ppe handbook 2011-2012

PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS AND

ECONOMICS

HANDBOOK

2011-12

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

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PPE HANDBOOK 2011-12

This Handbook is intended as a guide to students studying Philosophy, Politics and Eco-nomics at Oxford. It gives the regulations prescribing the content of the syllabus and the subjects for examination in both the Preliminary and the Final Examinations in PPE, descrip-tions of all the courses available and other information useful to undergraduates throughout their time at Oxford.

This Handbook is revised annually and aims to be up-to-date in September for the next academic year. Comments and corrections should be addressed to the PPE Administrator Liz Griffith ([email protected]). The current issue is available online at: www.ppe.ox.ac.uk; for the latest course regulations, please be sure to check the web version.

* IMPORTANT *

1. Email: It is essential that you use email. It will be used to send you important information about your course. Please check your mail regularly, and do not exceed your user allocation, as this will prevent you from receiving new mail. The IT support staff in your college will set up an email account for you.

2. Lecture lists: Lecture lists are published before the start of each term. The most up-to-date versions for each subject are available on the following web sites:

Philosophy - www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk Politics - www.politics.ox.ac.uk

Economics - www.economics.ox.ac.uk

A PPE lecture list will also be available at www.ppe.ox.ac.uk.

3. Subject reading lists: These are available on the above websites and this is the easiest way to obtain them. Philosophy reading lists are also available at the Philosophy Library, and Politics reading lists are available in the Social Sciences Library. Course outlines and subject reading list for Economics can be obtained from the Economics web site.

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CONTENTS

PART A - THE COURSE: 1. PPE 5 Content: 5 The PPE Degree 5 Structure of the Course 5 Choices: 6 Choosing your options 6 Theses 7 Supervised Dissertations in Politics 9 Changing your Course 9 Teaching and Learning: 10 Tutors 10 Tutorials, Classes and Collections 11 Lectures 12 Vacations 13 Examinations: 13 Procedures 13 PPE Prelims 14 PPE Finals 15 Preparing for Examinations 17 Academic Integrity 18 2. Departments 22 Philosophy Centre 22 Department of Politics and International Relations 23 Department of Economics 23 Department of Sociology 23 Department of Social Policy and Intervention 24 3. Libraries and Computing 25 Libraries 25 Computing 27 IT Skills 28 Data Protection 30

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PART B - STUDENT ISSUES:

4. Participation 35 Consultation 35 Student Feedback 35 Undergraduate Joint Consultative Committees (UJCCs) 36 Library Committees 36 5. Student Support 37 Equal Opportunities 37 Harassment 37 Disability 37 Complaints Procedures 38 Illness and Personal Issues 38 Scholarships, Prizes and Grants 39 6. The Future 41 Taking your degree 41 Proceeding to Further Study 41 Careers 42 APPENDICES: Appendix A: Outline of Papers in PPE 43 Appendix B: PPE Examination Regulations 2011 74 Appendix C: Complaints and academic appeals 74 Appendix D: Key contacts 77 Appendix E: Oxford Web Addresses 79 Appendix F: Code of conduct 82 Appendix G: Advice on answering “gobbets” or commentary 83

questions in Philosophy

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PART A - THE COURSE

1. PPE

Content

The PPE Degree

PPE seeks to bring together some of the most important approaches to understanding the so-cial and human world. It fosters intellectual capacities that you can apply across all three dis-ciplines and develops skills that you will find useful for a wide range of careers and activities after graduation. The degree is constructed on the belief that the parallel study of related dis-ciplines significantly enhances your understanding of each discipline, bringing added dimen-sions of understanding and perspective. The study of Philosophy develops analytical rigour and the ability to criticise and reason logically. It allows you to apply these skills to many contemporary and historical schools of philosophical thought and to questions concerning how we acquire knowledge and how we make ethical recommendations. The study of Poli-tics gives you an understanding of the issues dividing societies and of the impact of political institutions on the form of social interest articulation and aggregation and on the character and effects of government policies. Among the big issues considered in Politics are why de-mocracies emerge and may be consolidated or why states go to war or seek peace. The study of Economics aims to give you an understanding of the workings of contemporary econo-mies. This includes the study of decisions of households, the behaviour of firms, and the functioning of markets under competition and monopoly, as well as the role of government policies in many areas. The course also looks at the determination of national income and employment, monetary institutions, inflation, the balance of payments and exchange rates, and considers issues in macroeconomic policy, focusing in part on the UK economy.

The Structure of the Course

The PPE degree is divided into two parts. The first-year course is designed to give you a foundation in all three branches. In your second and third years, you may continue with all three or concentrate on just two. Whether or not your choice of subjects includes any of the specially designed bridge papers, such as Theory of Politics, Labour Economics, or Philoso-phy of Science and Social Science, your study in each subject will benefit from what you have learned and the skills you have acquired in other parts of the degree course.

The syllabus is set by the University, which grants degrees and therefore examines for them; but most teaching, apart from lectures and some classes, is arranged by your college. The PPE syllabus prescribes the subjects for two University examinations: the Preliminary Examina-tion for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE Prelims), normally taken at the end of your first year; and the Final Honour School (FHS) of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE Finals), normally taken at the end of your third year. Prelims consist of three subjects, Finals


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of eight. Each subject is normally examined in one three-hour paper, except that one subject in Finals may be a pre-submitted thesis, or a supervised dissertation in Politics. In Economics the final examination will include three shorter examinations for three core courses that will count as two subjects. (See details in Appendix A.) All syllabuses are published annually in the University’s Examination Regulations (the ‘Grey Book’), to which this handbook will fre-quently refer. Changes which are too late for the printed 'Grey Book' are included in the web version available at www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/. You received a copy of the under-graduate version of the Examination Regulations when you arrived; you will be notified of any subsequent changes of regulation which significantly affect you, and if there are changes of syllabus which might affect you adversely, they will not apply to you without your consent.

PPE Prelims is a part of the ‘First Public Examination’. Graduates of other universities can apply through their colleges for Senior Status, which exempts them from taking the First Pub-lic Examination. Everyone else must pass it in some form - i.e. pass some Prelims or Mods - before entering for a Final Honour School (or Pass School). Unless you are exempt, your col-lege may require you to pass the First Public Examination before your fourth term from ma-triculating, as a condition of continuing with your course. If you take PPE Finals more than twelve terms after matriculating, you are ‘overstanding for honours’ and can receive only a pass degree (unless your First Public Examination was Moderations in Classics, which allows you fifteen terms, or you have been granted dispensation by the University).

Choices

Choosing your options

In PPE Prelims you must offer all the three papers prescribed, one each in Philosophy, Poli-tics, and Economics. In Philosophy the regulations require you to ‘show adequate knowledge in at least two sections’ out of the three into which the paper is divided: Logic, General Phi-losophy, and Moral Philosophy. In Politics, they require you to ‘show knowledge’ of two or three set countries and of political theory/ideology. The Economics paper has a range of ques-tions covering Microeconomics and Macroeconomics some of which involve the application of mathematical techniques to economic problems. In none of these cases are you forbidden to range over the whole syllabus; and your tutors may expect you to study more than the ex-amination minimum. But if they do not, then you have early choices to make within the Pre-lims syllabus, with the help of advice from your tutors.

After Prelims the choices are greater. First you must decide whether to select two branches from Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, which will make you ‘bipartite’, or to keep going with the third as well, making you ‘tripartite’. This choice may be easy for you, if you were originally attracted to PPE for the sake of one or two of its branches and have not changed your priorities during your first year; or it may be difficult. If it is difficult, go by what inter-ests you, provided that your tutors think you are suited to it; do not be too much affected by your marks in Prelims - which can differ greatly from Finals marks. A few subjects are avail-able under more than one branch, and bipartite Politics and Economics candidates are al-lowed to include one Philosophy subject: similarly bipartite Philosophy and Economics can-didates are allowed to include one Politics subjects: see the Examination Regulations. Further

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/�

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guidance on the choice of individual subjects within the three disciplines is given in Appen-dix A. (Students should be aware that they will have the opportunity to choose the Jurispru-dence paper (Philosophy of Law) as an option in Philosophy. Please see Appendix A for more details.)

Please note that not all options may be available to all students in any given year.

