Political Science 481
Campaigns and Elections, Fall, 2004

Bill Daniel

Office- F 130, ex. 3914, wrd1@axe, wrdaniel05@pacbell.net

Hours: MW, 2:30 - 3:30, TTh, 9:00 - 10:30 , or by appt.

Campaigns and Elections provides an opportunity for students to eam academic credit while working on an election campaign. If you are interested in a particular campaign, you can make arrangements to work on it on your own. If you do so, you should provide me with the name of the person who supervises your work, and inform her or him that I will be in contact. If you have not yet selected a campaign, I will help you find one of interest to you.

Regardless of what campaign you choose, it is important that you (or 1) indicate to your supervisor that you need to get involved in many aspects of the campaign: strategy, advertising, precinct walking, and finances as well as envelope-licking and telephoning. You obviously cannot do everything, but we want campaign managers to understand that we are not providing cheap labor to carry out the tedious tasks of campaigning.

This is a variable-unit course, from one to four semester units. It is up to you to decide how much time you want to devote to this course, but you are required to spend three hours of campaign work per week for each unit of credit. Thus, for three credit units, you will work on a campaign for nine hours a week through the election. For political science majors, this course can be used to satisfy the skiHs/methods requirement; it is essentially a political internship.

It will be necessary for you to keep a journal with at least twice-a-week entries. You should indicate in your journal how you have spent your time that week, how your activity fits into the overall campaign strategy, and your evaluation of the activity. Your entries do not have to be lengthy, but they should be thoroughly reflective of your work. I will collect your journal occasionally during the semester, so you should keep it in a looseleaf binder, with a separate folder to hand in completed work when you are requested to do so.

We will not meet every week, but it is important that you keep Thursday evenings free. (See the schedule below!) When we do meet, it will be for one to two hours at a time to discuss what each of you is doing (campaign "secrets" will not have to be revealed). Attendance at these meetings is mandatory. Two unexcused absences or three absences for any reason will result in losing credit for the course.

After the election is over, you will be expected to write a five- to seven-page paper about your experience. For this paper you are to read Catherine Shaw The Campaign Manager: Running and Winning, and evaluate the extent to which the campaign on which you worked followed Ms. Shaw's perscription. The Paper should be in a recognized scholarly format.

This course will be evaluated on a credit/no credit basis. In order to receive credit, students must satisfactofily complete their contract for the required number of hours for each credit unit (i.e., they must have completed the requisite number of hours to the satisfaction of their supervisor), they must keep an adequate journal and it must be current (if, more than once, the entries are not up-to-date when the journals are collected, students will not receive credit for the course), and a satisfactory paper must be turned in on time.

MEETING DATES

August 26

September 2 (For those who missed the first meeting)

September16

September 30

October 14

October 28(

November 4 (wrap up)

PAPERS DUE DECEMBER 2