Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [Government] From Dartmouth College

Political science is a highly diverse field united around a core interest.  Political scientists study power, and especially power used for public purposes:  how it is created, organized, distributed, justified, used, resisted, and sometimes destroyed.  They study power both normatively and empirically.  They study it in different settings:  within states, among states, and in spaces that states do not (or no longer) control.  They consider past as well as contemporary patterns.  They use a wide array of approaches and methods to gain leverage on the even wider array of questions they pose.

The Department of Government at Dartmouth maintains the ancient Greek concern with the nature of order and governance at every level of social interaction. We are also attentive to communal failures and to the divisions, conflicts, and wars to which such failures give rise. We explore these issues from diverse perspectives. Faculty and students analyze texts, conduct surveys, experiments, interviews, and case studies, and collect and analyze quantitative data in their efforts to understand the political world.

The Department is committed to the proposition that outstanding scholarship and outstanding teaching are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Many of our faculty are prominent researchers, addressing enduring problems including, for example, the sources and resolution of international and civil conflicts, the development of representative institutions in new democracies, the defense of civil and human rights, the value of partisanship, gender bias in political campaigns, the persistence of mistaken beliefs in public opinion, the consequences of American power for the future course of international relations, the causes of genocide and prospects for its prevention, the detection of electoral fraud, and the proper level of autonomy for religious communities within liberal states. These issues attract students to Government classes in large numbers.