Political Science Commencement 2012 Information!
Schedule:

11:30am-12:15pm: Political Science reception with beverages and sandwiches

12:15-2:30pm: Diploma Ceremony

Location: Kennedy Grove

For information on the university commencement ceremony at the Stanford Stadium, please visit the Stanford commencement webpage or view the Stanford commencement brochure.

More questions?  Call Hana Meckler at 650-723-1608, or send her an email at hmeckler [at] stanford [dot] edu.

Research Honors Track - Applications due February 24

The Department of Political Science is excited to announce the new Research Honors Track to begin in the 2011-12 academic year. The program, which leads to a BA degree with honors, will give participants the analytical tools they need to write top-notch honors theses and collaborate with Stanford faculty and Ph.D. students.  Through a specially designed program of study and research, students will develop the foundation for successful careers in academia, law, government, business, and other fields.

Click here to download the application.

Theory Workshop - Lucas Stanczyk

The Right to Free Choice of Occupation

May 18, 2012 - 1:15pm - 3:00pm

Lucas Stanczyk joined the MIT faculty in the spring of 2012 as Assistant Professor of Political Science, after finishing his Ph.D. in Harvard’s Government Department. A political theorist by training, his research ranges across a variety of topics in political philosophy, constitutional and legal theory, and the history of moral and political thought.

His doctoral dissertation investigates the implications of the value of social justice for the organization of economic production in contemporary societies. He is also at work on a history of the modern concept of distributive justice and ideas of redistribution.

Methods Workshop - Adam Bonica

"Mapping the Ideological Marketplace"

May 16, 2012 - 12:15pm - 1:30pm

 

ABSTRACT: I develop a method to measure the ideology of candidates and contributors using campaign nance data. Combined with an expansive dataset of over 81 million contribution records from state and federal elections, the method recovers ideal points for a wide range of political actors. The common pool of contributors that give to campaigns across institutions and levels of politics makes it possible to recover a unied set of ideal points for candidates for Congress, the presidency, state legislatures, governor, and other state-wide o ces, all in a common-space with the interest groups and individual donors that fund their campaigns.

CP Workshop - Lily Tsai

Feedback or Resistance? Constructive Policy Noncompliance in Rural China

May 21, 2012 - 4:15pm - 6:05pm

Co-sponsored: Stanford China Program

Abstract:  Noncompliance with government policies and regulations is usually interpreted as resistance that undermines state authority. The evidence presented in this article suggests that this interpretation may sometimes be wrong and that some noncompliance behaviors may actually be intended to communicate information about local conditions and contribute constructively to the policy process. The article proposes a model of constructive policy noncompliance to improve our understanding of how individuals in nondemocratic and transitional systems may try to influence political decision-making and policy processes when conventional forms of participation are difficult or unavailable for individuals. To examine this phenomenon, the article combines original data from a nationally representative survey of 2000 households in rural China with a series of multiple, in--‐depth interviews conducted with a separate sample of thirty households randomly selected from three disparate localities.