Results for POLECON

Preference to sophomores. Rational choice methodology in political science. Why have third-party candidates been unsuccessful in the U.S. when other countries often have numerous political parties? Does racial gerrymandering contribute to Republican control of the House of Representatives? Why do people vote, despite the slim chance that a single vote determines an election? Is there a difference between policy outcomes under unified government versus divided government.

This course focuses on the firm's strategic interactions with nonmarket players, like politicians, interest groups, activists, regulators, and bureaucrats. These players work within the public institutions that determine the "rules of the game" for market activity. Their interventions, like passing a new piece of legislation or writing new regulatory standards, shape market competition and the opportunities available to firms. The goal of the course is to build a deeper understanding of and appreciation for what goes on beyond the market, and to develop tools and frameworks with which to analyze it. We will focus on building integrated strategies for optimal firm performance that combine elements from within and beyond markets. The course is case-based, drawing on case studies from a variety of countries and institutional environments.

This course focuses on the firm's strategic interactions with nonmarket players, like politicians, regulators and bureaucrats. These players work within the public institutions that determine the "rules of the game" for market activity. Their interventions, like passing a new piece of legislation or writing new regulatory standards, shape market competition and the opportunities available to firms. The goal of the course is to build a deeper understanding of and appreciation for what goes on beyond the market, and to develop tools and frameworks with which to analyze it. We will focus on building integrated strategies for optimal firm performance that combine elements from within and beyond markets. The course is case-based, drawing on case studies from a variety of countries and institutional environments. Note that POLECON 230 is a condensed version (2 unit) of this course, which covers roughly the same material as we do in POLECON 231, but at a relatively more surface or abbreviated level.

This course addresses managerial issues in the social, political and legal environments of business. Cases and readings emphasize strategies to improve the performance of companies in light of their multiple constituencies, both within the US and internationally. Most core courses focus on firms' interactions with customers, suppliers, and alliance partners in the form of mutually beneficial voluntary exchange transacted in markets. In contrast, this course considers the strategic interactions of firms with comparably important constituents, organizations, and institutions beyond markets. Issues considered include those involving activist and interest groups, the media, legislatures, regulatory and antitrust agencies, and other forms of political risk. In many of the class sessions, we will draw on theoretical and empirical research in political economy, a field that is particularly relevant for understanding relationships between firms and governments, because (unlike most of economics) political economy focuses on interactions that are neither voluntary nor transacted via money.

This course explores the experience of respected business leaders who have been able to integrate their spiritual and business lives successfully. It also provides an explicit opportunity for students to discuss their own intentions to find deep meaning in and through their business careers. Difficulties, struggles and barriers will be examined as well. Readings will include both biographies of specific business people and background materials on the major religious and philosophical traditions represented. A number of the exemplars whose biographical information will be examined, like Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, will be invited to class -- initially to listen to the class discussion, and then to provide feedback to students, expand on their own biographies and the background resources read in preparation for each class, and respond to questions and answers. This course will help students elucidate how their business careers fit into what ultimately matters most to them and how to build moral courage and long-term commitment to their ideals.

This course uses novels and plays as a basis for examining the moral and spiritual aspects of business leadership and of the environment in which business is done. On the one hand literature is used as the basis for examining the character of business people, while on the other hand literature provides illumination of the cultural contexts of values and beliefs within which commercial activities take place in a global economy. The course is organized around the interplay of religious traditions and national identities. Classes are taught in a Socratic, discussion-based style, creating as much of a seminar atmosphere as possible. A two-text method is used, encouraging students to examine their own personal stories with as much care as the stories presented in the literature. This course will be graded on the basis of class participation, weekly reflection papers (1 page), and a final paper. There will be no exam.

