Political Science 894

War, Crime, and Violence

John Mueller bbbb@osu.edu
Autumn 2002
Thursdays, 8:30-11:18 am

The seminar will involve a sort of bottom-up assessment of war. It will explore combat motivation and the processes by which military forces are variously formed. It will also focus on linkages and comparisons between war and crime and between warfare in early Europe and contemporary civil war.

There will only be a small amount of general reading. For the most part, each student will be assigned a different book or article for each class. The grade will be based on written summaries of the assigned reading due each week, on participation in the class discussion, and on a term paper. There will be some overlap with the course as conducted in Autumn 2000 and Autumn 2001, but most of the material will be new. Students who have taken one of the earlier versions can also get credit for this one.

Week 1: General introduction
Week 2: Combat motivation
Week 3: Ordinary men as combatants
Week 4: Crime, violence, and blood feuds
Week 5: Violence and warfare in medieval and early modern Europe
Weeks 6 and 7: Contemporary civil war
Week 8: Policing contemporary civil war
Week 9: Trends, relationships, explanations, extrapolations
Week 10: Presentation of progress reports on term papers