Teaching

At OSU, I am currently teaching (or have taught) the following courses:

This course provides an overview of the economics of the public sector. It includes a theoretical overview for government involvement in markets and rectifying market failures, expenditure programs and taxation. It also includes the theoretical underpinnings for determining efficient and equitable government policy and programs.

PS 300: RESEARCH METHODS

This course introduces undergraduate students to the fundamentals of political science research (with an emphasis on quantitative and comparative research). We begin with a discussion of theoretical paradigms (the philosophy behind research) and framing a research question. We then move to discussions about data collection and quantitative and qualitative methods (techniques) of research. The primary focus of the course will be on research design, but attention is paid to elementary data analysis in STATA and Excel.

PS 341: EUROPEAN AND EU POLITICS

This course provides an overview of political processes in European countries and the European Union. Students will learn about political parties and the composition of political systems, electoral systems, and welfare states in various Western European countries and how they contrast from those in the United States. The second half of the course examines the European Union. Students will examine the history behind the EU’s construction, theories of European integration, the EU’s institutions and policy competencies, reoccurring problems with democratic representation in the EU (the democratic deficit), and the EU’s political and economic influence over candidate countries via requirements for entry. The class will also discuss the creation of the European Monetary Union and the Euro currency, how the EU has managed the Syrian refugee crisis and the political crisis in Ukraine, as well as Brexit.

PS 342: THE POLITICS OF CORRUPTION

This class provides an overview of corruption and how it manifests itself in democracies and centralized states. The course is organized into four parts: 1.) theoretical accounts for why corruption occurs; 2.) what institutional, political and geographical factors are conducive towards producing corruption, 3.) what are the economic, social and political consequences of corruption, and; 4.) national and international anti- corruption efforts that have succeeded and failed to rectify corruption.

PS 354: INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND GLOBAL POLITICS

This course examines the role of international law and international organizations in global politics. Initially, we discuss international relations theories that explain how sovereign states interact at the international level, and what motivates (and does not motivate) them to commit to supranational laws and intergovernmental organizations. We then discuss the politics of international law and international courts, how they began and evolved since the early 1900s, and the types of legal topics they preside over. The second half of the course focuses on major intergovernmental organizations (IOs) and treaties (with emphasis on the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Students will learn about the purposes of these organizations, how they operate, and how states engage with them.

PS 449/549: COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE WELFARE STATE

This course discusses the ideas and interests behind the formation of modern welfare states within Europe and the United States, as well as its institutional trajectory in the post-war era. Students learn different welfare state typologies (the Anglo-Saxon, Social Democratic and Continental European models), what types of interest groups and class conflicts led to these systems’ emergence, and how they have been transformed under pressure from globalization, the shift to a service-sector economy (post-industrialization), the rise of neo-liberalism, and the recent debt crisis. This class is does NOT empirically analyze welfare policy. Rather, the focus is on what political factors and ideological constructs have led to the creation of major welfare policies and institutions across developed democracies, and how/whether these policies have been altered in the face of political, economic and ideological change.

PPOL 522: QUANTITATIVE POLICY ANALYSIS

This course serves as an introduction to the use of quantitative analysis in social science research for graduate students. In the lectures, we discuss the mathematics of multivariate statistical modelling, how they have been applied to academic papers, and work through relevant exercises. In the computer labs, using STATA, we work with various datasets, exploring the methods learned in lecture. This course focuses on: linear regression, logistic regression (binary dependent variables), ordinal logistic regression (dependent variables with an ordinal scale), and Poisson-type regressions (count-based dependent variables).

PPOL 622: ADVANCED POLICY ANALYSIS

This course introduces students to (temporal-based) advanced quantitative modelling techniques used in policy analysis. This course focuses on the following methods: time series (the static and dynamic model), the difference-in-difference estimator, panel regression for continuous and limited-response dependent variables, and error correction models.