This course will examine how scholars go about testing theories-many, but not all, formal-of political institutions. We will survey a broad array of models of legislatures, executives, courts, and the inter-relationships between and among them. Most of theory will be drawn from American politics, but literatures from international relations and comparative politics will also be consulted. The primary intention of the course, meanwhile, is to critically examine scholars' efforts to derive comparative statics from these various theories and then, vitally, to construct datasets that permit tests of them. Familiarity with basic principals in game theory and statistics is presumed.
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