Those who teach political science are likely to hold strong, even passionate political opinions. They must confront the question of the role these views ought to play in the classroom. Two common but opposite approaches might be characterized as “partisan” and “neutral.” The former involves a clear presentation of the teacher's views (“I'm a Marxist, and I'll tell you that right off”). The latter aspires to be fair to all beliefs; its practitioners may be proud that students are unaware of the teacher's own views. Most teachers probably fall somewhere in the middle, hoping to inject life into political instruction by drawing on their own opinions while trying to be fair to all sides. After a thorough analysis of both partisan and neutral approaches, Glenn (1979) concluded that only such “fair-mindedness” can be justified as a pedagogical style.

We agree that: (1) controversy is a central attraction of political education and (2) unrestrained teacher partisanship raises serious questions of ethics and educational technique. This article describes an experimental course that suggests another way of approaching the goal of utilizing controversy without unfair teacher input.

The vehicle was a course we designed and conducted, entitled Clashing Viewpoints, which featured teacher debate on highly controversial issues. We believed that by instituting checks and balances, we could have it both ways—teacher partisanship and fair-mindedness.

In 1987 we surveyed a number of teachers of African politics in order to examine the topics, theoretical frameworks and textbooks/readings treated in those courses. The information presented below was derived from responses to 42 questionnaires and from analysis of 35 syllabi. Reference is also made to a similar 1978 study.

About three-fourths of the courses reported were defined as “comparative politics” with international relations treated secondarily; the remaining courses combined comparative and international politics. Sixty-five percent of the courses were offered exclusively to undergraduates. Sixty-seven percent concentrated on sub-Saharan Africa, 14% the entire continent, and 19% southern Africa.

Instructors vary widely in their course introduction. The most popular method is historical, but nine spend one to two weeks “setting the scene” of contemporary Africa before the historical overview. Twenty-two percent explicitly address approaches to the study of African politics. Some treat competing approaches to “development” or approaches to the causes and cures of poverty in Africa. This roughly compares to the percent of respondents who indicated a desire to expose students to competing paradigms. Although the low percentage of direct treatment of competing approaches is surprising, the syllabi indicate that many teachers integrate the issue throughout the course.

For the past 12 years, I have regularly taught an upper-division course titled American Political Thought. This course typically enrolls between 30 and 40 students and provides the single opportunity for political science majors to focus intensively on the political thought of the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras. Like most courses on American political thought, this one includes a section on the Federalist Papers and a good deal of reading and discussion of the speeches and writings of the anti-federalists. And, like most instructors, I have often felt frustration in trying to get students excited about these “classics.”

This year, inspired by the fanfare surrounding the Bicentennial of the writing of the Constitution, I developed a constitutional ratifying convention simulation as a major component of the course. Rather than simply reading and discussing the writings of federalists and anti-federalists, the students would have to roleplay particular writers and act-out the arguments that are found in anti-federalist documents and The Federalist Papers. The class was divided into two equal-sized teams of federalists and anti-federalists, and they were given nine topical areas with corresponding readings which would form the substance of the convention debates. The students were encouraged to play the role of particular characters, for example, Madison, Hamilton and Jay on the federalist side and Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and Melancton Smith on the anti-federalist side. To get students fully involved in their subject matter and to make the simulation fun, I made it clear that high sounding rhetoric, period costumes, and appropriate decor in the convention room would be most welcome.

Students of the judiciary have long been concerned with the factors that contribute to decision-making at the individual and institutional levels. In particular, analysts have focused a great deal of attention on the Supreme Court and the behavior of its members. Despite this attention, analysts have differed as to the relative influence of the factors justices rely upon when making their decisions. Even the courses taught in a standard political science undergraduate curriculum send mixed signals about these factors to students. Basic constitutional law courses tend to overestimate the role of doctrinal interpretation and precedent and underestimate the impact of the values and attitudes of the Court's members. Courses on the judicial process and politics err in the opposite direction.

When the decision-making literature is viewed as a whole, five basic determinants of judicial decisions emerge: the background of the justice (Tate 1981), the justice's attitudes and values (Rohde and Spaeth 1976), the dynamics inherent in small-groups (Murphy 1964; Woodward and Armstrong 1979), the member's conception of the role of the Court (Howard 1977), and the impact of external stimuli (Casper and Posner 1974). Some of these variables can be measured, but some are very difficult to gauge. As a consequence, analysts cannot accurately assess the relative impact of these five factors upon the individual's decision.

