Politics Week 6

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Politics Week 6, Instructional Plan

This week we agreed to make a small change to the class plan. Instead of reading and discussing Chapter 5 from the textbook (Nations and Nationalism), I suggested we spend some time on a specific writing task. This will help the students organize their thoughts in a more logical order.

Let’s quickly check the answers for the Critical Thinking test.

Next week, we will be back on the regular schedule:

  1. Chapter 6 Political Economy and Globalization (Mon)
  2. review for mid term exam (Thurs)

Class Plan and Objectives

Objective 1: understand the difference between a persuasive argument and an inquiry based argument (sometimes called evidence based argument).

Objective 2: learn the basic logical format of an inquiry based argument:

  1. define the question
  2. collect evidence
  3. identify universal rules
  4. generate probable conclusions

Objective 3: demonstrate this knowledge in four different cases.

  1. bus puzzle
  2. murder mystery
  3. analysis of food patterns
  4. understanding rationale choice theory applied to North Korea and Russia’s actions in Syria.

 Output

Students will write and hand-in short answers for these two questions using the inquiry-based framework we have studied this week:

  1. Do you think political actions can be understood and predicted by looking at rational choices?
  2. Do you think the state is becoming weaker in an era of globalization?

Understanding Russia in Syria: Using Evidence Based Arguments to Understand Rationale Choice Theory

In the textbook reading we learned about rationale choice theory. Rational choice tries to help us understand why states behave as they do. The theory has many assumptions:

  • states usually have many options
  • each option has some costs and benefits
  • states calculate the net benefit of each option
  • states choose the option(s) which serves their own self-interest the best – gives them the biggest net benefit
  • actions are considered rationale when the choice can reasonably lead to the biggest net benefit
  • if we can know the net benefit calculation of each option we could predict how states would behave in international politics

New Articles and Information

Background Information

  • map of Syria region or a regional map
  • pop 17.9 million, area 185,000 sq km
  • the US lead battle against ISIS has not improved for the past year – it’s a stalemate
  • civil war in Syria going on since 2011 – 250,000 dead, 9.0 million refugees since 2011, now 3,0 million refugees left the country
  • refugees are powering into Europe from Syria, causing local political problems
  • no solution to the Syria civil war or the battle with ISIS is likely
  • after years of fighting, Russia jumps into support the Syrian president and fight the rebels
  • the rebels are supported by the US
  • the US plans seem to focus on air bases in turkey which which attack ISIS inside Syria; the US does into seem to want US soldiers in Syria