Political science classes are unique in its focus not just on substantive knowledge about peoples, cultures, and governments (“the science”), but also on the argumentation, negotiation, and contestation of values, interests, and meanings (“the political”). That makes political science classes an ideal vehicle in which undergraduate students learn not just knowledge about the world, but also analytic approaches and argumentation strategies that empowers them in using that knowledge to make reasoned claims and persuasive arguments about the world. Indeed, as I argue in this paper, political science courses are especially effective, if not essential, to the general education goal of developing and fostering undergraduate students to become informed and engaged citizens.

To that end, this paper discusses strategies and best practices on how to incorporate a dual emphasis on argumentation (the “political”) as much as the substantive knowledge (the “science”) in political science courses. Integrating theoretical suggestions with anecdotal and practical advice, this paper describes strategies and insights from my experience teaching introductory and advanced international politics courses that incorporate teaching of argument and reasoning alongside political science knowledge. First, I describe how to teach different argumentative approaches to help students structure how they link claims to reasons, evidence, and potential counterarguments. Drawing upon resources from the classic book “Craft of Research” guide and psychological research on the intersection of deliberation, reason, and argument, I describe a core set of concepts, frameworks, and skills that students should know about the art and craft of political argumentation. Second, I detail how to expose students to competing viewpoints on political issues. By challenging students to make sense of how different scholars can examine the same facts and make conflicting conclusions, I suggest strategies that draw upon the the use, misuse, and manipulation of evidence and reason in argument to improve the ability of students to make sound judgments and adjudicate between competing claims. Third, I suggest reasons and evidence of how a dual emphasis on both the “political” and the “science” of political science facilitates the development of analytical tools, critical thinking skills, and an intellectual framework instrumental in fostering informed understanding across all fields of inquiry. Finally, the paper concludes with suggestions on how political science departments can best take advantage of the prominence of political science classes in general education to train and develop the next generation of informed and engaged citizens.

Unpublished Research

What is the link between Chinese elite politics and foreign policy adventurism? This project seeks to answer this question by first building a new dataset on Chinese elite politics. Specifically, I build upon the existing wealth of Chinese scholarship by operationalizing the qualitative insights of leading Sinologists into a dataset amendable to qualitative analysis. My dataset focuses on the relationship between the supreme leader and other Chinese elites. The four dimensions that I examine are: (1) the balance of power between the supreme leader and Center elites (dictator variable); (2) whether the supreme leader intervened in first front politics (intervention); (3) whether the supreme leader was seeking to perpetuate factionalism among the elites, or trying to facilitate consensus and compromise (fragmentation variable); and (4) occurrences of supreme leader-Center elite collusion through elite purges (purge variable). I hypothesize the potential relationship and causal mechanisms between each of these dimensions of elite politics and Chinese foreign adventurism. From my statistical analysis, I then reveal new insights into the link between domestic elite competition and international foreign policy contestation.

China in Africa
Since the establishment of modern China (the People’s Republic of China) in 1949, there has been a robust if unpublicized relationship between the PRC and African states. Even before the current global financial crisis, Chinese investment in Africa was becoming more visible as the volume of Chinese investment in Africa has increased substantially. To that end, this paper examines the empirical realities of Chinese financial investment in Africa. It seeks to explore two main research questions. First, the paper examines whether there is a political selection effect. Specifically, we explore if contemporary Chinese investment in Africa follows earlier investment patterns when Chinese communist leaders were committed to exporting socialist revolution in Africa. Secondly, the paper examines the political consequences of Chinese investment. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that Chinese foreign investment in Africa has positive effects on regime durability in African countries. Using quantitative statistical analyses and qualitative case studies, this paper seeks to provide robust empirical report on the political economy of China’s increasing investment in Africa.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (with Xiaoyu Pu, Ohio State University)
While existing alliance theories can explain historical alliance patterns, it is unclear whether those theories can explain alliances in the 21st century. One such puzzling case is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an international alliance composed of China, Russia, and five Eurasian states. Dominant alliance theories cannot explain the SCO because the SCO has failed to facilitate greater gains for member states beyond that which would have been accrued without the alliance. However, the SCO is often portrayed as a model by the developing and non-Western world as an ideal type of alliance. We argue that the SCO can be best explained by new theories of great power legitimization and China’s New Security Strategy. It thus both demonstrates the shortcomings of existing theories and is a critical case for the development of new alliance theories for the 21st century.

In our paper, we first examine existing explanations of the SCO. Then, using a series of statistical analytical tests, we find mixed benefits for membership; economic and military benefits are marginal at best, though member states do accrue some political gain, specifically political legitimization. Drawing upon the growing literature on great power legitimacy and the emergence of the Chinese New Security Strategy, we then construct a model of alliance dynamics where the primary benefits of membership are political legitimization and not necessarily military or economic benefits. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings, especially as it relates to the future of alliances in the 21st century.