Politics

The study of politics emphasizes several challenging and critical issues:

• The exercise of power in formal governmental institutions and in non-governmental institutions, from interest groups to human rights organizations to corporate board rooms
• Political systems, their historical context, and the social and economic systems with which they interact
• The ideas of the great political thinkers, and how those ideas might apply in contemporary practice
• How public policy gets formulated, legislated, implemented, and evaluated and how democratic and accessible is the process.
• Comparing the U.S. political system to those elsewhere in the world, in nations in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East
• The politics of nations and international relations, and the transnational relations increasingly practiced by peoples, organizations, and local institutions across national boundaries