POLI 250 - Politics as Games

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

This course introduces a game theoretic approach used widely in the social and behavioral sciences. Politics often involves joint decision making by multiple players in interactive situations. Therefore this kind of reasoning is particularly fruitful for analyzing political phenomena. The course starts with a general discussion of rationality and proceeds to various model setups and solution concepts. The emphasis is on the application of these theoretical concepts to the real world. Class exercises and homework are designed to encourage students to analyze political events around us and the world. The main objective is the development of logical reasoning and not mathematical expression. Minimal amount of mathematics is used in the course. Fubing Su.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS