Exploring Research Areas of the UCLA Political Science Faculty

The UCLA Department of Political Science prides itself on its high national ranking and the commitment of its faculty to fostering a vibrant intellectual community. The department combines outstanding faculty and students, a broad-ranging curriculum oriented toward research, and the resources of one of the nation’s great universities. With approximately 45 core faculty members, the department aims for an entering class of about 15 to 20 students each year, allowing for considerable personal attention to each student. Currently, there are about 150 students in residence.

Political Science is the study of how humans relate to one another and the systems of power and institutions of rule we construct in order to arrange our collective lives. These institutions can be formal like electoral systems, or international courts, or the various branches of governmental power; but they can also be informal and include the cultural practices of diverse ethnic groups, the public contestation of beliefs and values, and everyday forms of collective participation ranging from sporting activities, to political activism, to digital networking and beyond. What these diverse expressions of political activity share is an acknowledgment of the fact that we are many and that in order for the many to live peacefully with one another we must innovate ways to negotiate forms of power.

A "Full Service" Department

The UCLA Department of Political Science considers itself a “full service” department. Its large and intellectually diverse faculty offers coursework and opportunities for research in all of the major sub-fields of the discipline. In addition, graduate students have found that the curriculum facilitates intensive study in a number of cross-cutting areas - empirical and theoretical, contemporary and historical. Among these interdisciplinary concentrations are political economy, American political development, race and politics, and the philosophical, historical, and literary dimensions of political theory.

This emphasis on rigorous academic training and independent research creates a diverse and intellectually exciting graduate student community. Most doctoral graduates pursue careers in academic institutions, while others find challenging employment in the public sector or in private organizations that emphasize research and analytic skills. In the past decade or so, graduates have obtained tenure-track academic positions at prestigious institutions such as Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Harvard’s Kennedy School, Stanford, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Michigan, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego.

Subfields and Areas of Expertise

The curriculum of the graduate program is divided into six general areas: American Politics, Comparative Politics, Formal Theory/Quantitative Methods, International Relations, Political Theory, and Race, Ethnicity & Politics. The department encourages students to be well-rounded in their study of politics, requiring study in two major and two minor fields. The boundaries between these general fields are intentionally permeable, as are the boundaries between the department and other academic disciplines.

American Politics

The American Politics field makes use of a broad set of methodological approaches to study political behavior and institutions in the United States. Faculty research includes such areas as media effects, attitudes and opinions, voting behavior, political parties, and the political and constitutional development of nations. Members of the field foster discussion about contemporary work through the American Politics Workshop Series and occasional reading groups on topics of interest.

Comparative Politics

Comparative Politics courses focus on the study and comparison of political processes in countries all over the world. Scholars in this field explore political change and economic development in the nations of Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. UCLA has led the development of understanding of political change and economic development in the nations of Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia since the 1970s.

Formal Theory/Quantitative Methods

Grounded in popular introductory courses in Data Analysis and Game Theory, this field offers students the opportunity to learn techniques of statistical methods and mathematical modeling that have become the staple of political pollsters as well as electoral campaign strategists, public policy analysts, survey researchers, forecasters, and social scientists in general. Formal theory and methods offers training that supports research across most of the subfields. The department was an early leader in the application of statistics and game theory to the study of politics, campaigns and party politics, and design-based inference.

International Relations

With the end of the Cold War, the world has grown more complex and interdependent. New issues like terrorism, currency crises, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and global warming provide fascinating research challenges. Globalization of production, of financial markets, and information systems has introduced powerful new dynamics into the international system. The International Relations (IR) faculty has a range of expertise that spans international history and diplomacy, international political economy, security studies, IR and formal theory. In the 1950s, UCLA experts developed the cold war doctrine of deterrence.

Political Theory

The Political Theory field represents a broad range of perspectives on how to pursue political thinking in an era of rapid institutional change. The department has great strengths in critical and democratic theory, and in American as well as European political thought.

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Race, Ethnicity & Politics

REP is a hybrid field built around the background of racial and ethnic difference. Scholars study Native, African, Latino, and/or Asian Pacific Americans; racial and ethnic politics internationally; issues of race or ethnicity in social theory, public policy, and political history. More recently, UCLA pioneered the study of Race and Ethnicity in US politics, in developing countries, and in political thought.

Interdisciplinary Concentrations

Several interdisciplinary concentrations further enrich the graduate program, including:

Political Economy: This area overlaps Comparative Politics and International Relations, and also invites interdisciplinary work with the Department of Economics.
American Political Development: Examines the historical evolution of American political institutions and processes.
Race and Politics: Explores the intersection of race, ethnicity, and political power.
Philosophical, Historical, and Literary Dimensions of Political Theory: Offers a broad perspective on political thinking in an era of rapid institutional change.

