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Week 3 · Readings & resources

Week 3 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 3 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 67–77 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–20 min total)

① Which "liberal" do you mean?

Chapter 3, Section “Split liberalism: one core, two wings” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Liberalism's two wings” · Remember: in everyday American speech liberal means left-of-center, but in political theory liberalism is the whole rights-based tradition.

  • Political Ideology: Crash Course Government and Politics #35 — CrashCourse — a quick tour of how Americans use the words liberal and conservative in everyday politics; as you watch, notice that it uses the everyday U.S. sense of the words, then ask which theory wing each view it describes would belong to. Use it while working through the Week-3 module overview. (video, 9 min) (captions: creator)
  • Classical Liberalism vs. American Liberalism (Drive Home History #3) — Tom Richey — a short talk on why liberalism means free markets and limited government in one setting and an active, regulating state in another; listen for the shared core underneath both meanings. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
  • Mixed Economy — Economics Help — a short explainer on economies that leave most businesses to private enterprise and market prices while the state provides public services, regulates, and redistributes; read the definition, the features, and the advantages and disadvantages, and notice where it sets the free-market complaint of too much government beside the socialist complaint of too much inequality. Skip the country examples. (reading, 4–6 min)

② Keeping, changing, and sharing

Chapter 3, Section “Sort the socialist family: two branches” · Session 1, Segment 4, “The socialist family” · Remember: socialism is a family; communism is its revolutionary branch and social democracy its electoral branch.

  • Conservatism vs Liberalism — Philosophy Vibe — two animated characters debate tradition against change, each giving the other side's strongest objection; ask what each view values, fears, and argues, and compare the conservative case with Burke's line in the chapter. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
  • Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism Compared — Mr. Beat — a longer explainer that sorts the three terms and returns to what Marx and Engels argued; as you watch, mark which examples fit the revolutionary branch and which fit the electoral one, and keep the regime type, totalitarianism, out of the sort. (video, 15 min) (captions: creator)

③ The smaller families, defined by their adherents

Chapter 3, Section “Meet the smaller families, each by what its adherents hold” · Session 2, Segment 5, “The smaller families” · Remember: define each family the way its own adherents would, and keep conservatism apart from fascism.

  • A World Without Governments? Anarchism Explained — CrashCourse — an explainer on what anarchism means to political theorists, as opposed to the everyday sense of chaos, and on its main strands; this builds on Week 2's work with power, authority, legitimacy, and the state, since anarchism denies that the state's claim to rule is legitimate. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
  • The Origins of EPA — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the agency's own short history of how rising public concern about pollution in the 1960s became a national agency; read it as one example of environmentalist ideas shaping political decisions, and skip the list of founding documents. (reading, 4–6 min)

④ One line or two?

Chapter 3, Section “Weigh the left–right spectrum: what it captures versus what it flattens” · Session 2, Segment 8, “The left–right spectrum” · Remember: the one-line map is a useful sketch that can flatten an economic dimension and a social dimension.

  • The Political Spectrum — CIVIX — a short animated introduction to the left–right line and what it is meant to summarize; afterward, name one view the single line would have trouble placing. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)
  • Ideological divisions over cultural issues are far wider in the U.S. than in the UK, France and Germany — Pew Research Center — a survey summary comparing how far apart people on the left and the right are on cultural questions in four countries; read it as evidence that the same two labels sort people differently from one country to the next, and ask what it measures, over whom, and whether it shows a correlation or a cause. It reports what each side says without judging either, so read it for the size of the gaps, not for who is right; its note about a presidential inauguration only dates the U.S. fieldwork. (reading, 5–7 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

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