GOVERNMENT UG3

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What you learn about on modules in this stream: This stream centres on the institutions, processes, and the political culture of Britain, Europe and the United States. It highlights modules that explore the workings of Parliament, political parties, elections, and the policy process within the UK, Europe, and the USA. Students gain an in-depth understanding of governance, legislative practice, and the dynamics of political communication and accountability.

Career ambitions: working as a researcher for an MP or a political party, working in a politically-aligned think tank, working for a Public Relations company lobbying governments.

AUTUMN TERM MODULES IN THIS STREAM

PR3002 – EUROPEAN UNION PUBLIC POLICY

POL/IR

15 credits – Autumn term

Module Description – This module introduces students to political science and international relations approaches for understanding the EU’s Single Market, which is the world’s largest rules-based market. It focuses on areas of public policy and includes regulation of the market, the energy sector, the euro currency, asylum, immigration and counter-terrorism, the budget, agriculture, and the EU’s foreign policy. The module will give students a taste for understanding how real policy is made in a powerful international organisation.

Module Leader – Dr Giacomo Benedetto

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Policy briefing (1000 words) – 30%; Essay (2500 words) – 70%

PR3720 – LEADERSHIP, POWER AND THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTERSHIP

POL

15 credits – Autumn term

This module enables final-year students interested in British politics to explore in depth the office of prime minister, its powers and its capacity for leadership. The prime ministership is one of the oldest headships of government and the single most important position in Britain’s political executive. We will examine its history, its relationship with other institutions and actors in the core executive, and its occupants’ capacity to influence domestic and foreign policy. We will also examine how prime ministers relate to other parts of the political system, how they might be and are held to account, and how we might evaluate styles of political leadership more broadly.

Module Leader – Professor Nicholas Allen

Module Delivery – Weekly seminars

Assessment – Blog-style essay (1000 words) – 30%; Essay (2500 words) – 70%

What you can do to prepare for this module – If you took PR1400 or PR2480, read through your lecture notes for the weeks on executives and prime ministers. An affordable and readable introduction to the topic is Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson (London: Atlantic Books, 2020).

PR3890 – AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

POL/IR

15 credits – Autumn term

Module Description –This module provides students with an advanced understanding of the institutions, politics, history and culture of the United States. It offers a thorough grounding in the scholarly literature on American Political Development (APD) and requires students to evaluate that literature critically through seminar discussion, oral presentations, and two substantial pieces of assessed coursework. Using diverse methodological approaches, students examine data sources alongside major scholarly works in APD. The module deploys the tools of historical institutionalism and APD to provide advanced knowledge of the domestic politics and history of the United States, with a particular focus upon the institutional arrangements of Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court; the operation of the federal bureaucracy, the party system, elections and state politics. By the end of the module students are prepared to engage in their own dissertation research in the field of US politics and to excel in the study of American politics, culture and history. This module locates one of the world’s most influential democracies in temporal and comparative context.

Module Leader – Dr Ursula Hackett

Formative Assessment – In-class exercises (10 Minutes); Short projects (500 Words)

Summative Assessment – PowerPoint presentation (1500 Words) – 30%; Essay (2000 words) – 70%

What you can do to prepare for this module – Read Richard Hofstadter’s classic work, The American Political Tradition (1976). It’s also a good idea to browse the politics section of a broadsheet American newspaper regularly (e.g. Washington Post, New York Times) and, if you’ve never studied American politics before, I recommend Lowi, Ginsberg, Shepsle and Ansolabehere’s textbook: American Government: power and purpose (2019).

SPRING TERM MODULES IN THIS STREAM

PR3103 – PARLIAMENTARY STUDIES

POL

15 credits – Spring Term

Module Description – PR3103 Parliamentary Studies is a final-year half unit that offers students the opportunity to obtain an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the British parliament and its place in British democracy. It will help students to evaluate the work and role of Parliament and parliamentarians, appreciate ongoing debates about contemporary legislative practice, and engage critically with previous academic scholarship in this area. It will also help students to develop their own awareness and experience of conducting research. The module covers Parliament’s development and place in the British political system, its internal organisation and operation, and the work and behaviour of individual Members of Parliament. It is co-taught with officials from Parliament, who will provide students with practical and vocational teaching about the work, processes and business of Parliament based on their own experiences.

Module Leader – Professor Nicholas Allen

Module Delivery – Weekly seminars and external visits

Assessment – Comparative analysis (1000 words) – 30%; Research report (2500 words) – 70%

PR3106 – CRISIS, RECOVERY AND EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY

POL/IR

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – During the last 15 years, the EU has faced a quintuple crisis of economics, migration, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. This module takes the students through each of these crises and the EU’s response to them in securing its own survival and in setting an agenda for a wider Europe that is less stable than in the past. The module is recommended for students who have taken PR2001 in their second year but EU beginners are also welcome. The first two weeks introduce students to the political set-up of the EU that applied in 2009, when the economic crisis commenced. The next weeks look in turn at the economic crisis of the early 2010s, the migration crisis of 2015-16, the challenge of Brexit, the Pandemic in 2020, and the Ukraine conflict since 2022. The final weeks look at the EU’s budget and its financial response, and the EU’s initiatives to set up a citizens’ conference on Europe’s future to try to build a more popular base for European integration. The assessment consists of two written papers and no exam. The first paper is a standard academic essay that draws on the relevant readings within the module. The second paper is a policy briefing for a politician or policy-maker written in the style of a think-tank.

Module Leader – Dr Giacomo Benedetto

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Policy Briefing (1000 words) – 30%; Essay (2500 words) – 70%

PR3631 – WHY AND HOW PEOPLE VOTE

POL

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – Elections are more unpredictable than ever. Recent campaigns have shocked and surprised pundits and politicians alike. This module is designed to better understand these election outcomes and to examine both the long-term and short-term factors that underpin them. What explains the success of political outsiders and how best can mainstream parties respond? Why have recent results been so unpredictable? What impact do campaigns make? And how have voters become so polarised? In this module we will examine the relationship between voters - their identities and values - and political parties, and consider the theory and practice of how people decide whether to vote (or not) and for whom to vote. The module contains both a theoretical and an empirical component. Students will be encouraged to assess the evidence for competing explanations of voting behaviour through readings drawn from research on countries across Western Europe and North America. Besides an understanding of the main theories and main questions in the field of voting behaviour, the module will provide students with a thorough understanding of how to conduct systematic empirical research and critically appraise it.

Module Leader – Professor Oliver Heath

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay (2000 words) – 60%; Research assignment (1500 words) – 40%

What you can do to prepare for this module – An accessible article that introduces some of the themes we’ll look at is ‘Trump, Brexit and the Rise of Populism’ by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris.

PR3930 – ISSUES IN DEMOCRATIC THEORY

POL/IR

15 credits – Spring term

Module Description – This module examines some of the things that we want electoral democracy to do well, and the trade-offs that exist between them. We might, for example, want parties to keep their manifesto pledges, and do what they said they would do -- but what if I told you that the countries where parties are best at keeping manifesto pledges also have some of the most "wasted votes" cast in their elections? We might want our country to have a constitution which says what actions are permitted and which are not -- but what if following a constitution means giving more power to long-dead individuals who were there are the time the constitution was ratified? These are some of the key normative and empirical trade-offs that electoral democracies face, and in this module we'll study a select number of these trade-offs, working out where we would draw the line and how this translates to choices about institutions.

Module Leader – Professor Chris Hanretty

Module Delivery – Weekly lectures and seminars

Assessment – Essay 1 (1750 words) – 50%; Essay 2 (1750 words)

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