POLI 626. Historical Analysis in Political Science.

This seminar examines how political scientists engage with historical research. The course will interweave two broad themes: (1) methodological and ontological issues in historical social science, including the nature of historicist explanations, the comparative-historical method, path dependence and critical junctures, rational choice explanations, and evolutionary theory; and (2) substantive macro theorietical questions that are central to the genre of historical social science, including questions of modernization, democratization, revolutions, state formation, colonialism, political parties, and historical analogies in foreign policy-making. In interweaving these two themes, we are interested in the broad macro ontological frameworks, the merits of the substantive arguments, and the interaction between the two.