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SPRING 2008

UH Manoa POLS 673, THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS
Instructor: Prof. Dr. James (Jim) Dator
Course Description: This course will focus on the design of new systems of governance and is intended especially for students in the Alternative Futures MA option within the Department of Political Science. Other students are most heartily welcome. The course will be in three major parts.

THE FIRST PART, for which the instructor will be primarily (but not exclusively) responsible for leading class discussion, will begin with a review of some of the basic ideas about political futures studies and the design of governance systems. We will argue that "structure  matters": that certain  structures lead to specific behavior so that if different behavior is preferred, different structures are required. We will problematize the dominant mode of thinking about designing governance systems, called "constitutionalism", in light of what a "quantum" political design, or one based on evolutionary systems theory, might suggest instead. This will be followed by a consideration of other non-dominant governance design cosmologies.

THE SECOND PART: Then we will consider six of the many complaints levied against all existing governments: that they are bureaucratic, placing the convenience of the governors over the needs of the governed; that they too nationalistic, privileging the nation-state over both smaller and larger units; that they are undemocratic, thwarting participation of some, while favoring other, groups and individuals; that they are murderous, both using and causing killing; that they are patriarchal, insisting on a gender dichotomy that privileges men and violent masculinity, while marginalizing or oppressing other preferences; and that they are unfuturistic, severely discounting the needs and wants of future generations while favoring some people and groups in the present. Since a goal of this class is to invent and design systems that overcome these and other undesirable features, we will consider several examples of governance designs that are intended to address one or more of the major complaints
       By the third meeting of the class (January 30) each member of the class will identify one of the six "complaints" about which she wishes to become expert. Persons choosing the same "complaint" will then form teams. These individuals or teams will be responsible for (1) leading the discussion about the complaint and solutions to it on the night it is scheduled for class consideration, (2) researching and explaining to the rest of the class other governance designs that attempt to solve the complaint; (3) and in general, serving as expert consultants to the rest of the class on this matter. However, all students are expected to include their solutions to all six complaints (plus any others of particular concern to them) in their final paper.

THE THIRD PART, for which the members of the course will be responsible, individually and collectively, will focus on governance designs in any area of each student's choosing. However, students are expected in their governance design to present their solutions to the "major complaints" plus any other concerns they may have. Moreover, students are especially encouraged to develop designs that are not based upon traditional Western structures and/or philosophical assumptions. For example, you might consider developing Hawaiian or other indigenous, Confucian, Islamic, Taoist, or Buddhist political designs; and/or those made on the basis of feminist, Gaian, or Green values; and/or on the assumptions of evolutionary, biological, self-organizing, quantum, catastrophe, chaos, or string theories.  As will become clearer during class readings and discussion, the focus of your design must be on forms and structures that encourage preferred  behavior in accordance with your values, and not on the simple assertion of your preferred values alone.
For Detailed Syllabus

UH Manoa POLS 660, PUBLIC LAW AND JUDICIAL SYSTEMS (LAW AND POLITICS)
Instructor: Dr. Katharina Heyer
Course Description: This course is to serve as an introduction for graduate students to the interdisciplinary body of theory and research called “law and society studies.” To that end we will study some of the main questions and themes that have emerged in sociolegal research and consider the different methodologies prevalent in addressing these questions. We will pay special attention to the role of law in either promoting or hindering social change – how power relations shape and are shaped by legal institutions, processes and meanings. We will examine the relationship between law and social change “from the bottom up,” by asking how social change creates conflict in everyday life and how individuals use law, politics, and experience to resolve these conflicts.
For Detailed Syllabus

UH Manoa ELI 80(3), Advanced Listening and Speaking
Instructor: Yoonah Seong
Course Description: This course provides the students with the opportunity to further improve their academic listening and speaking skills to enable the students to follow lectures and participate orally in class in an American university setting. The course will focus on listening comprehension, presentation, and discussion skills. This course is designed for students who have considerable listening/speaking experience and advanced proficiency in English as an additional language.
For Detailed Syllabus

