211 Silsby Hall
HB 6108
Hanover, New Hampshire 03755
Tel: (603) 646-2544
Fax: (603) 646-2152
E-mail: Government.Department@Dartmouth.EDU
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The Government Department’s Foreign Study Program takes place each year during the fall term. In affiliation with the London School of Economics, it focuses on international relations and comparative politics. The prerequisites for this program are Government 4 and 5 (or equivalents), and three course credits are offered. Students take two seminars with faculty of the London School of Economics’ Department of International Relations (Government 90 and 91), and a third seminar taught by the Dartmouth faculty member accompanying the group (Government 92).
Professor Ned Lebow directed the London Program in fall 2010, and Professor Dirk Vandewalle will direct the program in fall 2011. The LSE professors participating in this program are: Michael Cox, who teaches Government 90 (Strategic Aspects of International Relations”); and Christopher Coker, who teaches Government 91 (“International Relations Theory”).
Below are descriptions of recent seminars offered by Dartmouth faculty on the London Program.
Centered around Correlli Barnett's notion of "Total Strategy"--"strategy conceived as encompassing all the factors relevant to preserving or extending the power and prosperity of a human group in the face of rivalry from other human groups"--this seminar investigates the complex interaction of factors that led to the rise and decline of the British Empire, and of the unique position of London as a financial powerhouse for the global economy during that time. In light of this notion of "Total Strategy", in this seminar you will be asked to read widely across a number of sources from different disciplines--political science, sociology, economics, literature. Although the seminar looks at the British Empire in a more or less chronological fashion, the emphasis will be on the common elements across time that provided both for the coherence and cohesive strength of the empire, and, eventually, as those elements lost their relevance or were lost to other powers led to the decline of Great Britain as an empire.
A seminar that attempts to cover “individuals, beliefs, behaviors, and outcomes,” i.e. “Principals, Principles, Practices, and Policies,” can be decomposed in a number of ways. In examining these four “Ps” in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom, we most often will employ the typical and “twin” modes of political analysis, that of the empirics, e.g., the nature of conservative beliefs and practices in American and British political life, as well as the philosophical analysis of the meaning of political conservatism in the two countries.
Empirically, what do we mean by ideology as employed in practice by voters and elected officials? Do voters even employ ideology in their political reasoning, and how would we know if they did? Is conservatism largely an “elite” trait shared by the well-educated and politically involved? Further, we analyze the “empirics” of political practices employed by “conservatives” when in power in each country. In a philosophical analysis, we want to understand what values rest at the heart of a belief system. What do conservatives believe? Are there “core” values that are common to every brand or stripe of “conservatism”? And, at the core, is “conservatism” in the US and UK a coherent, inter-related system of values and opinions that can properly be called a “belief system”?
In our empirical and philosophical analyses, we also examine the main actors – the so-called “principals” among conservatives. We will focus on the iconic conservatives in the US and UK, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but will also consider George W. Bush, his father, David Cameron, the current UK Conservative Party leader as well as other active conservatives in each country. We will also review the “principals” among the philosophers of conservatism: in the U.K. from Edmund Burke to Michael Oakshott to David Willetts and John Gray and from James Madison to John Kekes in the U.S.
Fifteen seminar sessions will take place over the space of the academic term in the U.K and will be supplemented with guest speakers drawn from the academy and British political life.
The application deadline for the fall 2011 London Program is February 1, 2011; for students who will be off campus in winter 2011, the deadline is November 2, 2010. If you have questions about the London Program, feel free to contact Professors Ned Lebow or Dirk Vandewalle. More detailed information may be obtained from the Off-Campus Programs Office, 44 North College Street, and at the following website: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ocp/
