The First Two Years

Courses

• Students must complete successfully at least twelve half-courses, of which eight must be in political science. At least ten of these twelve half-courses and seven of the eight half-courses in political science must be listed in the catalogue as 1000- or 2000-level courses.
• Students must complete six half-courses by the end of their second term in residence and nine by the end of their third.
• Upon petition to the department and with the approval of the director of graduate studies, a student may receive credit toward the twelve required half-courses for not more than two graduate-level courses successfully completed elsewhere.

Minor Course Requirement

• Students must enroll in one government department half-course, ordinarily at the 2000-level, in a minor field. The department is organized into four fields: American government, comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. Two of these four fields will be assessed during the general examination (see below). The minor course requirement is fulfilled through one half-course from either of the remaining two fields not assessed during the general examination.

Seminar Papers

• At least three seminar-style research papers must be completed. The usual means is through enrollment in seminars, but the requirement may also be satisfied by reading or lecture courses in which papers of this type are written.

Language Requirement

• Every student must demonstrate competence in a language other than English. Competence in a language is defined as the ability to translate from the foreign language into English approximately 750 words of a political text in one hour with the aid of a dictionary. A student may choose to be examined in any language in which there is substantial political science literature, such as French, Spanish, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, or in any other language specifically appropriate to the student’s PhD program and approved by the director of graduate studies. Students whose native language is not English must also satisfy this requirement even if that language is specifically appropriate to their PhD work.

Quantitative Methods Requirement

• Every student must successfully complete, with a grade of B (not B-) or better, in quantitative methods, such as Gov 2000: Quantitative Methods for Political Science I or, with the approval of the DGS, an equivalent course.

Completion of Requirements

• Requirements relating to courses, seminar (research) papers, languages, and quantitative methods should normally be completed before the general examination, that is, during the first two years of graduate work. A student may defer the fulfillment of two of the following until after the general examination:
– one seminar paper
– two half-courses, or one half-course and one other deferred requirement.
– the quantitative methods requirement
– the language requirement, although work toward fulfillment of the language requirement should be under way, in any case, prior to the general examination.

Within six months of passing the general examination, the student must have fulfilled one of these deferred requirements. Within twelve months, he or she must have completed both deferred requirements.

Advising

• First-year students are assigned a faculty advisor by the director of graduate studies. In subsequent years, students may either remain with the first-year advisor or choose an advisor on their own.
• Dissertation prospectus committees must include at least three faculty members, one of whom must be non-tenured. Dissertations must be approved by three committee members, two of whom must be faculty members of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The chair must be a member of the Department of Government. Any member of the committee who is not a member of the department must be approved by the director of graduate studies.

General Examinations

• The general examination must be taken by May of a student’s second year of study; however, in exceptional cases the student may petition the department for special permission to take the examination in December. The general examination consists of a 90-minute oral examination.
• Each general examination is structured as follows:

Major Field

This part of the examination covers one of the four areas of political science: American government, comparative politics, international relations, or political theory.

Focus Field

This part of the examination covers in greater depth one subfield within the student’s major field, or, if the student chooses, it covers either the field of empirical political methodology or the field of formal political theory.

Examples of appropriate focus fields are listed below:

Major Field	Illustrative Focus Field
American Government	Congress
	Presidency
	Bureaucracy
	Law and Courts
	Federalism
	Urban Politics
	Political Parties
	Interest Groups
	American Political Development
	Public Opinion and Elections
Comparative Politics	Government and Politics (of major foreign country or region)
	Comparative Political Development
	Comparative Executives
	Comparative Bureaucracy
	Comparative Elections and Party Systems
	Comparative Political Economy
	Comparative Public Policy
	Comparative Political Behavior
International Relations	Theories of International Relations
	Foreign Policy (of major country or region)
	International Conflict
	International Political Economy
	International Law and Organization
	Nationalism and Imperialism
Political Theory	All students whose major field is political theory will be examined in both ancient/medieval and modern political thought.

 

The director of graduate studies, in consultation with the chair and other relevant faculty members, may authorize alternative focus fields, defined in other ways but comparable in scope to those listed above. Requests for the approval of alternative focus fields must be approved by a member of the faculty and submitted to the department at least three months before taking the examination.

Students are expected to have developed with a member of the faculty a focus field within their major at least three months before taking the examination.

Political Theory

All students must include political theory as one part of the general examination.

Students not majoring in political theory are expected to have a basic knowledge of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics in addition to the writings of major political philosophers from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Such students should take Government 1061 and Government 2030, the political concepts field seminar or have equivalent preparation. Students whose major field is political theory must take one minor field in the Department of Government.

