Department of Government
The
Telephone: 512-471-5121
Email: rhwagner@mail.utexas.edu
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Available
Papers
Of primary interest to graduate students:
Preparing for the Preliminary Examinations (pdf)
Some advice to graduate students about how to prepare for the preliminary exams. Implicit in this advice is some information about how I evaluate answers to the questions on the exams.
The paper called "Who’s Afraid
of Rational Choice Theory?" listed below contains some advice to
graduate students concerning what to do about this thing called “rational
choice theory.” And the paper called "Knowing,
Learning, and Teaching" might be of interest to someone who is at once
a student and a future teacher.
Other papers:
Who's Afraid of Rational Choice Theory? (pdf)
A discussion of all the brouhaha about something called “rational choice theory.”
Bargaining and Conflict Management (pdf)
A discussion of what bargaining theory tells us about the causes of conflict, and the feasibility of managing it by military intervention.
Bargaining, War, and Alliances (pdf)
An examination of the relation between war and bargaining when there are more than two potential parties to a conflict. An earlier version was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2001. (Revised, January 2004)
Knowing, Learning, and Teaching (pdf)
An essay on what’s really important in teaching, and why so few people in American universities are interested in it.
How do you build a state? (pdf)
An essay on what the literature on state formation might have to say about recent foreign policy controversies about “state-building” or “nation-building.”