This is a highly engaging, discursive seminar on how people think and decide politically and why. It is about elites and ordinary citizens.
I love teaching this course because the matter is close to my research, because it makes all of us think about ourselves as political beings and because we learn so much from one another. Many students in past years chose their theses in this field afterwards. The course is open to all Master programmes in political science.
The seminar is capped at 30 participants. Please register in the LSF system.
We have weekly Friday meetings in person on campus from 8.30 to 10.00 am. The first meeting is 14 October. There is no component of remote teaching. Students have to attend every session and must not take part remotely. Active preparation for and participation in class discussions on campus are part of your credit load. Whenever you miss one session, you have to excuse yourself in advance with an acceptable reason and submit an alternative task substituting for your missed class participation within 14 days.
One session will be taught remotely by Prof Mark Vail from Wake Forest University, USA. https://www.mivail.com/
Questions that we will deal with
- How do individuals arrive at decisions in political contexts?
- What effects to gender and social identity have?
- What effect does the institutional context have on their decision-making? Which institutional roles are most prone to individual influences? How does decision-making vary between liberal-democratic and other political systems?
- To what extent are political elites different when taking a decision, compared with “ordinary citizens”?
- What effect does individual decision-making have on political output and most importantly good governance?
- Is there something like “good” and “bad” leadership with regard to decision-making? The course will deal with these kinds of issues and participants will learn how scientific approaches that are located at the intersection of politics, psychology and even economics try to find answers.
Political psychology is a relatively new but nevertheless exciting, vital and vibrant field. It is a modern branch of political science and its findings are often intriguing and have important implications for politics, society or in a normative sense. In this sense, the course offers a unique opportunity to get in touch with up-to-date developments within our discipline as well as interesting examples of the most sophisticated research in the field of political psychology.
Requirements 5-6 ECTS (150-180 working hours)
- Active class participation
- Reading about 40-50 pages a week, all readings will be digitally available.
- Making many mistakes and learning from them. Mistakes are another opportunity to grow.
- In a small group: preparing a scientific poster, present it and give feedback to others.
- Writing thinkpieces, short essays that are due across the teaching period; provide feedback for other thinkpieces.
I have no access to the recognition of ECTS in the study course programmes below. Thus, here again
TuV: Policy Module in combination with seminar taught in summer semester by Prof Blätte or a member of the working group "Policy Evaluation"
PM: open studies module
IBEP and DevGov: the seminar can be taken as an alternative to "Democracy and Governance" seminar |
