American Foreign Policy: Theory and Method
MIT OpenCourseWare presents this graduate-level course examining the causes and consequences of American foreign policy since 1898. The syllabus covers four substantive areas: major theories of American foreign policy, key historical episodes and their interpretive controversies, evaluation of past policies as good or bad, and current policy debates. It pairs these with three methods topics: social scientific inference and theory-building, historical archival research, and case study methodology, using historical episodes as raw material for constructing case studies. Materials include the full reading list and assignments as posted by MIT OCW, free to access with no certificate offered. The course suits students interested in how political scientists and historians actually build and test explanations of policy decisions rather than simply narrate them.