You should also plan your lecture attendance because of inevitable lecture clashes, meaning you may need to attend one series in your second year and another in your third. Theses

One of your eight Finals subjects may be a thesis: see 199, 299 and 399 in the Honour School regulations in the Examination Regulations. A Philosophy thesis must be combined with at least three other subjects in Philosophy. Bipartite candidates who offer a Politics or Econom-ics thesis must combine it with at least three other subjects in the same branch.

If you propose to offer a thesis, the latest date for seeking approval of its topic is Friday of Fourth Week of the Michaelmas Term preceding the Finals examination, but the right time tostart working on it is much earlier. Begin planning no later than your penultimate Easter Vacation, and have a talk with a tutor no later than the beginning of Trinity Term. If your tu-tor thinks that your proposal is manageable, get initial suggestions for reading and follow them up, so that work can be done during the Long Vacation. Remember that tutors can only advise: the decision to offer a thesis is your own, and so is the choice of topic. So of course is the work; what makes a thesis worthwhile is that it is your own independent production.

The Criteria for Assessment for PPE theses are as follows:

• cogency of analysis and argument

• accuracy and solidity in the backing up of the analysis and argument

• clarity of expression and presentation

• knowledge of how the topic fits into the existing work in its field

• awareness of relevant methodological issues

• respect for the scholarly conventions regarding contents pages, introductions, conclu-sions, chapters, notes, bibliographies, etc

• Application of appropriate theoretical or empirical models (applicable to Economics the-ses only)

Good undergraduate thesis topics can vary in character a great deal, but all have two things in common: they are focused, so as to answer a question, or set of questions, or advance an argument; and they are manageable, so that the time available is enough for your research and reflection on it, and 15,000 words is enough for an interesting treatment. Titles of past


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PPE theses are listed in the PPE Examiners’ Reports, which can be found on the PPE website (www.ppe.ox.ac.uk).

If you decide to go ahead, submit your title and a 100-word outline, in accordance with the regulations for theses in Examination Regulations, for approval in Michaelmas Term. Thesis outlines in Politics should be sent to the Director of Undergraduate Studies, care of the Un-dergraduate Studies Administrator at the Department of Politics and International Relations. Thesis outlines for Economics should be sent to the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Economics, care of the Undergraduate Administrative Officer at the Department of Econom-ics and theses outlines for Philosophy should be sent to the Undergraduate Studies Adminis-trator at 10 Merton Street. Do not worry if your outline is not in the end very closely adhered to; the point of it is to make clear the general subject of the thesis and to show that you have some idea of how to go about tackling it.

The regulations state that you may discuss with your tutor ‘the field of study, the sources available, and the method of presentation’. Before you start work, go over the plan of the whole thesis very carefully with your tutor. The plan must be yours, but the tutor can help you make sure it is clear, coherent and feasible. Get more advice on reading. But bear in mind that much of your reading will be discovered by yourself; so arrange to be in Oxford, or near a large library, for some weeks of the Long Vacation.

Avoid letting your topic expand, and focus your reading on the issue you intend to write about; 15,000 words is the length of two articles, not a book. Your tutor ‘may also read and comment on a first draft’ (in the case of Philosophy, ‘on drafts’), and ‘the amount of assis-tance the tutor may give is equivalent to the teaching of a normal paper’; so tutorial sessions can be used for trying out first drafts of parts of the thesis. However, you have to write the finished version on your own; make sure you allow plenty of time – almost certainly more will be needed than you first anticipated. You must not exceed the limit of 15,000 words, ex-cluding bibliography. That will probably, to your surprise, become a problem; but the exer-cise of pruning is a valuable one, encouraging clarity and precision which you should be aim-ing for in any case.

Some general advice: (i) the examiners cannot read your mind; explain in your introduction just what you are going to do, and in what follows present the argument, step by step, in as sharp a focus as you can achieve: (ii) examiners will notice if you try to fudge issues or sweep difficulties aside; it is much better to be candid about them, and to show that you appreciate the force of counter-arguments; (iii) take grammar and spelling seriously, and always aim at a simple English style, avoiding convoluted sentences and preferring short words to long (there is sound advice which may be relevant in George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’, in his Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, (1946), volume 4). Your bibliography should list all works to which you refer, plus any others you have used that bear on the final version. The style for references can be modelled on any book or periodical in your field. The rules for format and submission, and for change of title, are in the Examination Regulations.

If for any reason you expect to submit your thesis late, consult your college Senior Tutor in good time. The Vice-Chancellor and Proctors may grant permission on payment of a late-presentation fee which they determine; but they may at the same time give permission to the

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examiners to reduce the mark on the thesis by up to one class. If permission is not sought, or is refused, the thesis may be rejected, or its mark may be reduced by up to one class.

The Department of Politics and International Relations issues more detailed ‘Notes of Guid-ance’ on Politics theses, which you can find on the WebLearn site within the reading list for theses at https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/socsci/politics/teaching/redesign_und. Supervised Dissertations in Politics

If it is available in the appropriate year, one of your eight subjects may be a supervised dis-sertation in Politics, which is similar to a thesis except that there is a group of students, study-ing a common theme, all writing separate dissertations on it. The dissertation may not be combined with a thesis in any branch, or with fewer than three other politics subjects if you are a bipartite candidate. The regulations state that ‘with the approval of the Politics Sub-faculty, members of staff willing to supervise a research topic shall through the Courses Manager of the Department of Politics and International Relations place on the noticeboard of the Department not later than Friday of Fourth Week of Hilary Term a short description of an area of Politics (including International Relations and Sociology) in which they have a special interest, a list of possible dissertation topics lying within that area, an introductory reading list, and a time and place at which they will meet those interested in writing a dissertation under their supervision for assessment in the following year’s [Final] examination…’ This means Hilary Term of your penultimate year. So if the idea appeals to you, it is best dis-cussed with your tutor no later than the beginning of that term; if your interest arises too late for the Hilary Term meetings, you will need your tutor’s advice about the practicalities too.

You do not need to seek formal approval for a dissertation topic (unlike a thesis). The rules on length, format and submission, late submission, and change of title, are the same as for theses: see the Examination Regulations.

The Department of Politics and International Relations issues advice on supervised disserta-tions, contained within the Notes of Guidance for theses, which can be found athttps://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/socsci/politics/teaching/redesign_und. Changing your course

Sometimes the course you have chosen will not seem to be working out for you and you may wish to consider changing. Do not seek to change course at the first sign of difficulty. All courses that are worth anything bring the student up against obstacles, and your tutors will guide you past them. Seek the advice of your tutors at all times when in difficulty. Discuss problems also with your contemporaries; you are not in competition with them, and you should get into the habit of helping and being helped. But if, having thought the matter through, you wish to explore the possibility of changing, the first rule is, ‘Do not delay’ - you could be losing vital learning time. Talk to your current tutors or, if that is embarrassing, to your College Adviser or the Senior Tutor or any other Fellow whom you know.


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If you decide you really do want to change, there are three bodies which must approve: the University, your college, and those who are paying for you. College approval is usually the most difficult.

The University is unlikely to be a problem. There are no restrictions on examination entry: provided that your college approves, you may be a candidate in any part of the First Public Examination; and the condition for entering for a Final Honour School, besides college ap-proval, is that (if not exempt) you should have passed some part of the First Public Examina-tion - any complete Prelims or Mods will do. However, a few departments, such as Psychol-ogy, do have quotas for acceptance on to their courses.

Your college has admitted you to read for a particular Honour School, or a particular combi-nation of First Public Examination plus Honour School. You cannot change without its per-mission, which is liable to be refused if the `receiving’ tutors think you unsuited to their course, or do not have room (in some courses, e.g. Law and English, the teaching resources are often very strained).

If you hold an award from your Local Education Authority you will need the authority's permission to change course, which will be given only if backed with full college approval. Your Senior Tutor will do the correspondence. Other awards, scholarships, sponsorship, etc. may be tied to a particular course. Again the Senior Tutor will help, once your college has agreed to let you change.

