POLI1081 · Political Science
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences
Course restricted to political science majors only. This course may NOT be taken by any International Studies majors or minors. Class restricted to political science freshmen and sophomores. This course examines the principle sources of the behavior of countries in international politics, including the nature of the international system and the decision-making process within states. It examines such issues as the sources of power, the causes and implications of the security dilemma, the dynamics of alliances, the causes of war, international political economy, and the dilemmas of world order. This course is strongly recommended for students who plan to take upper level international politics courses.
Course experience
Averages use the original five-point historical evaluation scale.
Organization
4.2 / 5
How well the course was organized
Challenge
4.6 / 5
How intellectually challenging students found it
Attendance
4.0 / 5
How necessary attendance was
Assignments
4.1 / 5
How helpful assignments were
Weekly effort
~5
hours per week
Estimated from the original workload response buckets. Individual sections may differ.
Instructor options
Ratings below reflect only recovered evaluations connected to this course.
Student perspective
Recovered and new anonymous comments are shown as written and may reflect different course formats.
Dec 11, 2025 · Historical comment
Nice guy who is super knowledgeable about politics. However, your entire grade is based on 3 exams which have nothing to do with lectures. Each test requires literally hundreds of pages of dense readings. Unnecessarily hard.
Across time
Section-level results available in the recovered archive.
Spring 2025
1 sectionSpring 2024
1 sectionFall 2023
1 sectionFall 2022
1 sectionFall 2021
1 sectionFall 2020
1 section