What does one need to know about Islam to do business effectively in an Arab country? How can understanding the Protestant ethic help Mexican managers deal with U.S. partners? How does Confucianism influence Chinese business ethics? What are the business advantages of knowing how different countries rate on the spectrum of individualist versus communitarian values? These are the kinds of issues discussed in this course, which seeks to help students who will be engaged in international business during their careers. It aims to examine the deeper levels of attitudes and beliefs, often unconscious, which lie beneath the way business is done in various countries. Information will be provided on major religious and philosophical traditions like Confucianism, Shinto, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Some cross-cultural frameworks will also be considered. Case studies and background readings are set in nations like China, Japan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Mexico and the United States. The class will be discussion-based, drawing on students- own life experiences as well as the cases and readings. The hope is to provide a competitive advantage, both theoretically and practically, to students through understanding certain unspoken rules of the game in global business.

We live increasingly in a world of political polarization and conflict. Disagreements, often violent, dramatically shape the challenges and opportunities that leaders face, whether it be while managing diverse teams to addressing the future of the planet.So what can we do about it? In this course, participants will consider a series of decision-making challenges that leaders of organizations have faced in societies divided by political polarization and conflict. We will combine examples drawn from around the world, with insights distilled from the newest research conducted in economics, political science, social psychology and sociology on how to address these issues. This includes work conducted by us at the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. By the end of the course, participants will develop a new set of tools for managing organizations in societies divided by political polarization and conflict, as well as for leaders seeking new approaches to address conflict and polarization directly.

The future of the energy industry is deeply intertwined with politics and the formation of policy. In this class we'll take a deeper dive into the market and beyond-market (policy) strategies in the energy industry. Our focus will be on new clean energy technologies as they attempt to break into the industry. Each session will address a business problem and analyze the interaction of market structure and the beyond-market environment. The business problem will either come from a written case or a guest speaker. Topics covered: 1) Mapping the regulated energy landscape: the politics and innovation of the renewable energy industry. 2) Working with State Regulators and Using the beyond-market to dislodge entrenched incumbents. 3) Beyond State Politics: The US & Australian Federal Government. 4) The Utilities from inside and outside. 5) Investing in a highly regulated industry. This course is led by Steve Callander, GSB professor of public and private management & political economy and Josh Richman, VP of global business development and policy at Bloom Energy.

Cities are where billions of people live and they are the engine for innovation and economic growth. They are also going through enormous change and battling with fundamental problems, like housing, transportation, urban planning, the environment, safety, transparency and more. Innovation offers the promise of exciting solutions. But for that change to happen, it must serve the interests of the people who live in a city and overcome the challenges of politics and policymaking. The class will focus on this intersection. We will analyze cities as a distinct phenomenon, look at what is possible technologically, and explore how change can be made to happen. The class will consist of a combination of case studies, guest speakers, and class discussion. It will be led by Steve Callander, GSB Professor of Political Economy, and Sarah Hunter, the director of Global Public Policy at X, the google Moonshot Factory.

This capstone course uses novels and plays as a basis for examining the moral and spiritual aspects of business leadership and of the environment in which business is done. On the one hand literature is used as the basis for examining the character of business people, while on the other hand literature provides illumination of the cultural contexts of values and beliefs within which commercial activities take place in a global economy. The course is organized around the interplay of religious traditions and national identities. Classes are taught in a Socratic, discussion-based style, creating as much of a seminar atmosphere as possible. A two-text method is used, encouraging students to examine their own personal stories with as much care as the stories presented in the literature. This course will be graded on the basis of class participation, weekly reflection papers (1 page), and a final paper. There will be no exam. Course previously offered as POLECON 349.

This course provides an introduction to empirical and theoretical research in political economy, focusing on issues in democracies. Topics include institutional foundations, accountability and electoral incentives, candidate positioning, voter behavior, polarization, media and political communication, redistribution, special interests and lobbying, immigration, and populism.

