Major Fields

• American Politics
• Comparative Politics

Degree Requirements

• 72 credit hours of approved graduate work are required for students entering the program with a bachelor's degree; a minimum of 48 credit hours is required of students who have completed an approved master's degree.
• A minimum grade point average of 3.2 in all course work is required to remain in good standing and to earn the degree.
• Advancement to candidacy is accomplished by successfully defending a qualifier paper after the first year, passing written qualifying examinations in primary and secondary fields, and by successfully defending a dissertation prospectus.
• Students take a primary field comprehensive examination in American politics or comparative politics. They take a secondary field comprehensive examination in the other field, or, with written approval from the faculty advisor and department chair, they may take a second field elsewhere in the School of Public Affairs (SPA), the School of International Service (SIS), or in another doctoral degree-granting teaching unit. Under special circumstances, students may take a second field outside American University, subject to the approval of the SPA graduate director, in consultation with the department's faculty advisor for the PhD program.
• The Ph.D. is fundamentally a degree in preparation for an academic career of research and teaching. Understanding scientific inquiry and correctly using research techniques require extensive preparation. All students in the program take four courses in research methods designed to help doctoral students comprehend the nature of science and master tools of research (see Course Requirements, below).
• Dissertation

Dissertation Details

Each student selects a specialization in which to complete an original research project under the direction of program faculty and write a dissertation. Students may choose research projects within one of the major areas. It is the responsibility of the student to secure the agreement of a Department of Government full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member to serve as the chair of the dissertation committee. One of the other two members of the committee may be from outside SPA. As part of this process, each student must publicly defend the research proposal before the dissertation committee and other interested faculty. The committee and the chair of the department, in consultation with the SPA director of doctoral programs, must approve the research proposal in order for the candidate to advance to candidacy.

As work on the dissertation project progresses, students register for dissertation credit. Substantive course work may be used as part of this requirement where it contributes directly to the research specialization and is specifically recommended by the dissertation committee chair.

Upon writing the dissertation, the candidate submits the manuscript to the dissertation committee for review. If the committee members approve the dissertation, the candidate must complete an oral defense of it, including demonstrable mastery of related literature on the general field in which it lies before the committee and other interested faculty. After hearing the candidate's defense, the committee decides whether the dissertation is acceptable as the culminating work of the student's doctoral career.

The dissertation must consist of high quality original research directly relevant to the student's doctoral program. A dissertation proposal may be rejected if the topic does not address a major research issue in political science, the research design is inadequate, the methodology is inappropriate, or because no full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member in the Department of Government is academically competent or available to supervise the project. If the candidate fails to maintain satisfactory progress toward completion of the dissertation, his or her candidacy may be terminated.

Course Requirements

Primary Field (12 credit hours)

American Politics

• GOVT-710 Seminar in American Politics (3)
• 9 additional credit hours in doctoral-level courses in American politics

Comparative Politics

• GOVT-730 Seminar in Comparative Politics (3)
• 9 additional credit hours in doctoral-level courses in comparative politics

Secondary Field (6 credit hours)

American Politics

• GOVT-710 Seminar in American Politics (3)
• One other doctoral-level course in American politics (3)

Comparative Politics

• GOVT-730 Seminar in Comparative Politics (3)
• One other doctoral-level course in comparative politics (3)

Methodology (12 credit hours)

• GOVT-612 Conduct of Inquiry I (3)
• GOVT-613 Conduct of Inquiry II (3)
• 6 credit hours in methodology courses from the following:

  GOVT-614 Quantitative Research Designs (3)

  GOVT-615 Qualitative Research Methods (3)

  GOVT-704 Approaches to Political Understanding (3)

  GOVT-720 Seminar in Policy Analysis: Advanced Quantitative Methods (3)

  Other approved methodology courses, including two graduate-level foreign language courses

Electives (6 credit hours)

• 6 credit hours chosen in consultation with the department

Dissertation (12 credit hours)

• GOVT-799 Doctoral Dissertation Seminar (1-12)

Admission to the Program

Applicants are considered and admitted for the fall semester only. January 1 is the deadline for application for admission. All applicants must submit scores from the verbal and quantitative sections of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). The normal minimum for consideration is a grade point average of 3.30 (on a 4.00 scale) in all previous academic work. Preference will be given to applicants for full-time study, although highly qualified students may be admitted for part-time study.