Teaching and Learning

As you are no doubt aware, Oxford is almost unique in the way teaching is organised. You will learn through a mixture of lectures, classes and tutorials, with the last playing a particu-larly important part. This is what differentiates Oxford from most universities in the world. The following brief notes should help you understand the importance of tutors, tutorials and University lectures and classes for the course. All of these learning experiences will enhance your knowledge of the subjects being studied and contribute to your performance in the final examinations in which your degree classification is determined. Tutors

Anyone to whom you go for tutorials or college classes counts as one of your tutors. In your preparation for PPE Prelims there are bound to be at least three of them, and over the whole course there may well be eight or ten. Some will be tutorial fellows or lecturers of your own college; some may be tutorial fellows or lecturers of other colleges, or research fellows, or graduate students. The overall responsibility for giving or arranging your tuition will lie with tutorial fellows or lecturers of your own college, probably one in each of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Behind them stands the Senior Tutor, who must see that proper arrangements are made if one of these people is absent through illness or on leave.

Tuition for a term is normally arranged at the end of the preceding term; so before going down each term you should make sure that you have received reading guidance and the names of

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your tutors for all the work you will be doing in the following term. (In the occasional cases in which the name of the tutor is not yet known you should make sure you have received an explanation and that you are confident that arrangements will be in place by the beginning of term.) Some tutors like to see their pupils at the end of the preceding term to make detailed arrangements. Colleges have different rules about when term ‘begins’. The official start is Sunday of First Week of Full Term, but you will almost certainly be required back before then, and you should try to ensure that by the Sunday at the very latest you know who your tutors for the term will be, have met or corresponded with them, and have been set work and assigned tutorial times by them.

If you would like to receive tuition from a particular person in Oxford, ask the in-college tutor concerned; do not approach the person yourself, who cannot take you on without a request from your college. If you would like a change of tutor, say so if it is not embarrassing; otherwise do not just do nothing, but take the problem to someone else in your college - your College Adviser, the Senior Tutor, the Women’s Adviser, the Chaplain, or even the head of college, if your difficulty is serious. Most such problems arise from a personality clash that has proved intractable; but since in a university of Oxford’s size there are almost certain to be alternative tutors for most of your subjects, there is no point in putting up with a relationship that is impeding your academic progress. In these circumstances you can usually expect a change, but not necessarily to the particular tutor whom you would prefer.

In Economics, the provision of classes and tutorials for optional subjects will be organised by the Department. Centrally nominated subject convenors will communicate with college tutors at the end of each term on the allocation of students to particular tutors for the forthcoming term. Tutorials, Classes and Collections

What you are expected to bring to a tutorial is knowledge of the reading that was set for it (or a variant on your own initiative if some book or article proves really inaccessible) and any written work demanded. What you have a right to expect is your tutor’s presence and scholarly attention throughout the hour agreed, plus guidance, e.g. a reading list, for next time. Beyond that, styles differ, depending on how many students are sharing the tutorial, the nature of the topic, and above all the habits and personality of your tutor. You must not expect uniformity, and you will gain most if you succeed in adapting to differences.

In PPE it is necessary to cover eight Finals subjects, or nine for Economics candidates, in five tutorial terms (the weeks before the Finals examination being usually set aside for revision). So you will nearly always have more than one tutorial a week. The three PPE disciplines have, however, agreed that you should not normally be expected to write more than twelve tutorial essays a term. All written work for a tutorial will receive either written or oral comments. Tutors submit written reports on the term’s work as a whole, and you are entitled to see these. Many colleges have timetabled sessions at which college tutors discuss reports with their students.

Work on a tutorial essay involves library searches, reading, thinking, and writing. It should occupy a minimum of three days. Read attentively and thoughtfully. As your reading progresses, think up a structure for your essay (but do not write an elaborate plan which you


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will not have time to execute). Expect to have to sort out your thoughts, both during and after reading. Use essays to develop an argument, not as places to store information. You will learn a lot if you share ideas with fellow students, and if you try out ideas in tutorial discussion. Remember that tutorials are not designed as a substitute for lectures, or for accumulating information, but to develop coherent verbal arguments and the capacity to think on one’s feet, and to tackle specific difficulties and misunderstandings. This means that note-taking, if it occurs in a tutorial at all, should be very much incidental to the overriding dialogue. You should, however, leave time after the tutorial to make a record on paper of the discussion.

Students are broadly encouraged to use word processors, though there are arguments for and against. On the one hand it makes one’s notes and essays more ‘inviting’ to read later, and in writing an essay it becomes possible to postpone commitment to all the stages in an argument until the very end of the essay-writing process. On the other hand there is a danger of getting out of practice in hand-writing time-limited examinations, especially University examinations, in which word processors may not be used.

Some tuition is by means of college or University department classes, a system specially suited to subjects in which written work is exercises rather than essays - e.g. logic, econometrics, or statistics. In the case of certain FHS papers in Politics, reading organised by colleges is supplemented by departmental classes. The information on the classes is included in the Course Outline and Bibliography for each of the papers. You have a right to expect that written work for a class will be returned to you with written or oral comments.

Most colleges will require you to sit college examinations, so-called ‘collections’, before the start of each term. Their object is to test your comprehension of work already covered, and to give you practice in sitting examinations. Make sure at the end of each term that you know the times and subjects of next term’s collections.

Oxford trains you as a writer to deadlines; so equip yourself with a writer’s tools - a dictionary, such as the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and, unless you are very confident, a thesaurus and Modern English Usage. Lectures

While tutorials and classes will be mainly organised by your College, lectures are provided centrally by the University departments. A PPE lecture list is published each term, covering all three branches; all three subjects also publish individual lecture lists; and Philosophy issues lecture prospectuses which describe the contents of the term’s lectures. Get a copy of the lecture list, and the relevant prospectuses, from the websites, or from the Social Science Library and the Philosophy Centre. Take your copy of the list to your meetings with tutors: all of them will have advice on which lectures to attend. Remember that the printed lecture lists often go out of date and the most up-to-date version of the lecture list will be online.

Provisional programmes for lectures for the remainder of the academic year are also available on the three subjects’ websites, which will help you to plan for the future. Do not expect lectures on a subject always to coincide with the term in which you are writing essays on that subject. Important lectures may come a term or two before or after your tutorials, and in the case of

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some less popular options they may come in your second year and not be repeated in your third year: consult your tutors early about this risk.

The importance of lectures varies from subject to subject within PPE. Some lectures give a personal version of what could be got, in other personal versions, from books. Others provide the last word on a fast developing subject, or the only satisfactory overview on a subject whose boundaries are not well recognised in the literature. It is perilous to miss the ‘core’ lectures on your chosen options: although in Oxford’s system lecturers do not necessarily set the University examinations, they may be consulted by those who do. Prelims students in Politics should also attend the lectures on methods in political science. Vacations

UK degree courses are among the shortest in the world. They hold their own in international competition only because they are full-time courses, covering vacation as well as term. This is perhaps particularly true of Oxford, where the eight-week terms (technically called Full Terms) occupy less than half the year. Vacations have to include holiday time; and everyone recognises that for very many students they also have to include money-earning time. Nevertheless vacation study is vital.

You are said to ‘read’ for an Oxford degree, and PPE is certainly a reading course: its ‘study’ is mainly the study of material obtained from books and other documents. In term you will mostly rush from one article or chapter to another, pick their bones, and write out your reactions. Vacations are the time for less hectic attention to complete books. Tutorials break a subject up; vacations allow consolidation. They give depth and time for serious thought. They are also particularly important for reading set or core texts.

Examinations

Procedures

Each year a board of up to nine ‘moderators’, drawn from the academic staff, is appointed to examine PPE Prelims, and a board of up to nineteen examiners, also drawn from the aca-demic staff except for three external members, is appointed to examine PPE Finals. The Finals examiners are assisted by a number of assessors, also staff members, who spread the load and deal with some of the specialised subjects. It is chance whether any of your own tutors exam-ines you. If that happens, the convention is that the tutor takes no part knowingly in deciding your result; but since scripts are anonymous, tutors rarely take part knowingly so the conven-tion is seldom required to operate.

It is your personal responsibility to enter your Options for University examinations, and if you enter, or change your options, after the due date, you must pay a late fee and gain the examiners’ consent. Entry is through colleges. The forms are kept in college offices, which may advertise times for applying. The University deadlines are listed each year in the Exami-nation Regulations.


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The starting dates of examinations, which do not often vary in relation to weeks of term, are announced each year on the University website and in the University Diary. Working to these dates, a timetable is issued a month or two before each examination; this is posted in the Ex-amination Schools, and probably also in your college lodge. A month or two before Finals, the examiners send a memorandum to all candidates about the conduct of the examination.

