Political Science 2237E Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Systematic Chaos, Pareto Efficiency, Homo Economicus
7 Nov 2017
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Continuing global challenges: climate change, global poverty, war, refugees. Someone forced to leave their country or face persecution. 21 million ppl classified as refugees (half under 18) Denmark: well-governed, peaceful, happy, excellent health care, education. Not intelligence, propensity to violence, or geog that explains differences between syria/ denmark. Politics is about collective choices we make to reduce conflict and promote cooperation. Descriptive: how things are (who is entitled to education, who runs canada) Explanatory: why things are this way (why has syria produced so many refugees, how to poli rulers obtain power) Normative: how things should be (what would be a good response to the refugee problem, why should the pm have authority to say who can smoke weed. Steven pinker"s thesis-> violence is at an all time low. Since 1960, war deaths are way down (going up because of syrian crisis) Democracies don"t fight each other, more countries are organized democratically.