Fall 2007

UH Manoa POLS 730, International Relations Seminar: Foreign Policy Theory, Practice and Research
Instructor: Prof. Dr. Richard Chadwick
Course Description: This fall semester, this seminar will focus on the study and practice of American foreign policy from a variety of perspectives, those of applied research offering guidance concerning achieving goals and objectives, scientific research offering insights into how foreign policy decision making takes place and factors that shape world views and situational perceptions, and philosophical research offering insights into constructing alternative futures, alternatives to existing systems, value frameworks, and paths to enlightenment. One caveat: this field is extremely well populated with histories, analyses, and commentaries, theories, data collections, and philosophical orientations. You should expect, therefore, considerable challenge to your own worldviews, what and even how to study this material, and with what orientation (e.g., critical, constructivist, and so on).
For Detailed Syllabus or POLS

UH Manoa POLS 610, Political Theory and Analysis: State Theory
Instructor: Prof. Dr. John Wilson
Course Description: The primary focus of this course is "The State," meaning the "modern" nation-state in general. The second and third foci are "modern political theory" and "the nation". In addition, some special attention will be given to the PRC and especially the USA, as highly problematic "states." Overall, we will investigate and discuss the ideology, development, and structure of the state, working from the assumption that what is most characteristic of the discipline of political science in the modern era is the formation called "The State."
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UH Manoa POLS 610, Introduction to Public Theory
Instructor: Prof. Dr. James H. Spencer
Course Description: Regulation of society, allocation of resources, and public choices are central questions in the context of rapidly changing societies, especially in the context of globalization, technological change and decentralization. This class will provide a broad overview of public policy in a market economy, covering the theoretical foundations of state, private sector, and civil society roles in social organization, distinctions between secular and non-secular trends as well as the role of political expediency. In the broad context of urbanization and market reform the class covers the importance of accountability, process, and financial mechanisms in the development of effective public policy. It uses the cases of urban poverty in the United States, as well as market reform in developing countries to examine the relationship between policy theory and practice.
For Detailed Syllabus

UH Manoa ELI 83 (1), Writing for International Graduate Students
Instructor: Larry Davis
Course Description: ELI 83 is designed for graduate students at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa who need to develop their academic writing abilities in English as an additional language. Students in this course will explore academic writing in their disciplines, develop clarity of written expression, and improve command over textual, rhetorical, and discursive conventions common in academic writing. Students will also apply the different tasks that are associated with the writing process to various writing situations. By the end of this course, students should be prepared for independent academic writing at the graduate level.
For Detailed Syllabus

UH Manoa ELI 82 (7), Reading for International Graduate Students
Instructor: Munhong Chue
Course Descriptions: This course is designed to help students deal with high demands of academic reading by focusing on becoming efficient and autonomous readers. This goal will be achieved through activities that treat efficient reading strategy use in relation to text type and the purpose of reading, build field-specific vocabulary, and develop critical reading strategies.
For Detailed Syllabus

Spring 2006

UH Manoa POLS 651, Political Leadership
Instructor: Prof. Dr. Richard Chadwick
Course Description: "Exploration of political leadership as a focus for research, teaching, and applied political science."

This version of the course examines
  1. theoretical and applied approaches to furthering knowledge about leadership,
  2. anecdotal knowledge and the search for generalizations,
  3. relations between leadership, organization and anticipatory knowledge or foresight, and
  4. historical, problem-focused contextualizing of political leadership and the search for models (leadership in the Mideast, East Asia, and the European Union).
    For Detailed Syllabus

UH Manoa PUBA 667, Special Topics: Intercultural Challenges in the Public Sectors
Instructor: Prof. Ass. Dr. Jeffrey Ady
Course Description: Planning, problem-solving and crisis response action among national governments, regional and global transgovernmental agencies, NGOs and private-sector actors all
involve working with others from various cultural backgrounds. This cross-cultural work often presents unique challenges: Approaches toward defining problems, managing, leading, making decisions, differ from culture to culture—often to the degree where
progress toward objectives can be impeded.
Challenges of this nature to work across cultural boundaries have received much attention as they have impacted private sector endeavors. And many of the cross-cultural problems experienced in global business apply to public sector work. In addition, public sector work crossing cultural boundaries produces its own set of problems. This course focuses on how these problems manifest as people work on regional and global projects and problems of compelling public interest.
For Detailed Syllabus or PUBA

