Political Theory

Faculty

Core:
Joshua Cohen
John Ferejohn
James Fishkin
Josiah Ober
Jack Rakove
Rob Reich
Debra Satz

Affiliated:
Eamonn Callan
Barbara Fried
Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Tom Grey

Courses

Undergraduate:
PoliSci 3P/136S: Justice
PoliSci 132S/132X: Theories of Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Non-Profit Sector
PoliSci 134R: Environmental Justice
PoliSci 136R: Intro to Global Justice
PoliSci 137R: Justice at Home and Abroad: Civil Rights in the 21st Century
PoliSci 230A: Origins of Political Thought
PoliSci 232T: The Dialogue of Democracy

Graduate:
PoliSci 334: Philanthropy ad Civil Society
PoliSci 337S: Seminar on Liberation Technologies
PoliSci 433: Political Theory Worksho
PoliSci 438: Democracy and the Constitution
PoliSci 336S: Justice
PoliSci 337R: Justice at Home and Abroad: Civil Rights in the 21st Century
PoliSci 330A: Origins of Political Thought
PoliSci 332T: The Dialogue of Democracy
PoliSci 332S: Theories of Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Non-Profit Sector
PoliSci 336: Intro to Global Justice
PoliSci 331S: Politics and Collective Action
PoliSci 337T: Designing Liberation Technology
Polisci 430A: Wealthy Hellas
PoliSci 431L: Graduate Seminar on Equality
PoliSci 430B: Wealthy Hellas
PoliSci 436R: Graduate Seminar on Amartya Sen

Back to top

Workshops and Lectures

Political Theory Workshops

Global Justice Workshop
    Regular Meeting Time: 1:15-3:00 PM
    Regular Meeting Place: Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Encina Hall, 616 Serra St., Room 008 (map)

Legal Theory Workshop
    This two-semester course is designed to give students a broad introduction to legal scholarship through exposure to current academic writing in a range of fields and close attention to students' own scholarly writing projects. While all students are welcome to apply, the course is especially designed to meet the needs of students interested in an academic career after law school.

Back to top

Program on Ethics in Society
     The Program in Ethics in Society is designed to foster scholarship, teaching, and moral reflection on fundamental issues in personal and public life. The program is grounded in moral and political philosophy, but it extends its concerns across a broad range of traditional disciplinary domains. The program is guided by the idea that ethical thought has application to current social questions and conflicts, and it seeks to encourage moral reflection and practice in areas such as international relations, politics, science, medicine, law, and business.

Center for Ethics
    The Stanford Center on Ethics promotes research, teaching, and public debate on the fundamental moral issues of our times. As home to some of the leading professional schools in business, law, medicine, education, and engineering, Stanford has unique opportunities to contribute to path breaking interdisciplinary work. Drawing on these strengths, the Center aims to advance the foundational theory, moral reasoning skills, and social commitments necessary to address ethical issues.

Center for Global Justice
     Located in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Program on Global Justice aims to foster a global sensibility and an understanding of global politics among political theorists. It aims as well bring humanists and social scientists studying global politics, as well as practitioners in international law, public health, and education, into more direct contact with systematic normative analysis

.The program focuses on four topics:
1. Human rights: Since the end of World War II, it has been widely agreed that all human beings have certain basic entitlements, but how far do these entitlements extend? Do human rights compromise social and economic rights? What are the implications of the idea of human rights for gender equality? How can human rights be advanced in a world with no global state, and in which firms are much more mobile than people? Who has principal responsibility for ensuring the protection of human rights?

2. Global governance: Global politics is not focused on a global state, but in part of a range of global institutions, from the United Nations, World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, to a range of regional security organizations, to such standard-setting bodies as the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Though these organizations are not states, and lack the rule-making and coercive power we associate with states, they have important impact on human lives and well-being, and large issues have emerged in the past decade about their legitimacy. What kinds of processes should they follow? Is membership really voluntary, and does that matter for issues of accountability, representation, and procedural fairness?

3. Access to basic goods: What kinds of goods are essential for an acceptable level of human functioning (health, education, communications, clean water)? How can such basic goods be ensured? Is such provision principally a local responsibility? If so, what kinds of support should be given to local providers? If not, what kinds of outside agents—states, philanthropic organizations, non-governmental organizations—are best positioned to provide them, and how can outside agents provide such basic goods as education and health care, without undermining efforts to build decent local institutions?

4. Philosophical foundations: Modern Western political thought, which emerged in the context of a central political authority ruling over people divided by ethnicity, class, and religious confession, has been preoccupied with how to establish legitimate authority over such a divided population. Philosophical work in the Program focuses on how the new context of global politics changes this terrain of normative argument.

Back to top