4.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Citizens of countries in North America and Europe govern themselves with multiple, overlapping layers of governmental institutions that in practice compete for support, whether that support is expressed in the form of tolerance of taxation, compliance with regulation, or legitimacy. Constitutions in turn govern the formal relationships among competing institutions, but these rules of the game form only the parameters of public policy responsibility and authority. This course is designed to examine the structure and performance of intergovernmental policy competition in North America (where Canada, Mexico and the United States are all constitutional federations, and supranational institutions are few and relatively weak) and Europe (where several countries are federations to varying degrees, and the supranational institutions of the European Union are relatively sophisticated). The methodological approach used in the course will be comparative international political economy, drawing on historical and contemporary materials and emphasizing attention to primary source documents. (This is a cross-listed course offered by the Canadian Studies Program that also can fulfill a requirement for the Latin American Studies Program.) <a href="http://www.sais-jhu.edu/resources/administrative-offices/how-access-course-syllabi-and-evaluations" target="_blank">Click here to see evaluations, syllabi, and faculty bios</a>