At University examinations you must wear academic dress with ‘sub-fusc’ clothing. Aca-demic dress is a gown, and a regulation cap or mortar board (it must be a mortar board for men). Sub-fusc clothing is: for women, a dark skirt or trousers, a white blouse, black tie, black stockings and shoes, and, if desired, a dark coat; for men, a dark suit and socks, black shoes, a white bow tie, and plain white shirt and collar.

There are special University regulations on the typing of illegible scripts (NB: ‘the cost of typ-ing and invigilation shall not be a charge on university funds’), on the use of typewriters in examinations, on blind candidates, on dyslexic candidates, on candidates unable to take pa-pers on certain days for religious reasons, and on the use (where permitted) of computers in examinations; see the Examination Regulations. In certain examinations calculators may be helpful and a list of approved calculators can be found on the Economics Department web-site: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/undergraduate/intranet/calculators/. Please note that students are not allowed to use any other calculator than the models on the list. If your native language is not English, you may request to use your own bilingual dictionary during examinations. The request must go to the Proctors through your college, usually your Senior Tutor.

If you have any problems connected with University examinations which you want to take further, never approach the examiners directly: always communicate through your Senior Tutor. This applies to complaints too (although every student has a statutory right to consult the Proctors directly on any matter at any time in their Oxford career). See Appendix E for more details.

The University regulations for PPE Prelims and PPE Finals are in the Examination Regulations: www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/. Please note that PPE is no longer assessed by viva voce ex-aminations. PPE Prelims

To complete the PPE Prelim you must pass all three subjects. If you fail one or more subjects in June (or miss any examinations through illness), the University allows you (subject to your college’s agreement) to retake in September any paper you failed (or missed).

Papers are marked on the scale 0-100. The marks can be interpreted as follows - you will no-tice that this is much the same as for Finals, but the level of attainment that is expected for Prelims is, of course, considerably lower:

100-70: work displaying analytical and argumentational power, with good command of the facts and/or arguments relevant to the questions and evidence of ability to organise them with clarity, insight and efficiency.


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69-60: work displaying analytical power and argumentational power, but with less comprehensive and thorough command of evidence; or work showing considerable thoroughness but less analytical skill or less clarity in organisation.

59-50: competent work with no major defects, but giving an incomplete account of the question, or marred by inaccuracies; or work which demonstrates lapses in (but does not lack) analytical and argumentational skills.

49-40: work that is generally weak with muddled argumentation, but containing some evidence of knowledge of facts and analytical skill; or work that, while competent and knowledgeable in itself, does not address the question asked by the examiners.

39 and below: very poor quality work, showing little if any evidence of effective study.

0: Any script which fails to fulfil the rubric for the paper is liable to be given this mark: e.g. failure to obey the instructions about answering questions from the different sec-tions of the paper, or, in the case of Introduction to Politics, failure to show knowledge of two countries.

You should note that one of the commonest reasons for answers receiving poor marks is ir-relevance. It is very important to direct your answer at the question which has actually been asked.

In 2011, Distinctions were awarded to candidates who scored a total of 200 or more on the written papers, if sat in one go. The pass mark for each of the three papers was 40; but com-pensation was allowed for fail marks in the range 37-39 on one paper, if marks on both the others were 58 or better. The examiners report your marks to the college, which communi-cates them to you. In 2011 the outcome of the June PPE Prelim was: Distinction 18.0%; Pass 80.8%; Fail in one or more subject 1.3%.

To enter for Finals you must have passed the PPE Prelim as a whole (or some other ‘First Public Examination’), but your Prelims results do not contribute to your Finals result. PPE Finals

All scripts, theses and supervised dissertations have the same weighting; and all are double marked blind. Any wide discrepancies, or discrepancies that might affect a candidate’s class, are either re-read by the two original markers or given an adjudicating mark by a third marker. The External Examiners play a special role in adjudication. The class boundaries are set as an average mark with each subject weighted equally except that ‘the highest Honours can be obtained by excellence in a minority of subjects offered provided that adequate knowledge is shown throughout the examination’ (Examination Regulations), and a Fail mark in one or more subjects may disqualify for Honours or even, in extreme circumstances, for a Pass degree. Candidates who miss a paper are governed by the general regulations in the Ex-amination Regulations, which allow for classification in some circumstances.


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The mark scale for individual papers is divided by classes:

Class I II 1 II 2 III Pass Fail

100 – 70 69 – 60 59 - 50 49 - 40 39 - 30 below 30

The boundary for classifying each candidate to a class is an average mark which is in most cases set a little below the minimum mark associated with that class (e.g. it is not necessary to score an average of 70 for a First) and a ‘preponderance’ requirement which states that at least two papers are marked within the relevant class (e.g. for a first you would need two pa-pers marked at 70 or above, and an average a little below 70). There are penalties for a miss-ing or negligible answer, and for ignoring instructions on the question paper (such as ‘show knowledge of both authors’), which vary according to the seriousness of the omission.

Uniform standards required of markers are as or like the following:

First Class script: work displaying analytical and argumentational power, with good command of the facts and/or arguments relevant to the questions and evidence of abil-ity to organise them with clarity, insight and efficiency. When these qualities are evi-dent in all questions attempted, the mark should be 80 or above. Where these qualities are evident throughout and the script displays original thought of near publishable standard, the mark should be 90 or above.

Upper Second Class script: work displaying analytical power and argumentation of the quality associated with a First, but with less comprehensive and thorough com-mand of evidence; or work showing considerable thoroughness but less analytical skill or less clarity in organisation.

Lower Second Class script: competent work with no major defects, but giving an in-complete account of the question, or marred by inaccuracies; or work which demon-strates lapses in (but does not lack) analytical and argumentational skills.

Third Class script: work that is generally weak with muddled argumentation, but con-taining some evidence of knowledge of facts and analytical skill; or work that, while competent and knowledgeable in itself, does not address the question asked by the ex-aminers.

Pass Degree script: very poor quality work, showing only slight evidence of effective study.

Fail script: work of still lower standard, but not so poor that it should prevent the can-didate from being awarded a degree if able to show better ability in enough other sub-jects.

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Outright Fail script: work of such a dismal standard that the candidate should not be awarded a Pass degree irrespective of performance in other subjects, unless the examin-ing board finds exceptional mitigating circumstances.

The examiners report your marks to your college, which communicates them to you. In 2011 the division by outcome of PPE Finals was: I, 24.9%; II 1, 69.9%; II 2 4.8%; III, 0%; Pass, 0%; Fail, 0%.

British universities tend to use a standard scale for marking individual papers, whereby the range 70-100 indicates a First; 60-69 a 2.1; 50-59 a 2.2; 40-49 a Third; 30-39 a Pass [i.e. not Hon-ours]; and 0-29 a Fail. However, they turn these individual marks into an overall Degree clas-sification according to different principles. One is to allocate each paper to a particular class (First, 2.1, 2.2, Third, etc), and then to establish which class predominates. The other is to add up the marks on all papers and establish the average. Because principle one does not require a First-class mark on every paper to obtain a First overall, or a 2.1 on every paper to obtain a 2.1 overall, and so on, principle two requires an average mark a little below 70 for a First, a little below 60 for a 2.1, etc. PPE currently uses a hybrid of these two principles: it requires BOTH an average mark set below the class threshold for an individual paper AND also least two papers falling within or (where possible) above the appropriate range for that degree. For example, in the academic year 2010-11 a First required both an average of 67.8 and two marks of at least 70. The conventions are kept under review by the PPE Committee, in the light of advice from external examiners. Those currently in use are communicated by the Chair of Examiners when he or she writes to finalists about the practical arrangements for that year’s examinations. Preparing for examinations

When planning your examination strategy, it is sensible to keep in mind the nature of the ex-amination method which the University uses (the conventional method in UK higher educa-tion over the past two centuries). If the examiners allowed you to set the questions, you could prepare good answers in a few months; by setting the questions themselves, they ensure that a candidate cannot be adequately prepared without study over a broad area. They will there-fore not be interested in answers which are in any way off the point, and they will severely penalise ‘short weight’ - too few properly written out answers. The examiners are looking for your own ideas and convictions and you mustn’t be shy of presenting them. When you have selected a question, work out what it means and decide what you think is the answer to it. Then, putting pen to paper, state the answer and defend it; or, if you think there is no answer, explain why not. Abstain from presenting background material. Do not write too much: most of those who run out of time have themselves to blame for being distracted into irrelevance. Good examinees emerge from the examination room with most of their knowledge undis-played. Examiner’s reports are available on the departmental websites and can be helpful in identifying the characteristics of good and bad answers in the various papers.