UH Manoa PUBA 622, Strategies of Change: Leaders and Leadership
Instructor: Dr. Alm Robert
Course Description: Leaders and leadership have always fascinated us. Whether we focus on their largerthan-life aspects, their pivotal roles in history (The “Great Man” or, today, “Great
Woman” theory) or their fatal flaws (Greek tragedies and their modern versions), we pay tremendous attention to them. And most of our attention is to the more dramatic and, very often, public acts of these leaders, which in fact account for only a fraction of their
overall activities. We will learn more about them, and about ourselves, from a rigorous examination of and reflection on the routine habits of leaders, the day-to-day actions that are an expression of leadership, and from their relationship to those they lead, as well as these larger acts upon which we currently focus.
The course examines leadership: as we see it everyday, as we see it in major public officials, and as we see it in popular media. The course will also look at leadership in
Hawaiian culture and traditions. Finally, the course is subject to our reappraisal part way through (see Session 7) when we can consider whether to change any portion of the remaining material.
For Detailed Syllabus or PUBA

Fall 2006

UH Manoa MGT 650, Management Topics
Instructor: Dr. Nick Barker
Course Description:
- Program Vision and Mission
The APLP introduces candidates from a wide spectrum of national origins and fields to a blend of regional and leadership coursework. We believe that through the interpretation of “real world” events in the Asia-Pacific and the development of leadership capacity we are building towards a community of success that will in turn enhance the outcomes of Asia Pacific integration. - Leadership Seminar Mandate
The discovery and development of leadership attributes needs to be combined with an ability to critically evaluate issues and interpret regional contexts. The Leadership Seminar prepares APLP fellows for contextually sensitive and effective leadership in the Asia Pacific region. The course equips, challenges and motivates participants to lead in diverse, multicultural communities, and to become collaborative change-agents in an era of global citizenship.
For Detailed Syllabus or APLP

UH Manoa MGT 660, Negotiation
Instructor: Dr. Scott MacLeod
Course Description:
- Program Vision and Mission: Navigating Change
The APLP introduces candidates from a wide spectrum of national origins and fields to a blend of regional and leadership coursework. We believe that through the interpretation of ‘real world’ events in the Asia-Pacific and the development of leadership capacity we are building towards a community of success that will in turn enhance the outcomes of Asia Pacific Integration. - Regional Core Issues Seminar: Making Your Map
The discovery and development of leadership attributes needs to be combined with an ability to manage diverse forms of information, critically evaluate issues and interpret regional contexts. The Regional Core Issues (RCI) Seminar seeks to provide both broad regional understanding and focused engagement of key issues in an interdisciplinary and interactive manner (please also see ‘Preface’ in Course Draft Textbook).
For Detailed Syllabus or APLP

UH Manoa BUS 699, Professional Development Seminar
Instructor: Christina Monroe
Course Description:
- APLP Program Vision and Mission: Navigating Change
The APLP introduces candidates from a wide spectrum of national origins and fields to a blend of regional and leadership coursework. We believe that through the interpretation of ‘real world’ events in the Asia-Pacific and the development of leadership capacity we are building towards a community of success that will in turn enhance the outcomes of Asia
Pacific Integration.
- Professional Development Seminar: Building the Boat
The Professional Development Seminar promotes professional collaboration and provides a venue to exchange professional advice with other fellows. It facilitates fellows in achieving satisfying positions which allow them to create positive change in the Asia Pacific community. Professional development is about career success. It is also about creating a vision of what our communities could be while gaining the skills and experiences needed to realize that vision.
The Asia Pacific Leadership Program uses the metaphor of ‘Navigating Change’ to describe how successful leaders in the 21st century will lead. The theme of navigation ties to the history of Polynesians who migrated from island to island to populate the Pacific. Before the master navigators of Polynesia could navigate, they needed something important a boat. Building this boat required the entire community. The Professional Development Seminar uses the metaphor of building a boat to describe the process of building a body of professional skills, resources and networks.
As you build and strengthen your own professional life, you will see how it impacts and is impacted by others. Similarly, when you build your part of a boat, you must see how it fits together and overlaps with other parts. To build the boat right, we must do it together.
For Detailed Syllabus or APLP

Empowering People for the Future of the Asia and the Pacific (Wednesday Evening Seminar 2006)