Course Overview

German and American Politics in Comparative Perspective is organized around broad themes that allow students compare the German and American political experience.  The distinctive feature of this course is that for 2/3 of the semester it will use an on-line classroom to connect students in Professor Jonathan Olsen's class in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside to classes in Germany.  For the 2010-2011 academic year we will, as always, be partnered with Professor Annette Zimmer's students in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Muenster; but we will also partner with a seminar course at the University of Potsdam.  In terms of course content, in previous years we have organized our seminar around themes such as "Elections and Institutions in Germany and the US" and “Germany and the US in International Politics”.  For the 2010-2011 academic year we will look at institutions and political culture but also have more of a policy focus, examining health care and education policies comparatively.

Students analyze scholarly literature on the above three thematic areas and then present/post their findings on this literature on the web.  We will then use classroom time for a wide-ranging discussion on the day’s readings in order to compare the German and American Political experience. Our goal here is to learn something about our two different political systems and to foster an intelligent interchange on the ways in which similar political experiences and challenges in each country are shaped by country-specific institutional structures, political culture, and geopolitical circumstances.

Required texts
The Politics of the New Germany, S. Green, D. Hough, A. Miskimmon, and G. Timmins (eds.)

Readings on Electronic Reserve at the UWP Library (see link below).