The first day of class is always a challenge (Vile 1985). An instructor has several objectives: to convey a sense of what the course will entail, to begin convincing students that what they are about to study is important, and to leave the impression that the class will be a stimulating experience. I remember my first class during my initial semester of teaching, a section of introductory American government. Fresh from graduate school, I lectured on how the study of politics could be scientific and dazzled the students with a tour through social science terminology—norms, roles, institutions, and so on. The response was, to be charitable, restrained.

Fortunately for my students, I've moved on to other approaches. One that has been particularly successful in basic American government classes is to place the students in a you-be-the-judge situation through consideration of a Supreme Court case that raises issues of substantive importance to which introductory students can readily relate. The case must have resulted in a non-unanimous decision that is not widely known among undergraduates. (There is no problem in meeting these criteria.) The legal background and facts of the case are presented, as are highlights from the majority and dissenting opinions, but without indicating which is which. The students are then given the opportunity to put their thoughts about the case on paper and to discuss their opinions with their colleagues, first in small groups and then with the whole class.

Before entering the teaching profession, I served as the administrator of an environmental agency, a lobbyist, and a policy advisor in the state of Pennsylvania. These experiences made me aware of the need for practical suggestions on how to improve bureaucratic effectiveness and measure organizational success. My research interests focus on developing quantitative measures of implementation efforts and applying these measures to administrative agencies. I believe this approach to studying administration will become increasingly important in the future because it concentrates on measuring productivity and can be adapted to the private as well as the public sector.

The theories of international political economy certainly lend themselves to classroom teaching. And courses on Asian politics and society have long been offered. Typically, however, international political economy and Asian studies are not formally mixed in a single course offering.

My task was to devise a restricted-enrollment, upper-level seminar which encompassed political economy theory applied specifically to Asia. The department offered no courses in political economy, and the only offerings on Asia were two courses in Chinese politics I had taught the prior semester.

Despite the lack of supporting coursework, the topic proved to provide an interesting conceptual focus, and students became quite engaged with the subject matter. Further, it appears that an explicit geographical focus may help, rather than hinder, the teaching of political economy concepts. The body of theory in international political economy is rather abstract in the absence of application to concrete situations. The Asian areas examined (Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea) provided stimulating grist for such concepts as interdependence, the connections between “high politics” (security policy) and “low politics” (economic relations), and the dependency-vs.-developmental models of economic growth.

Biopolitics is the study of the relationship between our biological makeup and our political behavior. While this line of inquiry can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, the contemporary surge of interest dates from the middle 1960s. Among the major contributing factors then were—take your pick—James C. Davies' Human Nature in Politics (1963), a 1964 essay by Lynton K. Caldwell, and a panel chaired by Albert Somit at the Southern Political Science Association (1967). Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic growth of interest in “biopolitics,” as the area came to be known, to the point where some 900 works have now appeared (Peterson and Somit, in press).

A variety of indicators testify to the acceptance that biopolitics has since achieved within the discipline: formal recognition by the International Political Science Association (1972); biopolitical articles in our leading professional journals; books bearing the imprint of leading publishers; the regular inclusion of panels on biology and politics at regional, national, and international conferences; support from major foundations, such as the Rockefeller and Lilly Foundations; awards by NSF and NIA for biopolitical research; the establishment of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (1981) and its journal, Politics and the Life Sciences (1982) and, most recently, recognition by the American Political Science Association of biopolitics as an “organized subfield.”

The purpose of this brief review is to update the article entitled “Microcomputers and Public Policy Analysis” which appeared in the summer/fall 1985 special symposium issue of the Public Productivity Review on “Microcomputer Applications to Productivity Improvements.”

A lot happened in the three years since early 1985 (when the original article was drafted) and early 1988 (when the current updating review was drafted). The main idea that the 1985 article reported was the development of pioneering software. The logical next step was the inclusion of such software as part of the textbook literature of public administration, business administration, policy analysis, political science, and related fields.

This updating review thus mainly reports the availability of recent textbooks which provide a microcomputer interface regarding the five fields which were emphasized in the original article. Those five software fields most relevant to public productivity are multi-criteria decision making, management science/operations research, statistical analysis, information systems, and computer-assisted instruction.