PSC 311—State Politics

This course considers state and local politics in the US, and begins with an assertion: states matter. States matter because states are the primary drivers of many policy areas that affect people – higher education, K-12 education, health care regulation, and family law are all examples. The course considers three primary questions. First, how can we understand why different states do different things and choose different policies? Why does New York spend more on education than Mississippi? Second, state governments are organized in different ways, so how can we understand why they made different organizational choices and what effects those choices have? Why did some states choose term limits for their legislators, and what effects did they have? Finally, how can we use the laboratory of the states to examine other important questions for American democracy? How does looking at states help us learn that parties are important for democracy, or what fosters good representation?