Political Science Reading Lists for Undergraduates

Coates shares with his son--and readers--the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder.

Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore the conditions under which common-pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved.

Analyzing the actions of modern presidents ranging from Eisenhower to Clinton, Brandice Canes-Wrone demonstrates that presidents' involvement of the mass public, by putting pressure on Congress, shifts policy in the direction of majority opinion. More important, she also shows that presidents rarely cater to the mass citizenry unless they already agree with the public's preferred course of action.

The thesis of this original and provocative book is that representative government should be understood as a combination of democratic and undemocratic, aristocratic elements.

Stanovich shows how the insights of dual-process theory and evolutionary psychology can be combined to explain why humans are sometimes irrational even though they possess cognitive machinery of remarkable adaptiveness.

Temple faculty recommend Book 5. This highly regarded volume features a modern translation of all ten books of The Republic

This book demonstrates that moral clarity can be achieved even when a collective commitment to justice is uncertain.

In 'Saving Persuasion', Bryan Garsten uncovers the early modern origins of this suspicious attitude toward rhetoric and seeks to loosen its grip on contemporary political theory.

Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America.

With Obfuscation, Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum mean to start a revolution. They are calling us not to the barricades but to our computers, offering us ways to fight today's pervasive digital surveillance -- the collection of our data by governments, corporations, advertisers, and hackers.

Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society.

Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.

"Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism." amazon.com synopsis

Ian Haney López offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America.

Hudson's provocative book offers a structured yet critical look at the functioning of the American political system.

Groundbreaking analysis showing that greater economic equality-not greater wealth-is the mark of the most successful societies, and offering new ways to achieve it.

Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem.

Observes congressional representatives in their home districts and explores the ways in which their political behavior is affected by their attitudes toward their constituencies.

shows that the public's views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor.

Beyond Trans pushes the conversation on gender identity to its limits: questioning the need for gender categories in the first place.

The thesis is that we shall never understand politics unless we know what the struggle is about.

Applying economic analysis to the subjects of the political scientist, sociologist, and economist, Mancur Olson examines the extent to which the individuals that share a common interest find it in their individual interest to bear the costs of the organizational effort. The theory shows that most organizations produce what the economist calls "public goods"--goods or services that are available to every member, whether or not he has borne any of the costs of providing them.

Stone proposes a tripartite breakdown to understand the elements of public policy: goals, problems, and solutions

"Edelman explored the use of myths, rites, and other symbolic forms of communication in the formation of public opinion and policy." https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Symbolic-Uses-of-Politics

Gutmann and Thompson illuminate the theory and practice of justifying public policies in contemporary democracies.

When citizens think about political leaders, groups and issues, their feelings bias how information is encoded, evaluated and acted upon.

The Politics of Resentment shows that rural resentment--no less than partisanship, race, or class--plays a major role in dividing America against itself.

Krehbiel argues that the pivotal vote on a piece of legislation is not the one that gives a bill a simple majority, but the vote that allows its supporters to override a possible presidential veto or to put a halt to a filibuster.

"Rosenberg presents, with remarkable skill, an overwhelming case that efforts to use the courts to generate significant reforms in civil rights, abortion, and women's rights were largely failures."—Gary L. McDowell, The Washington Times

Get Out the Vote! Is a practical guide for anyone trying to mobilize voters or organize at the grass roots.

Do voters consider candidates' policy positions when deciding for whom to vote? And how do politicians' performances in office factor into the voting decision? In Follow the Leader?, Gabriel S. Lenz sheds light on these central questions of democratic thought.

The implementation of Obamacare has cut the number of uninsured and underinsured and reduced some of the disparities in coverage, but it continues to leave too many people open to tremendous risk.