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Academic integrity: good practice in citation, and the avoidance of plagiarism

Plagiarism is the use of material appropriated from another source or from other sources with the intention of passing it off as one’s own work. Plagiarism may take the form of unac-knowledged quotation or substantial paraphrase. Sources of material include all printed and electronically available publications in English or other languages, or unpublished materials, including theses, written by others.

To avoid plagiarism, it is important for all students within individual subject areas to be aware of, and to follow, good practice in the use of sources and making appropriate refer-ence. You will need to exercise judgement in determining when reference is required, and when material may be taken to be so much a part of the ‘general knowledge’ of your particu-lar subject that formal citation would not be expected. The basis on which such judgements are made is likely to vary slightly between subject areas, as may also the style and format of making references, and your tutor or course organiser, where appropriate, will be in the best position to advise you on such matters; in addition, these may be covered, along with other aspects of academic writing, in your induction. By following good practice in your subject area you should develop a rigorous approach to academic referencing, and avoid inadvertent plagiarism. Cases of apparently deliberate plagiarism are taken extremely seriously, and where examiners suspect that this has occurred, they bring the matter to the attention of the Proctors.

In their Essential Information for Students, the University’s Proctors and Assessor draw atten-tion to two extremely important disciplinary regulations for all students.

“No candidate shall present for an examination as his or her own work any part or the substance of any part of another person’s work.

In any written work (whether thesis, dissertation, essay, coursework, or written ex-aminations) passages quoted or closely paraphrased from another person’s work must be identified as quotations or paraphrases, and the source of the quoted or paraphrased material must be clearly acknowledged.”

(The Proctors’ and Assessor’s Memorandum, Section 9.6)

The University employs a series of sophisticated software applications to detect plagiarism in submitted examination work, both in terms of copying and collusion. It regularly monitors on-line essay banks, essay-writing services, and other potential sources of material. It re-serves the right to check samples of submitted essays for plagiarism. Although the University strongly encourages the use of electronic resources by students in their academic work, any attempt to draw on third-party material without proper attribution may well attract severe disciplinary sanctions.

For more information please consult The Proctors’ and Assessor’s Memorandum, Sections 9.5 and 9.6: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/proctors/info/.

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Cases of plagiarism range from the culpably fraudulent to the carelessly inadvertent. Hon-esty is all you need to avoid the first, the cultivation of academic good practice will ensure that you do not fall foul of the second. You must avoid:

• The submission of other people’s work as your own. You should not use professional essay writing agencies nor submit any work which has been written in full or in part by any other person. It is also forbidden to submit work which you have already submitted (partially or in full) for another degree course or examination.

• The verbatim quotation of other people’s work without clear indication and due ac-knowledgement (i.e. quotation marks or indentation, together with a full citation.) In-advertency in this may be avoided by scrupulous note-taking. Whenever taking notes always write down the full details of the source (author, title, page numbers, lecturer’s name and date of lecture, URL.) Where exact words are copied or taken down quota-tion marks should be used; your notes should make it completely clear, in case your memory does not, which of its words and ideas are your own and which other peo-ple’s. The risk of plagiarism is increased where material is ‘cut and pasted’ from elec-tronic resources. If you copy material in this way make sure it is fully referenced and does not become confused with your own work. You should be aware that there exist sophisticated systems to detect such copying.

• Close paraphrase. Linking together phrases from a source with just a few words changed here and there is not enough to avoid the charge of plagiarism

• The reporting of ideas without acknowledging them as your own. When you write, there should be no room for doubt which are your ideas and which are other people’s. Note that where an idea is unattributed it will naturally be taken as the author’s own. How often you provide references must to some extent be a matter of style and judg-ment; to begin each sentence of a paragraph of exposition with “Davidson says that…” would be redundant, but where you are substantially indebted to a particular author it may well not be enough to cite his or her work once in a footnote at the start or the end of the essay.

The surest way to avoid suspicion of plagiarism is by careful referencing. Tutors may be more concerned to check that you understand than that your essays display scholarly refer-ences, and no examiner expects full references in a three hour exam, but it is good practice to give proper references.

There are many ways to do this (footnotes, author and date, bibliography, etc.) In general there is no one preferred system. Tutors and style guides are a source of advice. Note that some electronic sources explicitly tell you how to make references to their articles.

You should not reference anything that you have not actually consulted. Where your knowl-edge of a primary source is via a secondary one this should be made clear. (e.g. R.Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, quoted in J.Cottingham, Descartes (Blackwell, 1986) p.92.)


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Some ideas may be taken as part of the ‘general knowledge’ of a particular subject and, as such, do not call for a formal reference. You will need to exercise judgment in determining when this is the case. If in doubt, seek advice or err on the side of caution.

Some illustrations of plagiarism:

Source text

‘Even more important, however, and certainly more generally applicable, is the argument from queerness. This has two parts, one metaphysical, the other epistemological. If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else.’ (J.L.Mackie, Ethics, Inventing Right and Wrong (Penguin, 1977) p.38)

Examples

(1) An important argument is that from queerness. It has two parts, one metaphysical and one epistemological. Metaphysically, if objective values existed, then they would be very strange entities, unlike anything else in the universe. Epistemologically, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some strange faculty of moral intuition, quite different from our ordinary awareness.

Without reference of any kind to any source, this would be taken as the author’s own words and ideas; when in fact it simply copies phrases verbatim from the source with just a few words changed here and there.

(2) It has been argued against objective values on the grounds of queerness. The case can be made in either metaphysical or epistemological terms. If objective values ex-isted, they would be strange things, utterly different from anything else in the uni-verse, and they would have to be known in an equally strange way, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else

This is a mixture of verbatim copying and close paraphrase. Two phrases have been copied from the source, but no quotation marks or reference provided. The phrase ‘It has been ar-gued’ is insufficient for this purpose.

(3) ‘The argument from queerness’ (Mackie, 1977, p.38) has been stated as follows. ‘If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.’ Correspond-ingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else

By selective use of quotation marks and referencing this suggests that the second point here is the writer’s own, when it is in fact just as heavily indebted to the source as the material ex-plicitly acknowledged. All quoted material must be enclosed in quotation marks and ade-quately referenced.

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Remember:

• Always make clear the extent of your borrowing. A text reference, such as (Mackie, 1977, p.38), can leave it unclear whether the debt you wish to acknowledge is with regard to a clause, a sentence, a few sentences or an entire paragraph that you have written.

• Try always to express the ideas and arguments you encounter in your own words; this is part of what it means to really understand them.


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2. Departments

The Departments of Politics and International Relations, of Economics, of Sociology, and of Social Policy are in the Social Sciences Division, one of four Divisions in the University, between which the academic departments and faculties are divided. The Faculty of Philosophy is part of the Humanities Division.

The administration of the PPE degree is carried out by the PPE Administrator Ms Liz Griffith (Tel: 88564; email: [email protected]) on behalf of all three subjects within PPE. Liz is available to answer enquiries in Room 126, Manor Road Building, from 09:00 to 17:20 Monday to Friday.

The PPE degree has its own website at www.ppe.ox.ac.uk.

The PPE Committee, consisting of members of the Faculty of Philosophy, the Department of Politics and International Relations, and the Department of Economics meets at least once a term to consider issues relating to the course.

