GV340      Half Unit
The Art of Power and Political Resistance

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Pre-requisites:

Students must have completed GV101 before taking this course.

Additional requisites:

Comfort with basic statistics as covered by Research Design in Political Science (GV249) or an equivalent course in research design or introductory statistics (such as ST102, ST107, ST108, GY140, SA201) is highly recommended.

Throughout history political elites and the state have finessed strategies for developing power, imposing control, extracting resources, and shaping the ideas of their populace. In turn, citizens have adopted methods of confronting the powerful, undermining the elites’ rule, and countering their narratives. These confrontations between the powerful and the weak were sometimes violent, but most often not. To understand power and resistance, students will engage with classical political science theories on state capacity, elite domination, and resistance, primarily drawing on the work of James Scott, alongside thinkers like Margaret Levi, Joel Migdal, and Theda Skocpol. The course incorporates both theoretical perspectives and empirical research on power and resistance, encouraging students to apply these concepts to real-world policy issues. With a global scope, the course considers power dynamics in diverse contexts, from the Global North to the Global South. Through readings, discussions, and policy engagement, students will develop a deeper understanding of how power is exercised and resisted in various societies. By the end of the course, they will be equipped to generate their own ideas about how domination and resistance matter for governance and policy implementation.

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Blog post

Proposal

Formative Assessment 1:

Students reflect on the readings on a chosen week in a short blog post on Moodle. They will have to use the insights from the readings to analyze a policy failure either in any country in the Global North or South. Both students and the instructor will provide feedback on these blog posts. Students then can use these reflections as a template for writing their op-ed or Substack pieces.

Formative Assessment 2: 

Students hand in a detailed outline of a proposed podcast that evaluates a book we have covered in the course. While they will have to work in pairs to produce the podcast, they will have to develop their ideas and write their script by themselves. Students will receive written feedback on the formative assessment that they can use before recording their podcast. The feedback will be targeted at students’ use of theories, policies, and empirical evidence we have covered in the class.

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, 1998.

Scott, James C. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press, 2009.

Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press, 1990.

Lee, Melissa M., and Nan Zhang. "Legibility and the informational foundations of state capacity." The Journal of Politics 79, no. 1 (2017): 118-132.

Nathan, Noah L. "Do grids demobilize? How street networks, social networks, and political networks intersect." American Journal of Political Science (2023).

Ferree, Karen E., Lauren Honig, Ellen Lust, and Melanie L. Phillips. "Land and legibility: when do citizens expect secure property rights in weak states?." American Political Science Review 117, no. 1 (2023): 42-58.

Podcast (60%) in Winter Term Week 2

This component of assessment includes an element of group work.

Position piece (40%, 1200 words) in Autumn Term Week 11

Summative Assessment 1:

The format of this assessment is a podcast. Students are asked to pick one of the books we cover in class on theories of power and resistance. They will need to discuss the key ideas and arguments in the book and use the empirical papers we have covered in class that test these ideas. Students will be encouraged to also incorporate music, interviews, and personal reflections into these podcasts. While students carry out this assessment in pairs, they will be graded individually.

Summative Assessment 2:

Students will build on their formative assessment 1 to develop an 800–1200-word piece in the form of an op-ed or Substack newsletter. The piece should reflect on a government policy failure in any country in the Global North or South using the course readings and discussion.