: Legislatures & Executives Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
8 Midterm Review & Exam Lecture: Midterm Review & Exam Adaptive discussion, midterm exam Discussion
9 Political Institutions II: Judiciaries, Courts & Judicial Review Lecture: Political Institutions II: Judiciaries, Courts & Judicial Review Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
10 American Government & Politics: the U.S. Case Lecture: American Government & Politics: the U.S. Case Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
11 Political Participation: Parties, Elections & Voting Systems Lecture: Political Participation: Parties, Elections & Voting Systems Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
12 Public Opinion, Political Behavior & the Media Lecture: Public Opinion, Political Behavior & the Media Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
13 Comparative Politics Lecture: Comparative Politics Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
14 International Relations Lecture: International Relations Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
15 Political Economy & Global Issues Lecture: Political Economy & Global Issues Tutorial, Political Analysis Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
16 Finals week (no module) None Final exam None

The midterm in Week 8 covers Weeks 1 to 7, which is Objectives 1 to 5 as taught in those weeks. The final in Week 16 is cumulative and draws on every course objective: the subfields, the toolkit, and the empirical/normative distinction (Objective 1), power, authority, legitimacy, the state, and the social contract (Objective 2), the ideologies and normative theory (Objective 3), regime types, constitutions, and the rule of law (Objective 4), legislatures, executives, and judiciaries (Objective 5), the U.S. case, parties, elections, voting systems, and public opinion (Objective 6), the comparative method and governance indices (Objective 7), and international relations, international law and organizations, and global political economy (Objective 8). Both exams come with a study guide, a practice exam, and an exam-prep tutorial you work with your chatbot.

Attendance and Participation

This course meets in person twice a week. Come to class having opened the week's Start Here page and read the chapter, because class time builds on that reading with texts, cases, data, and questions. Your participation also shows in your weekly work: the tutorial, the Political Analysis Workshop, the discussion, the assignment, and the quiz. Each week reads its cases through the concepts and the empirical/normative distinction taught in the weeks before it (you cannot weigh an election or an index until you own the concepts), so falling a week behind is the most common reason a grade slips; keep to the weekly rhythm and talk to your instructor the moment you feel lost. If you must miss class, follow the week's module from its Start Here page so you stay on pace.

Late Work

Late work loses 10% of the item's points for each day it is late. If something serious comes up, such as an illness or a family emergency, contact your instructor before the due date whenever you can so the two of you can agree on a fair plan. The penalty exists to keep the course moving, not to punish genuine hardship.

Academic Integrity

The work you submit must be your own, and you are bound by your institution's academic integrity standard. Do not copy another student's work, do not submit work you did not do, and do not misrepresent how a piece of work was produced. In a course built on sources, integrity also means honest sourcing: every quotation, court case, attribution, and figure you submit must trace to a real source you can name, and every quotation must match its source word for word. Three violations matter most in this course: presenting an invented quotation, court case, source, or statistic as real, including one a chatbot supplied; fabricating or doctoring a chatbot conversation or its share link; and using AI on the quizzes, the midterm, or the final. Violations are handled under your institution's academic integrity process and may result in no credit for the item.

Accessibility and Disability

This course is designed to reflect universal-design principles and offers multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression. If you have a disability and need an accommodation, contact your institution's disability services office to arrange it, and let your instructor know so it can be put in place promptly. If any material is hard to use with your assistive technology, tell your instructor and an equivalent version will be provided. Every table or chart a question refers to is described in words as well. This course is not yet accessibility-certified, and your feedback helps improve it. The course page Accessibility & Inclusion in Module 0 explains how the course offers multiple modes, how to turn on captions, and how to request an accommodation.

AI-Use Policy

This course uses an AI chatbot as a study partner, and then asks you to check its work against the source. Use any one of the approved chatbots: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, or Microsoft Copilot. Your instructor may edit this list. Free tiers are fine, and Copilot is often included with a campus Microsoft 365 account.

AI may be used on these activities:

  • Lecture tutorials (completed with a chatbot). Each week you work the tutorial in a conversation with an approved chatbot, then submit the conversation share link and your completion summary.
  • Practice sets (ungraded). You work the practice exercises with a chatbot coach.
  • Adaptive discussions (completed with a chatbot). You hold a real-time dialogue with an approved chatbot, then post the AI's summary with the conversation share link. This version does not require replies to classmates.
  • Adaptive assignments (AI-coached). You work the problems with a chatbot coach that scores your work against the assignment's rubric, then submit the self-scored report and the conversation share link.
  • Political Analysis Workshops (a required AI-critique step). After your own work, you ask your chatbot to do the same analysis, then catch, explain, and correct a slip in its answer against the pinned source, such as a fabricated quotation, an invented court case or holding, an invented source or statistic, an idea credited to the wrong thinker, partisan slant presented as fact, an oversimplified contested question, or an empirical claim blurred with a normative one.
  • Exam-prep tutorials and studying. Use AI freely to review, to check your understanding, and to prepare for the exams.

AI may not be used on the quizzes, the midterm, and the final. These are closed to AI and must be entirely your own work, because they confirm that you personally can apply the concepts, read a text or a dataset, and reason from evidence.

A chatbot is not a source. It can explain a term or quiz you on a thinker, but it routinely misquotes founding documents, swaps one thinker's ideas for another's, invents court cases with confident citations, rounds or swaps election figures, and quietly picks a winner on a contested question. Every quotation, case, attribution, and figure you submit must trace to a real source, checked by you.

If your instructor publishes a traditional alternative. A traditional discussion is your own post and your own replies to classmates; a traditional assignment is your own submitted work, graded by your instructor. AI may help you think, but you write and submit the work yourself.

Disclosure. The share link documents your AI use on the AI-based activities, so they need no separate note. For any other graded work where AI help is allowed, add one line naming the tool and how you used it.

Bring your own AI: access, cost, and privacy

  • Equity and a non-AI route. You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to complete this course or to reach any grade in it. Every AI-based activity in this course carries an Equivalent route (no AI required) on its own page. It assesses the same objectives, for the same points, against the same rubric. Take it whenever you like, for any reason or none; you do not have to ask permission, explain, or arrange it in advance.
  • Cost. A free tier of any approved chatbot covers everything in this course. No graded work depends on a paid subscription.
  • Privacy. Before you start, read what your chosen chatbot keeps of your conversations and how it uses them. Never paste personal information you would not want stored, such as how you vote, your party ties, or details about people you know, and remember that a share link lets anyone who has it read that conversation.

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