The members of the Departments and Faculties are those employed to carry out teaching or research within the University. Further details of staff in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, including their research interests, are available on the web sites:

www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk www.politics.ox.ac.uk www.economics.ox.ac.uk

The Departments of Politics and International Relations, of Economics and of Sociology are all located in the Manor Road Building on Manor Road. This building also contains the Social Science Library and a Common Room. Coffee, tea, etc., as well as breakfast and lunch, may be purchased in the Common Room. The caterers’ opening hours are 08:30 to 16:00. In addition, there is a Lecture Theatre, an IT Room and seven Seminar Rooms. The full address is: Manor Road Building, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UQ. Opening hours are:

Term-time: Monday – Friday: 09:00 – 22:00 Saturday: 10:00 – 18:00 Sunday: 12:00 – 18:00 Vacations: Monday – Friday: 09:00 – 19:00 Saturday: 10:00 – 18:00 (Christmas and Easter) Saturday: 10:00 – 16:00 (Long Vacation) Sunday: Closed

On all visits, bring your university card for access. Some undergraduate lectures and classes are held in the Manor Road building. The Philosophy Centre

The Philosophy Centre at 10 Merton Street is open from 09:30 to 18:30, Monday to Friday, in term-time, and 09:30 to 16:30, Monday to Friday, in vacation. The Centre operates an access con-

http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/�

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trol system and you will need your University Card to gain entry. The administrative offices are generally closed between 13:00 and 14:00. The Centre is sometimes open for evening meet-ings, or when the Philosophy Library (housed in the same building) has longer hours. The Centre is closed for about ten days at Christmas and Easter, and for four weeks from the be-ginning of August to early September.

As well as the Library, it contains a lecture room, a seminar room, a common room, a garden, and the administrative offices. All enquiries, including the purchasing of study aids, should be directed to the Secretarial Assistant (Tel: (2)76926; email: [email protected]) in room G11 (second office on the left of the adminis-trative corridor). The Philosophy web site at www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk contains further useful information. Department of Politics and International Relations

The Department is located on the first floor of the Manor Road Building. The Department is open from 08:30 to 22:00, Monday to Friday, in term-time and 08:30 to 19:00 in vacation, except on Bank Holidays and between Christmas and the New Year. It contains the offices of the Head of Department, Departmental administrative staff and Director of Undergraduate Studies. The Undergraduate Studies Administrator for Politics is situated in the Courses Office (Room 172), and is available for enquiries regarding Politics from 09:00 to 17:20 Monday to Friday. For more lengthy matters, please arrange an appointment in advance. If you wish to see the Courses Manager, please ask at the main reception. Department of Economics

The Department is located on the second floor of the Manor Road Building. Opening hours: 9.30-18.00. Most members of the Department have an office and collect mail there and the Undergraduate Administrator is based there (8:30-17:00) to whom enquiries may be addressed. Lecture handouts are available on the Economics website. Department of Sociology

The Department is concerned primarily with graduate degrees in Sociology. However, members give lectures and tutorials for PPE undergraduates in Political Sociology, Sociological Theory, Sociology of Industrial Societies, and Social Statistics. Its research programme includes work on social and political change, the sociology of elections, ethnicity and national identity, and the life course and ageing. A number of PPE students have written theses based on the Department’s research projects.

The Department is located on the third floor of the Manor Road Building. All students are invited to attend the weekly departmental seminars. Further information on the Department and the seminars can be found at www.sociology.ox.ac.uk.

http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/�

http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/�


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Department of Social Policy and Intervention

The Department is located at Barnett House, 32 Wellington Square (Tel: (2)70325). It is primarily concerned with graduate degrees in Comparative Social Policy and Evidence Based Social Intervention. Its senior members give lectures and convene tutorials for PPE and History & Politics undergraduates in Social Policy and in Demography. Its research programme includes work on social deprivation, poverty and disadvantage, the family, parenting and childcare, demography and population ageing, social security and welfare reform, mental health and anti-social behaviour, health and health care; there are growing programmes of research on the comparative politics of the welfare state and on social policy in South Africa. The tutorials are usually held in the Department; lectures and classes will be held in the Department or in the Manor Road Building.

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3. Libraries and Computing

Libraries

The library provision in Oxford University is very good but can seem complex. The Social Science Library (SSL) in the Manor Road Building hosts all reading list texts in support of Politics and Economics. Provision for Philosophy is split between the lending collections in the Philosophy Faculty Library at 10 Merton Street and the reference collections at the Bodleian, with the most popular items located in the Philosophy Reading Room in the Bodleian. Your local college library also has a good selection of books which can be bor-rowed. Each library is equipped with computers for searching databases and catalogues, and for checking email and printing. Looking at the websites, picking up a paper guide, or asking the library staff can provide you with further information about specific services and library rules and regulations.

Admission: The University Card, which is distributed by your College, will be required to enter and/or to borrow books or to order items from closed stacks. The best policy is to al-ways carry your University Card with you. If you lose your University Card, request a re-placement as soon as possible from your College Secretary.

Induction: There are library induction sessions for all PPE students during 0th Week. You will be taught how to use SOLO, the online catalogue for Oxford’s electronic and printed li-brary collections; PCAS, the system for printing, copying and scanning ; and OxLIP+, the OU local interface to a large selection of subject databases and internet resources. You will re-ceive further instructions from your college about the timing and location of these sessions.

Finding books: Begin by checking SOLO for items listed on your reading lists. Ask library staff for assistance if you cannot find the books you need. You can recommend new book purchases via the library's website.

Finding journal articles: First look for the title of the journal using SOLO. If you do not know the issue or the page number of the article, ask library staff who can help you search for the item in one of the many subject databases available from OxLIP+, e.g. EconLIT, Philosopher’s Index. Many journals are now available electronically via OU e-Journals. Feel free to ask li-brary staff for further information and assistance.

Borrowing from a library or reading in the library: Once you have found the books or jour-nal articles you wish to read, you may have a choice of either borrowing the item or reading the confined copy in the library (see individual libraries' websites for details). Central Bodleian Library books cannot be borrowed.

Printing, copying, and scanning: The PCAS system in operation across The Bodleian Librar-ies Group offers a range of services (see the link from the Bodleian Libraries website), paid for using an online account topped up by a debit/credit card.


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Opening hours: These vary between libraries and are longer during term-time than in vaca-tions; see individual libraries' websites for details.

Library Main subjects covered Web address

BOD Official Papers (Bodleian Law Library)

Official Papers (Parliamentary papers, government publications etc.)

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley

BOD Philosophy Reading Room (Lower Reading Room, Old Bodleian)

Philosophy www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley

BOD Upper Camera History, Education, History of Art, Anthropology

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley

History Faculty Library History www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history

Philosophy Faculty Library Philosophy www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/philosophy

Radcliffe Science Library Science and Medicine www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/science

Rhodes House Library

History and Current Affairs – political, economic and social – of Commonwealth and sub-Saharan Africa

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/rhodes

Said Business School, Sainsbury Library

Business and Management Studies

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/business

Social Science Library

Economics, International Relations, Politics, Social Policy, Social Work, Socio-Legal Stud-ies, Sociology and Criminology, International Development, Refugee Studies, Russian and East European Studies

www.sbodleian.ox.ac.uk/ssl

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Vere Harmsworth Library

American Studies/History – Political, Economic and Social – from colonial times to the present

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/vhl

Other libraries which might be of use to PPE students include: Bodleian Japanese, Bodleian Law, Sackler, and Theology Faculty.

Photocopying facilities and copyright law:

The copying of books and journals and the use of self-service photocopiers are subject to the provisions of the Copyright License issued to the University of Oxford by the Copyright Li-censing Agency for the copying (from paper on to paper) of:

• up to 5% or one complete chapter (whichever is the greater) from a book;

• up to 5% or one whole article (whichever is the greater) from a single issue of a journal;

• up to 5% or one paper (whichever is the greater) from a set of conference proceedings.

We hope you will enjoy using Oxford’s libraries. Please respect other library users and take care of library books and facilities.

Computing All colleges have a computer room, with software for word-processing and other applications, connections to the central University machines and the Internet, and printers.

The Manor Road Building has an IT Room with 48 PCs connected to the Internet. They have access to a wide range of specialist social sciences research software. The room is mainly used for computer-based courses. The Social Science Library has 55 PCs offering Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access), internet access (SOLO, OxLIP+ and the World Wide Web), and a range of other software include Endnote, Refworks, Nuance PDF creator Pro, GIMP, Adobe Digital Editions, and Windows Media Player. A further 10 PCs are available in the Philosophy Library.

To use library computers you will need to log-in with your University Card barcode number and your Library password. To set up your library password please see instructions available at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ssl/how/set-a-new-library-password.

Readers are welcome to use their own laptops in most library study spaces; power sockets and Ethernet points are provided. To use the wireless service, connect to the Bodleian-Libraries network and log-in with your University Card barcode and Library password. Ethernet cables and USB sticks (as well as a range of other stationery) are available to buy at the SSL issue desk.

