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This seminar will focus on the policy process and in particular on the ways social science (broadly defined) has been used or misused to shape and promote public policies in the United States. The seminar will focus on the expansion of government's access to information as a response to social and economic change and its use of this information to encourage and/or control it. It will focus, additionally, on the tensions between political and bureaucratic knowledge and between the experiential and t he experimental. Part of the seminar will be devoted to case study presentation by students. To this end, students will be asked to form small groups, with each group choosing and examining a particular case from a list of current and past cases such as the 1840 United States Census; the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell; various federal housing programs; The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964; The Housing and Community Development Act of 1972; and the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. The list will also include a range of other public programs dealing with education, crime and child welfare. The purpose will be to determine what "social scientists" said to lawmakers; whether they spoke with one or many voices; and how policy makers used the information, and with what consequences. In addition to class presentation, students will be expected to present a final written report.
Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.
COURSE FORMAT: Seminar
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS GOVT Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.
Last Updated on MAR-19-2002
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459