POLI 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Constituencies Of Iceland
Political Process and Behaviour in Canada
January 9th, 2018
Introduction to Course
●How to do well
- Pay attention in class and do all the readings
- Note on readings: Some readings are difficult to understand, so pointers to the
digital readings on myCourses will be written by the professor under the reading
●Course breakdown
- Midterm Exam (40%)
First (February 6th, in class)
Second (March 13th in class)
* If you write both midterms, the lowest mark will be dropped. If you only take one
midterm, that is the midterm grade that will count towards your final grade for the course.
- Conference Participation (15%)
- Final Exam (45%)
●Topics
- Part I: Ideas/Culture
- Part II: Parties/Partisan Competition
- Part III: From Political Demands to Policy
Lecture 1: Ways of thinking about the political process
●Politics and the Policy Process
-Politics: “the activity by which rival claims are settled by public authorities”
- “Politics is not a spectator sport”, it is all about competition
●Political Process
- Problem Definition: for example when electricity is scarce, someone can think of
it as a demand or supply problem. If someone sees it as a demand problem they
can say that people should not expect to have the lights on in a room. If someone
sees it as a supply problem, they may just simply say electricity is scarce.
- Getting Organized:
➢Where do groups come from? (e.g we cannot assume that women who are
not happy with workplace conditions will just form a group, groups do not
form automatically)
➢Building a political constituency
Document Summary
Pay attention in class and do all the readings. Note on readings: some readings are difficult to understand, so pointers to the digital readings on mycourses will be written by the professor under the reading. * if you write both midterms, the lowest mark will be dropped. If you only take one midterm, that is the midterm grade that will count towards your final grade for the course. Lecture 1: ways of thinking about the political process. Politics: the activity by which rival claims are settled by public authorities . Politics is not a spectator sport , it is all about competition. Problem definition: for example when electricity is scarce, someone can think of it as a demand or supply problem. If someone sees it as a demand problem they can say that people should not expect to have the lights on in a room.