Undergraduate Courses (Lisans)


INTL 204. Introduction to Comparative Politics (Karşılaştırmalı Siyasete Giriş)

Course Description: Comparative Politics studies political phenomena in different countries, regions, and different time periods, in comparative perspective. It is one of the oldest and most established forms of inquiry in political science, dating back to the founders of the social sciences such as Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Alexis de Tocqueville, among others. In this course, we will first compare different definitions of the “state”, the focal point of political analysis for many. We will then look at the emergence of the social sciences and of political science in its historical context, as well as the process of modern state building in relation to war-making and revenue extraction. We will then compare, among others, different economic systems, developmental models, varieties of nationalisms and nation-states, as well as supra-national and sub-national institutions and identities, electoral systems, and explanations for the emergence of democracy, dictatorship, social revolutions, and authoritarianism, using quantitative and qualitative methods. Our purview will be thoroughly comparative, ranging from Western European to Russian, from Latin American to East Asian, from African to Indian models of social, political, and economic organization.


INTL 350. Eurasia: Politics, Economy, Culture (Avrasya: Siyaset, Ekonomi, Kültür)

Course Description: This course is designed as a comprehensive introduction to the comparative study of Soviet and Post-Soviet Russian and Eurasian politics. Including four weeks on Soviet politics, followed thematic weeks on various aspects of post-Soviet Russian politics and society, including but not limited to political parties and the parliament, ethnic politics and nationalism, law, media, civil-military relations, economy, demography, foreign policy. Except for a week each dedicated exclusively to post-Soviet Central Asia and Ukraine, the rest of the course uses a regional or global comparative angle in approaching these issues, but with a heavy emphasis on the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia.


Undergraduate and Graduate double coded (Çift kodlu lisans ve yüksek lisans ortak dersi)


INTL 475 (formerly INTL 355). Politics of Ethnicity and Nationalism (Etnisite ve Milliyetçilik Siyasetleri)

Course Description: This is an undergraduate and graduate seminar investigating the definitions of and relationship between ethnicity and nationhood. Competing definitions of ethnicity and rival explanations for the emergence of nationalism are critically engaged. While covering the classical works on the field of ethnicity and nationalism studies, the course readings incorporate the most recent, cutting-edge works in the field as well. In the first half of the course, during the first three weeks, we will discuss theories of ethnicity, nationalism, and the role of states in the construction of ethnic categories. Through the semester, we discuss ethnicity and nationhood, specifically, in Nazi Germany and post-war Germany, Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, Arab Nationalism, Zionism, Israel, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in early modern and modern Europe, Apartheid South Africa, Greece, Austria, Hungary, France, Britain, and the United States, among others.


Graduate Courses (Yüksek Lisans, Doktora)


INTL 504. Comparative Politics Seminar (Karşılaştırmalı Siyaset Semineri)

Course Description: Comparative Politics studies political phenomena in different countries, regions, and different time periods, making comparisons between countries, within countries, and between different time periods. It is one of the oldest and most established forms of inquiry in the social sciences, dating back to the founders of the social sciences such as Max Weber, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville, among others. This is a graduate seminar for students of political science and other disciplines, on the origins and major themes of comparative politics. We will begin by reading and discussing about the debates over the role of theory and methods in comparative politics, situating these in the broader history of political science, from its origins in 18th-19th centuries to the 21st century. We then move on to the quantitative approaches to designing social inquiry and the comparative political historical analysis as a major qualitative methodological alternative, and continue with an extended discussion of the role of cases studies: how to (not) select cases, how to (not) compare, and how to (not) make inferences based on our cases. Following these theoretical and methodological discussions, we read and discuss about major themes of comparative politics: The modern state; institutions, institutional change, and the new institutionalisms; the origins and varieties of nationalism and nation-states and their multiple transformations over time; comparative study of democracy and democratic transitions; ideologies, parties, electoral- and party-systems; civil society; the rise and varieties of capitalism; and civil-military relations, all examined from a comparative vantage point. The course concludes with presentations and discussions of research topics and paper proposals by the participants of the seminar.


INTL 604. Qualitative Research Methods (Niteliksel Araştırma Yöntemleri)

Course Description: This graduate seminar is a comprehensive introduction to qualitative research methods used in the social sciences. Selection of topics, methods, techniques and research design tasks to be covered include, advantages and disadvantages of qualitative research in causal inference; conceptualization, concept stretching, measurement, and avoiding selection bias; case studies for theory development and testing, including comparative small-N case studies, most similar and most different case study designs, most likely and least likely case study designs, single case studies and within-case studies, deviant case studies and crucial case studies; the method of process tracing; the logic of knowledge accumulation in comparative research; causal and descriptive inference; time dimension of political processes and the four types of inter-temporal causality; the role of periodization and preferences; relationship between ontology and methodology; typologies and typological theorizing; necessary and sufficient concept structure; natural experiments; counterfactual analysis; congruence method; fuzzy sets; content analysis; discourse analysis; the use of genealogical and etymological studies in the social sciences; interview techniques; ethnography and immersion; thick description; and useful tips and logistics of conducting fieldwork and archival research.