Question for political science students

[nauru]

When you study political science at a Canadian university, are all your courses and assignments basically limited to a Canada-centric perspective? I realize there are some non-Canadian-centric courses available as electives, but even those -- are they taught from the perspective of comparing with Canada or are there genuinely non-nationalist political science programs in Canada? By non-nationalist I mean giving all forms of organisation of power equal weight, from federal constitutional republics to constitutional monarchies, socialist republics to religious republics, national socialist states, military dictatorships, revolutionary governing councils, principalities, etc. and considering all countries equally rather than Canada as superior to the rest of the world.

It would be, I suppose, political science from more of a first-principles perspective, an approach which prioritizes the study of the nature of power itself in the widest variety of political contexts, rather than to study the mundane details of Canada's mish-mash of ~50 million laws/acts/treaties and self-interested groups in different regions of the country. It would be a political science program that would spend the lions share of the time on relevant writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bastiat, Mill, Rothbard, Plato; as opposed to a name-and-date-oriented history of all the Canada-centric treaties, charters, accords and acts that have been signed/debated/amended while ignoring all the other ideas and movements affecting the rest of the world. Rather than rehashing "Quebec nationalism" over and over for years, the program would instead take a focus on the nature of nationalism itself, in all contexts and all countries -- Canada would be considered as just one of ~200 countries in the world, rather than the focus of 99% of the assignments and lectures being on Canada. Such a program would be about as relevant for a person who is outside Canada as a person who is inside.

Anyone know if such a non-nationalist political science program exists in this country?

[Nakuruin]

Are you considering studying it at a Canadian university, or just unsatisfied with the political science education you've received at a particular university?

My experience is this:

Almost none of my courses talk about Canada. I took one course in first year that was supposed to be a comparative course between Canada and the rest of the world but we spent barely any time discussing Canada, and we were not required to write about Canada - I did a democratic audit on Russia. I'm told that all first year courses at UTSG have been collapsed into a single course POL101 so i'm not sure if this still applies although I know it was taught by the same prof who taught me. We read some Weber and Marx then skimmed over the institutional systems of several countries in the world. My experience is that Canada is not politically significant at all :P

What you are talking about in your second paragraph is a bit different though, that's political theory. While relevant to the study of political science, it's very different from all the statistical analysis required in the field of poli sci. At UTSG, poli sci students must study political theory so yes we read plato, artistotle, hobbes, machiavelli, locke and enlightenment thinkers/writers in the upper years.

Also, I find course descriptions can be very misleading. It all depends on your prof's "specialty" and they kinda skew the course content to fit what they seemingly want to teach you. That's not a bad thing cause i liked the lectures but it's intriguing to see how profs will stretch the limits of the course to teach you what they are interested in.

From what I can tell, courses that don't deal with Canada aren't "electives", they are valid courses that are just as legitimate in being used to complete your degree. They are just as thorough and difficult and aren't treated as "lesser" just because it doesn't deal with Canada.

[nauru]

Are you considering studying it at a Canadian university, or just unsatisfied with the political science education you've received at a particular university?

My experience is this:

Almost none of my courses talk about Canada. I took one course in first year that was supposed to be a comparative course between Canada and the rest of the world but we spent barely any time discussing Canada, and we were not required to write about Canada - I did a democratic audit on Russia. I'm told that all first year courses at UTSG have been collapsed into a single course POL101 so i'm not sure if this still applies although I know it was taught by the same prof who taught me. We read some Weber and Marx then skimmed over the institutional systems of several countries in the world. My experience is that Canada is not politically significant at all :P

What you are talking about in your second paragraph is a bit different though, that's political theory. While relevant to the study of political science, it's very different from all the statistical analysis required in the field of poli sci. At UTSG, poli sci students must study political theory so yes we read plato, artistotle, hobbes, machiavelli, locke and enlightenment thinkers/writers in the upper years.

Also, I find course descriptions can be very misleading. It all depends on your prof's "specialty" and they kinda skew the course content to fit what they seemingly want to teach you. That's not a bad thing cause i liked the lectures but it's intriguing to see how profs will stretch the limits of the course to teach you what they are interested in.

From what I can tell, courses that don't deal with Canada aren't "electives", they are valid courses that are just as legitimate in being used to complete your degree. They are just as thorough and difficult and aren't treated as "lesser" just because it doesn't deal with Canada.

I've only ever taken two political science courses. One was a first year undergraduate course at a Canadian university, and the other was a masters level course that I audited at a university outside Canada. And also a masters level political economy course, but I'm not sure this counts as political science (more institutional economics IMO). The question is more for personal curiosity than anything; I have no plans to enroll in a political science degree program. The Canadian course was just Canada this, Canada that, Meech Lake, federalism and other topics that have no relevance outside Canada. The one abroad spent quite a bit of time on John Stuart Mill, meanings of liberty, and was much more ideas-oriented. The first year undergraduate course was really disappointing due to the scope being limited to, basically, Canadian political history from the 1960s to 1990s, and the total lack of discussion on fundamental ideas. But perhaps my experience wasn't typical.

