POL 403 - Directed Individual Study

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: Grade-point average of 3.000 in politics and instructor consent. This course permits a student to follow a program of directed reading, library research, or data collection and analysis in some area not covered in other courses. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2018, POL 403-01: Directed Individual Study: Party Machines and Institutional Effectiveness (3). A canvas of the literature of American political development on the subject of Progressive-era machine politics, pairing it with directed original research comparing the activities of the Byrd Machine in central and southwestern Virginia with its near contemporaries in the Deep South. Students address fundamental questions about the institutional effectiveness of state and local government through a critical examination of how state machines concentrated and dispersed authority to obtain and retain political power through constituent service. O’Dell.