This course studies the cognitive scientific foundations of political economy. It builds on the explosion of research in cognitive psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and allied fields over the last few decades to provide perspectives on political beliefs and behavior that are not tweaks on theories of complete rationality; they are distinct ideas with their own premises of how humans think, plan, and decide. These premises do not posit that we are irrational. Such claims are wildly off the mark; they cannot explain how we have become the dominant species on this planet. Instead, they describe a clever but computationally constrained primate whose evolution, cultural as well as biological, has produced a characteristic configuration of mental software and external symbol systems (writing, numbers). The representational and computational capacities of this software and these symbol systems, combined with our unusual ability to cooperate with unrelated strangers, has in a remarkably short time produced massive knowledge-intensive political institutions that can deploy nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and can use epidemiology and molecular genetics to combat epidemics. Such achievements warrant explanations. In short, we are boundedly rational, but that's only half the story; we're also really really clever problem-solvers. This course explores theories that explain both halves in a unified way.

Workshop for in-progress work by doctoral students in the PE program. Students present work and get feedback from other students and the faculty instructor.

This course provides an introduction to political economy with an emphasis on formal models of collective choice, public institutions, and political competition. Topics considered include voting theory, social choice, institutional equilibria, agenda setting, interest group politics, bureaucratic behavior, and electoral competition. Also listed as Political Science 351A.

This course extends the foundations developed in P680 by applying techniques of microeconomic analysis and game theory to the study of political behavior and institutions. The techniques include information economics, games of incomplete information, sequential bargaining theory, repeated games, and rational expectations. The applications considered include agenda formation in legislatures, government formation in parliamentary systems, the implications of legislative structure, elections and information aggregation, lobbying, electoral competition and interest groups, the control of bureaucracies, interest group competition, and collective choice rules.

This course critically surveys empirical applications of formal models of collective-choice institutions. It is explicitly grounded in philosophy of science (e.g., Popperian positivism and Kuhn's notions of paradigms and normal science). Initial sessions address the meanings and roles of the concept of institutions in social-science research. Historically important works of political science and/or economics are then considered within a framework called Components of Institutional Analysis (or CIA), which provides a fully general way of evaluating research that is jointly empirical and formal theoretical. The course concludes with contemporary instances of such bridge-building. The over-arching objectives are to elevate the explicitness and salience of desirable properties of research and to illustrate the inescapable tradeoffs among the stipulated criteria. Although this is a core course in the GSB Political Economy PhD curriculum, its substantive foci may differ across years depending on the instructor. For Professor Krehbiel's sessions, the emphasis is on legislative behavior, organization, and lawmaking, and on inter-institutional strategic interaction (e,g, between executive, legislative, and judicial branches in various combinations). Students should have taken POLECON 680. POLECON 682 is also listed as POLISCI 351C.

There is a growing awareness that many of the key challenges in fostering development in poor societies are political challenges. What can we do to encourage trade, cooperation and peace in environments riven with social and ethnic divisions? How do we foster broadly beneficial political reforms and good governance when the potential losers to reforms are able to mobilise to prevent them? How do we detect and mitigate the effects of corruption? What role may modern finance play in creating or mitigating political economy challenges in developing countries?These problems are modern and endemic, but many are also old problems, and economic theory and the practical experiences of different countries have much to tell us both about what has worked in the past, and what policy experiments we may try in new environments. Rather than a survey, the objective of this course is to selectively discuss new and open research areas in political development economics and the theoretical and empirical tools necessary to contribute to them, with the topics chosen to complement other Stanford courses in applied microeconomics, development, political economics and economic history. By the end of the course, the student will have analysed a theoretical or historical solution to a key political development challenge and proposed a natural or field experiment to test it empirically. Graduate level proficiency in microeconomics and empirical methods will be required.

This course is offered for students requiring specialized training in an area not covered by existing courses. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the reading.

This course is elected as soon as a student is ready to begin research for the dissertation, usually shortly after admission to candidacy. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the research.

Doctoral Practicum in Teaching

Doctoral Practicum in Research