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ssl/how/set-a-new-library-password�


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Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) is at 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. The building is open to non-key holders Monday to Friday 08.30 - 20.30. Undergraduates have access to the IT training courses, to the Learning and Resource Centre (Monday to Friday 09.00 – 20.30), and to the online shop; also, by application, to printers and software on the central UNIX computers. Further details may be obtained on-line at www.oucs.ox.ac.uk.

IT Skills

By the end of your first year we expect you to have the essential IT skills set out below; those listed as ‘desirable’ would be useful for your future employment but are not a requirement of your course. While many students coming to Oxford will already possess most if not all of these skills, those who need to develop any are required to do this in their own time. Your college will provide the basic hardware, software and support.

For those who would prefer to attend training courses, OUCS (Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Road) has a number of relevant courses set out below; information about courses and registration details can be obtained either from your college IT support service, from the reception desk at OUCS, or on-line at www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/courses (where there is a description of each course as well as details about the prerequisite knowledge and dates). There is no fee for attending any of these courses but a charge is made for course documentation. OUCS also has the LaRC (Learning and Resource Centre), a supported working environment where you can teach yourself using a variety of materials such as videos, computer-based materials, multimedia courseware and books. You can also study the OUCS courses in your own time, and materials for the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) are available.

Skill Recommended software OUCS Course

Essential

Basic use of a PC MS Windows Essential IT skills: basics and beyond (includes Windows, Word, Excel, databases, www, file management)

Word-processing MS Word(*) (1) Word – styles and table of contents (2) Word – tables, tabs and indents (3) Word – mail merge

Email and use of the Internet Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer

(1) Introduction to Email (2) Configuring and using Outlook Express (3) Essential web publishing skills (4) Searching the web for on-line resources

Desirable

Spreadsheets MS Excel (*) Designing and Using Spreadsheets

Presentation and drawing MS Power Point (*) (1) Introduction to Power Point (2) Creating presentations with MS PowerPoint

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/�

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Database and filing systems MS Access (*) (1) Database design

(2) Essential access (*) These are part of the integrated Microsoft Office suite. The University has a site license for this software (available via the OUCS shop) for use in departments and colleges but it cannot supply copies to individual students. You can obtain your own copy from a local supplier (see www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/shop/).

You will not be examined in any of these skills.

For second and third year students, various papers in PPE may have integrated practical ses-sions involving the use of relevant software. You will need to use IT during your course. Many tutors encourage students to present at least some of their essays in word-processed form. Web and email

All the information you may need about the course is available at www.ppe.ox.ac.uk. This contains information on, amongst other things, the lecture list, reading lists, recent finals papers and examiners’ reports, and the JCCs. This should be your first port of call for information.

It is essential that you use email as this will be used to communicate information to you by department or faculty staff. Your college will supply you with an email account. Your email address will be: firstname.lastname@ approved abbreviation of college name, plus ox.ac.uk.

All students should also be aware of the University’s IT code of conduct, available on-line at www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/196-052.shtml.

mailto:[email protected]�

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/196-052.shtml�


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Data Protection

DATA PROTECTION ACT 1998: INFORMATION ON STUDENT PERSONAL DATA

Please read this document carefully. It will help you to understand the purposes for which your College and the University of Oxford, including its departments, faculties and ad-ministration (‘the University’) process (i.e. collect and use) your personal data and any dis-closures that they may make of those data outside the College/University. It is important that you are aware of the personal data which is held about you, especially the sensitive personal data as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998 (see section A.2 below), where special provisions apply.

A. Processing

In order to fulfil their educational, pastoral, and administrative responsibilities before, during and after your studies at Oxford, your College and the University will need to collect and process personal data about you. The Data Protection Act 1998 requires that any such infor-mation is processed fairly and lawfully, is held securely, and is kept up-to-date. In some cases this processing is permitted under the Data Protection Act 1998 as being necessary to enable your College and the University to fulfil their operational responsibilities and where your rights and legitimate interests are not prejudiced by the processing. Your consent is not needed for processing of this data, which is described in section 1(a) below). There are other cases where your consent is similarly not required and these are described in 1(b) and 1(c) below. The final category of processing is that of sensitive personal data which does require your consent and that is described in section 2 below. In all cases data will be collected by your College and may be passed to the University and vice versa, so that necessary process-ing can be undertaken. Data may also be shared with other Colleges.

1. Non-sensitive personal data

Categories of the non-sensitive personal data which may be collected and processed are set out below; these lists are not exhaustive but indicate the main sorts of such data.

(a) Non-sensitive data which may be collected during the applications process and during your studies at Oxford

Name, address, telephone number and email address; any other contact details; date of birth and gen-der; marital and family/household details; name of doctor; person to be contacted in case of emergency and contact details; school and admissions documentation; matriculation details and course studied; information on academic performance; examination details; distinctions, prizes, positions of responsi-bility held; membership of University clubs and societies; disciplinary action taken; financial matters (including loans, fees, college invoices, scholarships and bursaries etc).; information provided to the College/University during the course of your studies; information needed to permit access to Col-lege/University facilities such as computing facilities, libraries and for the issue of the University card, where access will be subject to regulations available from the provider of the facility; passwords and

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IDs used to access College or University facilities; provision of student advice and support (e.g. OUSU and Careers Service).

Your consent for such processing is not required as it is processing needed to allow the Col-lege(s) and the University to fulfil their educational, pastoral and administrative responsibili-ties.

(b) Additional non-sensitive data which may be collected and processed after your studies have been completed.

Details of qualifications and skills; employment details; membership of professional bodies; publications.

Processing of data of this kind does not require your written consent but you may wish to indicate to your College/the University if you do not wish it to be collected or processed.

(c) Alumni data

Unless you request otherwise, your College and the University will add your details to their alumni records so that you may receive relevant publications and information about alumni activities, events and programmes and be kept informed more generally about the activities of your College and the University. Your data may also be included in College/University alumni publications.

Such data will be held securely and will be treated confidentially for your benefit and the benefit of your College and the University. The data will be available to your College, the University’s Development Office, International Offices, faculties, academic and administra-tive departments, and to the Oxford University Society and other recognised alumni societies, sports and other clubs associated with your College and the University. It may be disclosed to bodies outside your College/the University where such bodies are acting as agents of your College/the University.

Data will be used for a full range of alumni activities as described above. Data may also be used in fundraising programmes, which might include an element of direct marketing by your College/the University. Data will not, however, be passed to external commercial or-ganisations without your explicit consent.

2. Sensitive personal data

The Data Protection Act 1998 defines sensitive personal data as information about racial or ethnic origins; political opinions; religious beliefs or other beliefs; trade union membership; physical or mental health; sex life; criminal allegations, proceedings or convictions. Save in limited circum-stances specified in the Act, those collecting and processing sensitive personal data are re-quired to seek explicit consent to do so. However, much of the sensitive personal data han-dled by the Colleges and University will be provided by students themselves so that consent to process in those cases is not an issue.

The Colleges and University have no need or intention to collect information concerning the political beliefs, sexual orientation, or trade union affiliations of students. Nor do they have


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any need or intention to collect or process data on religious beliefs or practices except in so far as students may, for example, require special dispensation to avoid sitting examinations on certain days or may have special dietary requirements. However the student will proba-bly have volunteered the sensitive data him/herself so consent to collect and process is unlikely to present a problem.

If a student is convicted of an offence under the criminal law, this may be the subject of fur-ther disciplinary proceedings within the Colleges when data may be collected and processed; this will not happen without the student’s knowledge. Conviction of a criminal offence may in certain limited circumstances have to be mentioned in a reference to an employer or pro-fessional body.

The University and Colleges may need to process information relating to a student’s health. For example, it may be necessary to ask for dispensation to miss an examination or special provision may be needed for certain health problems or in cases of disability, or suspension of status may be needed for graduate students.

If a student is following a course leading to a professional qualification, the Col-lege/University will need to be able to report to the appropriate professional body, such as the General Medical Council, that he or she is ‘a safe and suitable entrant to a given profes-sion’.

The Data Protection Act allows action to be taken to process personal sensitive data, and to disclose such information to an individual/body outside the College/University, without con-sent, where it is regarded as in the student’s vital interest. However, this is generally likely to apply only in cases of illness or accident where the student is unable or unwilling to give con-sent. This exemption may only be used in exceptional circumstances.