Composition of Examination Board

• The ninety-minute oral examination covers all three of the fields being presented by the student. The oral examination is conducted by three faculty members, two of whom are ordinarily professors with whom the student has worked. The student is normally informed of the composition of his or her general examination board seven days before the oral examination.

Seminar Paper

• Every student must submit one of the three required seminar papers, which will serve as a basis of questioning for the general examination. This seminar paper will ordinarily pertain principally to the student’s focus field but, at the student’s discretion, it may pertain to any of the four fields or to a combination thereof. The paper must be graded (on a seminar paper approval form) by the professor for whom it was written and submitted to the graduate office no later than one month before the beginning of oral examinations. The paper cannot be co-authored or revised before submission to the graduate office.

Teaching

• Students in their third year and beyond are eligible for teaching fellowships, which enable them to participate in Harvard’s undergraduate tutorial program, teach sections in the introductory government courses, or assist undergraduates in middlegroup courses by leading discussion sessions or directing papers. All graduate students will normally be required to teach a minimum of two sections in departmental courses sometime during the period that they are in residence. To ensure diversity of experience, one section will normally be in an introductory course and one section will be in an advanced course (such as a 1000-level course).
• In the third year, most teaching fellows devote two-fifths time to teaching, the remainder to work on the dissertation. The fourth year may be devoted entirely to writing the dissertation or to a combination of teaching and research. Students who have passed the general examination may teach three-fifths time for four years, with the following exception: those who have taught fewer than sixteen term-fifths may be appointed in a fifth year up to that total.

Dissertation

Dissertation Prospectus

• Within sixteen months of passing the general examination, each student shall discuss and receive final approval of his or her written dissertation prospectus with at least three faculty members at an informal dissertation conference. These faculty members, one of whom must be non-tenured, are chosen by the student with the approval of the director of graduate studies. Students may receive formal consent for the proposed dissertation topic at that conference but final approval must be obtained no later than eighteen months after generals.
• The prospectus, typically ten to twenty pages in length, should set the proposed topic in an appropriate theoretical framework, allude to relevant literature, and describe the proposed research methods. A one-page (single-spaced) abstract of the student’s approved dissertation prospectus is circulated to the faculty of the department, and a copy of the full prospectus is kept in the student’s file. Petitions may be submitted to the director of graduate studies for extensions of this deadline. Students who have not received final approval of their dissertation prospectus by eighteen months after the general examination will be placed in unsatisfactory standing and may not be appointed as teaching fellows until they have had their dissertation prospectus approved. The dissertation title and name(s) of the advisor(s) must be registered with the graduate office.

Dissertation

• A student is required to demonstrate ability to perform original research in political science by writing a dissertation that makes a significant contribution to knowledge in the field. The requirement may also be fulfilled in the form of a three-article dissertation by approval of the dissertation committee.
• Dissertations must be approved by three committee members, two of whom must be faculty members of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The chair must be a member of the Department of Government. Any member of the committee who is not a member of the department must be approved by the director of graduate studies. Dissertations must be approved for defense by the committee. The final copies of the dissertation must conform to the requirements described in the booklet The Form of the PhD Dissertation.
• Each April, all students beyond their third year must submit a dissertation progress report to his or her major faculty advisor and to the director of graduate studies.

Special Examination

• After the dissertation has been approved, and after all other degree requirements have been met, a student will take the “special” oral examination or defense. This examination is focused on the dissertation and on the relevant special field, which is ordinarily one of the fields that the student presented in the general examination, or an approved portion of that field.
• Students who defend their dissertation later than six years after taking the general examination must re-take the focus field of the general examination. Approved parental leave extends this period by one year per child, but no other reason for leave does.

Depositing Dissertation Data

• Students are required to make available to the Harvard-MIT Data Center all of the quantitative data they have compiled in machine-readable form (together with accompanying explanatory materials) upon which the findings in their dissertation depend. These data will be made available to other users five years after receipt of PhD or sooner, if the PhD recipient permits.

Ten-Year Enrollment Cap

• An overall Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) policy has been established that students ordinarily will not be permitted to register beyond their tenth year in the Graduate School. However, exceptions to this rule may be made for students who have taken maternity or parental leave or for students with other special circumstances. However, GSAS now penalizes departments that register students beyond the eighth year. Students who are administratively withdrawn are free to apply for readmission to GSAS, so as to re-register for the purpose of receiving the degree, when their dissertation is completed.