Political science students do statistical analysis? What kind, relating to what topics? Do they design/solve voting systems? Or is it relating more to sampling/polling techniques and estimating median voter? I come from an economics background and voting systems fall squarely within public choice and game theory, which are (very quantitative) branches of economics. I wasn't aware that political science people also study such quantitative stuff.

So how much (in % if possible) mandatory unavoidable Canadian content is there in your political science program? Is this percentage typical of Canadian polisci programs? In theory do you have enough flexibility in your degree requirements to be able to create a truly non-national or international political science program for yourself, which treats all countries pretty equally? By this I mean to say no undue bias toward studying the specifics of any one country above others; I would however expect countries and blocs to receive attention that is somewhat commensurate to their economic and/or geopolitical influence.

[MonkeyBallZJr]

Political science students do statistical analysis? What kind, relating to what topics? Do they design/solve voting systems? Or is it relating more to sampling/polling techniques and estimating median voter? I come from an economics background and voting systems fall squarely within public choice and game theory, which are (very quantitative) branches of economics. I wasn't aware that political science people also study such quantitative stuff.

So how much (in % if possible) mandatory unavoidable Canadian content is there in your political science program? Is this percentage typical of Canadian polisci programs? In theory do you have enough flexibility in your degree requirements to be able to create a truly non-national or international political science program for yourself, which treats all countries pretty equally? By this I mean to say no undue bias toward studying the specifics of any one country above others; I would however expect countries and blocs to receive attention that is somewhat commensurate to their economic and/or geopolitical influence.


Political science as a whole is moving/incorporating to a more quantitative/statistical research methodology in order to supplement the traditional qualitative research. It is definitely something that is much more prevalent especially at the graduate level (primarily PHD) than at the undergraduate. I'm no expert on quantitative research methodology but you can pretty much apply it to any scenario with degrees, probability and conditionality of causation and effect where you just quantify your variables so you can compute them in more numerical terms. So topics can be pretty wide ranging, especially within political economy, public policy, revolution and GDP, etc. The usage of multiple regression and bivariate models seemed to be the most popular within political science.

When I did my undergraduate I only took about two courses that were Canada related and they were a choice amongst many so it wasn't like it was mandatory. I opted to focus more on international relations, comparative politics and political theory, so yes there is a lot of flexibility in terms of what you want to specialize in since political science is such a broad field. I assume this the norm at the majority of schools in Canada. Once you get to grad school, you can do whatever the hell you want as long as your supervisor doesn't object :lol:

[kodiaktfc]

I've only ever taken two political science courses. One was a first year undergraduate course at a Canadian university, and the other was a masters level course that I audited at a university outside Canada. And also a masters level political economy course, but I'm not sure this counts as political science (more institutional economics IMO). The question is more for personal curiosity than anything; I have no plans to enroll in a political science degree program. The Canadian course was just Canada this, Canada that, Meech Lake, federalism and other topics that have no relevance outside Canada. The one abroad spent quite a bit of time on John Stuart Mill, meanings of liberty, and was much more ideas-oriented. The first year undergraduate course was really disappointing due to the scope being limited to, basically, Canadian political history from the 1960s to 1990s, and the total lack of discussion on fundamental ideas. But perhaps my experience wasn't typical.

Political science students do statistical analysis? What kind, relating to what topics? Do they design/solve voting systems? Or is it relating more to sampling/polling techniques and estimating median voter? I come from an economics background and voting systems fall squarely within public choice and game theory, which are (very quantitative) branches of economics. I wasn't aware that political science people also study such quantitative stuff.

So how much (in % if possible) mandatory unavoidable Canadian content is there in your political science program? Is this percentage typical of Canadian polisci programs? In theory do you have enough flexibility in your degree requirements to be able to create a truly non-national or international political science program for yourself, which treats all countries pretty equally? By this I mean to say no undue bias toward studying the specifics of any one country above others; I would however expect countries and blocs to receive attention that is somewhat commensurate to their economic and/or geopolitical influence.

I suppose I'll have to answer this. I am currently enrolled in a Masters of Arts in Political Science at a Canadian university.

1. I'm assuming the class you took was Introduction to Canadian Politics because all of things you discuss are only dealt with in Intro to Canadian Politics. Mills and Liberty is discussed in Intro to Political Science, a class which I TA in and material I am quite familiar with.

2. Political Science is broken into my sub-fields Political Theory (discussing a multitude of writers, some of whom you mentioned), International Relations (similar to theory but with an IR twist), Canadian (discussing the Cdn system and events), Policy, International Security, Comparative Politics.

3. There isn't a Canadian spin, in fact most students dread the Canadian classes and prefer taking the broader more internationally based classes.

4. Qualitative/Quantitative from what I've seen very much deals with where you did your undergrad. I do very little if any quantitative work but some of my peers are doing primarily stastical work. The majority of Poli Sci works published IS quantitative.

5. One of the professors at this school specialized in Voting, its not very glamorous but his work is impressive. I don't know much about the topic but its pretty much all of the things you've listed that can be encompassed in these kind of works.

6. In undergrad I would say you're probably only required to take about 2 Canadian oriented classes, in grad school its zero.

7. Not in theory because I know many people who do, you can easily frame your classes around an international spectrum. I for one rarely touch Canadian topics.

Hope I've helped. If you have any further questions feel free to response or pm me.