Graduate Program - Major Disciplines

UVA’s Politics department stresses the long-term development of political and economic institutions, and the way that organized or potentially organized groups try to create or maintain positions of power through those institutions. The department is thus much more historically oriented than the typical department, much more comparatively oriented (in the sense that it is willing and able to contrast American phenomena with phenomena elsewhere), and much more concerned with understanding actors’ ethical motivations in both a normative sense and in the classic Weberian sense. However the department is committed to broad training in all methodologies, and to matching the appropriate methodology to the question at hand. Graduate training in the department is not hampered by divisions between traditional sub-disciplinary fields, and we strongly encourage work with faculty in other UVA departments.

American Politics

Comparative Government

International Relations

Political Theory