Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science- American Politics

AMERICAN POLITICS is the study of the political system of the United States, including the people, groups, ideas, and institutions that make up that system. Students and scholars may focus on political behavior (voting, public opinion), or on political institutions (Congress, parties, interest groups), or on the relationships between institutions and behavior. Many scholars focus on contemporary politics but some study the evolution of political processes and institutions over time.
The American Politics field at UMass has become a leader in the discipline over the past decade thanks to the department’s ability to hire and retain world-class award-winning scholars. The faculty conduct numerous active research programs and offer a broad array of training in the field of American Politics. Yet, while the American Politics field is the largest in the department, it is also a tightknit community that supports active research groups and provides plentiful opportunities for collaborative research. Indeed, every recent PhD student in American Politics has co-authored publications with faculty in the field.
The field has excelled in both academic and non-academic job placement in recent years. Recent students have gone on to tenure-track jobs at institutions such as Brandeis University, Dartmouth College, Fordham University, and Stevens Institute of Technology. Others have used their training in social science methods and critical thinking to find rewarding employment in the corporate and non-profit sectors.
The Department's approach to the discipline of political science is consciously eclectic, based on an assumption that the study of politics cannot be reduced to any one theory or a single set of methods. Mutual appreciation among faculty members with diverse interests and approaches characterizes the intellectual atmosphere of the Department. With more than 30 faculty members, the department covers a wide array of methodologies and research interests, including the study of theory, institutions, political behavior, and political development. UMass-Amherst offers PhD and accelerated MA degrees in six fields of political inquiry: American Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Law. In addition, while each field is its own thriving research community, your studies can involve multiple research clusters whose work crosses subfields, including Conflict, Violence and Security, Political Economy, Global Forces, Computational Social Science, and Ambiguities of Democracy. You’ll also choose methods training appropriate to the questions you are asking—from statistical modeling and network analysis to ethnography and textual analysis—and enjoy mentorship by scholars often across diverse subfields and methodological orientations.