Game Theory and Modeling in Political Analysis

This lecture course is class-restricted to juniors, seniors and graduate students. (Note: This is a course different from the undergrad course, "POLI3407: Game Theory for Political Science." It is more advanced and is designed to be a rigorous quantitative methods course for graduate students or advanced undergraduate students.) Game theory is the mathematical analysis of strategic decision-making. This course introduces essential concepts and applications of modern game theory in political science. The course consists of three modules. The first module focuses on how individuals make choices based on their preferences, and how a group of individuals collectively makes decisions that affect all members of the group. The second module focuses on key ideas and concepts in game theory and covers important types of game-theoretic models across various strategic environments. The third module discusses the application of the game-theoretical approach to a variety of real-world topics, including electoral competition, special interest politics, political parties, coalition building, revolution and regime change, democratization, democratic backsliding, among others. Overall, this course aims to provide a solid foundation in game theory as a research method in political science.