Faculty Research and Impact

UCLA's faculty are actively engaged in cutting-edge research, publishing in top academic journals, consulting with governments and businesses, writing in local and national newspapers and blogs, and regularly appearing on television and radio to offer expertise for public circulation.

Recent faculty research projects and publications exemplify the breadth and depth of their scholarly interests:

Crime, insecurity, and community policing: Experiments on building trust: This book presents the outcome of a major research initiative into the efficacy of community policing.
"Immigration and Customs Enforcement individual-level administrative data: An introduction." This dataset tracks United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) individual enforcement actions.
"The point of attack: Where and why does oil cause armed conflict in Africa?" This study integrates crisis bargaining and Blotto games to explain why armed groups rarely attack sites with the most oil.
"Accessing justice for survivors of violence against women." This paper discusses the outcomes of reforms aimed at increasing women's access to justice for crimes of violence against them.
"How does armed conflict shape investment? Evidence from the mining sector." This article rationalizes mixed results in past studies, arguing that armed conflict has divergent effects depending on firms’ exposure to violence.
"Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South." This study finds that community policing interventions led to mixed implementation, largely failed to improve citizen-police relations, and do not reduce crime.
"Trusted authorities can change minds and shift norms during conflict." This research tests whether messages from religious leaders can change minds and shift norms around the reintegration of former members of violent extremist groups.
"Do commodity price shocks cause armed conflict? Evidence from a meta-analysis." This meta-analysis of 46 natural experiments estimates the causal effect of international commodity price changes on armed conflict.
"Motivating the adoption of new community-minded behaviors: An empirical test in Nigeria." This study tests two campaigns that encouraged people to try reporting corruption by text message.
"Explaining support for combatants during wartime: A survey experiment in Afghanistan." This research investigates the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan.
"Poverty and support for militant politics: Evidence from Pakistan." Contrary to expectations, poor Pakistanis dislike militants more than middle-class citizens.
Research Design in the Social Sciences: Declaration, Diagnosis, and Redesign: This book provides a powerful framework for describing any empirical research design in the social sciences.
"Evidence needed for ethical social science." This article discusses the ethical principles for human subjects research.
"Field experiments in the Global South: Assessing risks, localizing benefits, and addressing positionality." This piece develops a set of questions for RCT research in the Global South, suggesting ways to involve scholars and research staff who hail from the study site at every research stage.
"Experiments in multiple contexts." This chapter categorizes efforts to conduct cross-context experiments into three types: “uncoordinated,” “coordinated, sequential,” and “coordinated, simultaneous.”
"When to worry about sensitivity bias: A social reference theory and evidence from 30 years of list experiments." This article discusses eliciting honest answers to sensitive questions.

The Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA also funds faculty research working groups and faculty research projects led by UCLA faculty in support of the study and analysis of significant questions of international policy and politics. Examples of Burkle Center-funded research projects include:

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Research on resilience among refugee women in resource-limited environments.
Research on conditional credit access to address the disconnect between global supply chain standards and local mining practices.
A Writer’s Retreat at UCLA’s Lake Arrowhead Retreat Center aimed at fostering rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship on global racial and ethnic dynamics.
Research on measures of accuracy and polarization in immigration coverage across a hybrid media environment in the US.
An archival investigation of the international work of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) and other American efforts in organizing and directing policing in Japan.
Research on what informational advantages, if any, do intelligence bureaucracies provide leaders.
Research on how IFDI mitigates anti-immigration sentiments and increases support for more open immigration policies.
Research on how the entry of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on local labor markets affect wages and employment.
Research on the comparative study of migration, ethnicity, race, and nation (or, MERN) around the world.
Research on the economic consequences of POWs stay in the countries of detention, or their performance when they returned in their country of origin.
Research on strategic alternatives which challenged official Cold War policy: “engagement” and “restraint.”
Research on the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a tool that enables political leaders to punish their rivals.
Research on the effect of Italian POWs on local Australian agricultural and industrial development.
Research on how international law works and why it matters.
Research on how domestic courts often prosecute foreign nationals for severe crimes.

Undergraduate Program

The department is one of the largest undergraduate majors at UCLA and offers around 140 different classes per year to 1800 Political Science majors as well as to students from across the campus. Overall, the faculty and graduate teaching assistants teach about 11,000 students every year. The graduate program is rigorous and encourages students to craft individualized study plans and take advantage of UCLA’s vast interdisciplinary scholarly offerings. The graduate curriculum is dedicated to providing students with the knowledge and expertise to become exacting researchers and compelling instructors. Every year the department hosts around 100 Ph.D. students and graduates around 12 new Ph.Ds.

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