Teaching

Master of Global Affairs, Keough School

Political campaigns are a key component of democratic competition and can influence election outcomes. The first half of the course covers the theoretical foundations of political choice, the role of institutional environments such as electoral systems, and forms of political persuasion, drawing on examples from democracies in Europe, Latin America and the United States. In the second half, students work with campaign strategists and develop their own campaigns, grounded in theory and in an empirical research project.

Campaign practitioners join the course each year. Recent guest sessions have included Katherine Diggory, former campaign manager for the UK Labour Party, and Anna Greenberg, senior partner at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

Syllabus (PDF)

Undergraduate

Democracies strive to hold governments accountable to their citizens. This course asks how, in practice, citizens influence political outcomes, and under what conditions they help sustain or undermine democracy. The first half examines how voters’ preferences and behavior influence political elites, drawing on comparative research from Europe, Latin America and the United States. The second half turns to the citizen side of democratic stability: which attitudes and forms of engagement support democratic resilience, and what makes citizens withdraw support from, or remain loyal to, anti-democratic leaders.

Students work with canonical and recent social science, public-facing books and journalism, and with practitioners who visit the class.

Julia Connolly, a first-year global affairs major who took the course, wrote about these sessions for the Keough School: Beyond the textbooks: what local politicians and a student body vice president taught me about democracy in action.

Syllabus (PDF)