Political Science 577 Theories of Conflict (original) (raw)

This course examines the literature on conflict that has developed in the last decade. We will examine recent formal literature as well as the latest substantive (nonformal) literature on conflict. The course will help graduate students identify the broad direction of international conflict studies and will also permit graduate students to pursue topics or ideas of their own interest. To that end, we set aside time for "model building sessions"where students can explore approaches to formalize some of the ideas in the substantive literature, or explore extensions of the current formal literature. We will devote one whole class at the end of the semester to such a model building session and around the mid-way point of the course take about half of one class to such a model building session . Much of the course revolves around the student led discussions, so we expect students to be prepared and fully participate. Students should have taken or be concurrently taking PSC 584 or have an equivalent knowledge of complete and incomplete information game theory.