Political Theory

Political theory studies the historical, conceptual, and normative foundations of politics and political science. Graduate students are trained to analyze both canonical texts (e.g., Plato, Hobbes, or Nietzsche) and contemporary problems (e.g., the logic of representation, the limits to democracy, or the relationship between violence and social order). Political theorists at UCSD are engaged in lively conversations with specialists in comparative, American, and international relations.

The faculty who teach and conduct research in political theory include Fonna Forman, Harvey Goldman, Germaine Hoston, Alan Houston, Victor Magagna, Gerry Mackie, and Tracy Strong. Together their interests span ancient and modern political thought, as well as Western and Eastern traditions. Strong is an internationally recognized scholar who has published path-breaking studies of Nietzsche and Rousseau. He is presently working on the relation between aesthetics and political thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Houston specializes in the history of political thought, with emphasis on early-modern England and revolutionary America. Author of a prize-winning study of the republican heritage in England and America, he is currently writing a book on the Levellers and editing a collection of Benjamin Franklin's political writings. Forman-Barzilai, our newest faculty member, uses ancient and modern moral and political thought to illuminate contemporary problems. She recently completed a prize-winning dissertation, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy, in which she thinks about globalization and cosmopolitanism through the lens of moral psychology.

Mackie's main interest is contemporary political theory, especially democratic theory, deliberation, and voting.  His award-winning book Democracy Defended radically revised understandings about the applicability of social choice theory to democratic theory.  He is also interested in prosocial behavior, social norms, and is an authority on the ending of harmful practices. Goldman's research focuses on contemporary social theory and its philosophical antecedents, and the sociology of literature. Author of a two-volume comparative study of Max Weber and Thomas Mann, he is presently working on the reception of Nietzsche among contemporary French intellectuals. Magagna's research focuses on the cultural foundations of politics in pre-modern and early-modern societies. He is currently completing a comparative study of the social radicalism of democratic politics. Hoston specializes in modern Chinese and Japanese thought. Author of two books on the reception and transformation of Marxist-Leninist ideas in China and Japan, she is completing a comparison of the call for spiritual and cultural revolution by writers in Japan and China with Latin American and Black African theologies of liberation.

Students of political theory combine core courses in ancient and modern political thought with specialized seminars on topics ranging from the ideology of the American Revolution to contemporary social theory, from cosmopolitanism to the political uses of antiquity, and the concept of civil society to the self and the political order. Many students also take directed readings on specific research topics. See Field Requirements for more detail. See http://weber.ucsd.edu/~ahouston/department/field_requirements.htm for basic reading lists for the general political theory field and focus fields.

Focus Areas in Political Theory

• A specialized subject
  (e.g. the social contract, authority, power, or obligation)
• A specialized genre
  (e.g. liberalism, Marxism, or feminist political thought)
• A historical period
  (e.g. contemporary continental thought or seventeenth century English thought)