There is also an exemption in the Act to allow collection of data without explicit consent in order to identify or keep under review the existence or absence of equality of opportunity or treatment between persons of different racial or ethnic origins. Such data is collected by the Colleges and University for the purposes of monitoring and of upholding equal opportunities policies.

If you have any concerns about the processing of any information in the sorts of circum-stances outlined above you should contact your College Data Protection Officer or the Uni-versity Data Protection Officer via email to [email protected].

B. Disclosure of data to bodies outside your college / the University

Your College/the University may be required to provide non-sensitive personal data to the Inland Revenue, Community Charge Registration Officers, local authority electoral registra-tion, assessment and valuation departments, other education and training establishments and examining bodies, and students’ sponsors (e.g. local authority education departments, the Student Loan Company and funding councils (and including the Higher Education Statistics Agency).

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Your College/the University will respond to requests for references, transcripts or other in-formation on your educational attainments, from employers or prospective employers or from other educational institutions, funding bodies or recognised voluntary organisations. However, the information will not be provided unless the request is made in writing and ap-pears to be bona fide.

Disclosure may also be necessary in certain other circumstances, for example to comply with legal or statutory requirements; in any legal proceedings; or for medical reasons to medical staff.

Your College/the University will not normally send information about you to outside organi-sations at home or overseas other than of the kind indicated. Your personal data will not be placed on any website by your College or the University without your consent.

You should be aware that many countries outside the European Economic Area do not have data protection legislation and so may not always protect your personal data to the same standard.

C. Keeping your personal data up-to-date

The Data Protection Act 1998 requires that your College and the University take reasonable steps to ensure that any personal data which they process is accurate and up-to-date. It is therefore important that you let the relevant College officer know of any changes to your per-sonal data, or of any error in those data. The University will be informed of changes as ap-propriate.

D. Queries and access requests

The Data Protection Act 1998 gives you the right to know what personal data your College and the University are processing, subject to certain exemptions provided in the legislation and to consideration of third party rights. If you wish to seek access under the Data Protec-tion Act provisions, you should contact either your college in the case of personal data proc-essed by your College or the University’s Data Protection Officer, via email to [email protected]. A fee is required for such access.

General queries about the Data Protection Act 1998 may be addressed to the University’s Data Protection Officer using the email address, [email protected]

E. Archives

The College and University records are normally archived as a matter of routine, but your College and the University are not liable for any failure to archive, or maintain the archive or for deletion of archive material however arising and you are advised to retain any original certificates issued by the University safely and securely.

As indicated in section A2 above it is possible that sensitive data may appear on your file. It is unlikely that your College or the University will have to process sensitive data without your knowledge and consent. It may, however, be necessary to process information about


34

your health. If when you leave Oxford you are concerned about the retention of any such material on your file or about the possibility that other types of sensitive data (as defined by the Act) may have been collected, you should discuss these concerns with the college Data Protection Officer in the first instance.

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PART B - STUDENT ISSUES

4. Participation

Consultation

Consultation of students is a serious concern to the departments and faculties and takes a number of forms discussed below. It is important that you give us your views and feel free to do so, in order that we may deal with problems that arise both relating to you personally and to the course. Feedback from students takes both an institutional form via the Undergraduate Joint Consultative Committees (UJCCs) and also involves you as individuals making the ef-fort to complete lecture or tutorial report forms or to seek out college or departmental officers for discussion. Confidentiality is preserved when we seek feedback and will be maintained if you wish it when you discuss issues of concern to you. It is important that you remember that both the college and the departments will seek and welcome your feedback in various ways. Student Feedback

The feedback which you provide to lecturers and tutors is valued and is taken seriously. It has an important contribution to make to maintaining the quality of the education you re-ceive at Oxford.

Lecture questionnaire forms will be provided for you to comment on each set of lectures. Lec-ture questionnaires are distributed either electronically or as paper copies.

Paper copies will be handed out by the lecturer towards the middle or end of his or her set of lectures, and further copies will be available from department or faculty offices. Completed forms may either be given to the lecturer at the end of the lecture or sent to the departmental office. The results of the questionnaire are seen by the lecturer and also by the Director of Undergraduate Studies or Teaching/Lectures Committee or panel. The DUS and/or commit-tee or panel are responsible for ensuring that any problems reported through the question-naires are addressed. These are reported on to the JCC and the department or faculty.

You will also be expected to provide feedback on tutorial teaching to your college, and al-though colleges may differ in the exact ways in which they provide for this, in general they will ask your views on the amount and quality of teaching, reading materials, timeliness of comments on essays and tutorial performance, and feedback on your progress on the course. Colleges also arrange for you to hear or read reports written by your tutor and to make comments on them, and also for you to submit your own self-assessment of your progress to date and your academic goals.


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Undergraduate Joint Consultative Committees (UJCCs)

Each department/faculty has an Undergraduate Joint Consultative Committee on departmen-tal/faculty matters (UJCC). The UJCC is your forum, through which departmental/faculty of-ficers will keep you informed of developments within the department/faculty. Typical agenda items include course developments, lecture arrangements, library provision and IT. Senior members will be looking to you for comments and suggestions, which may bring beneficial changes. It is also the forum in which you should raise any matters of concern to you relating to the organisation, content and delivery of the course.

The Politics UJCC comprises the Director of Undergraduate Studies, the Undergraduate Studies Administrator or Courses Manager), and an undergraduate representative from each college. It meets once a term at 2pm on Monday of 3rd and 6th Week in Michaelmas Term, Hilary Term and Trinity Terms. The undergraduates must be reading for a degree in PPE or HP. The Economics UJCC comprises several senior members, including the Director of Un-dergraduate Studies, and an undergraduate representative from each college. The under-graduate representatives must be reading for one of the Honour Schools involving Econom-ics. The UJCC meets once per term. It elects one of its undergraduate representatives as con-venor. The convenor prepares the agenda and minutes for meetings. The Philosophy UJCC is similar in structure to the Politics UJCC, but comprises junior members from across all seven of the joint honour schools involving Philosophy. It meets once a term in the Ryle Room at 10 Merton Street. The UJCC convenors attend their respective faculty meetings and should send one representative to attend the PPE Committee, which is the body of academics and admin-istrators responsible for the organisation of the degree. In addition, the Chair of the Philoso-phy UJCC serves as an undergraduate representative on the Philosophy Undergraduate Studies Committee.

For the UJCCs to function well, it is important that undergraduate representatives participate actively in its work. Make sure your college has a representative, and ask him/her to raise matters of concern at the UJCC and to report back to you. Library Committees (CoLP)

The Committee on Library Provision in Social Studies may include student representatives from the relevant UJCCs. The Committee meets once a term.

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5. Student Support

Equal Opportunities

The University has in place policies relating to equal opportunities, harassment and disability which are kept under review. Details can be found in the University prospectus, on the Oxford University website (www.admin.ox.ac.uk/eop/) and in the Proctors’ and Assessor’s Memorandum, a booklet which is given to all students on arrival. Harassment

The University has a Code of Practice on Harassment, which is published in Essential Informa-tion for Students. The Code of Practice makes it a disciplinary offence for any member of the university to harass another on any grounds. There are confidential advisers who can be con-tacted for help on any matter related to harassment:

Politics: Dr Gwendolyn Sasse (Tel: (2)88689), [email protected] Prof Martin Ceadel (Tel: (2)79505), [email protected] Economics: Dr Patricia Rice (Tel: (2)71047), [email protected] Dr Howard Smith (Tel: (2)71061), [email protected] Philosophy: Dr Katherine Morris (Tel: (2)70985), katherine.morris@ philosophy.ox.ac.uk Dr William Mander (Tel: 2(71028)), [email protected] You will also find that your college has people that you can approach if you feel harassed. You may wish to go to your tutor or to the Senior Tutor; alternatively, if you wish to deal with someone who is not connected directly with your academic work or your course, con-sult the Chaplain, Women's Adviser, or Welfare officers in your college. Disability

The University operates a code of practice to provide equality of opportunity for those with disabilities. There are currently over 500 students with disabilities at Oxford and the Univer-sity and the colleges are committed to making arrangements to enable students with disabili-ties to participate as fully as possible in student life. The University’s Committee for Disabled People is responsible for considering the issues facing disabled staff and students of the Uni-versity, improving access to University buildings for people with impaired mobility, and providing support to disabled staff and students. Detailed information about provision and sources of assistance, including the University’s Disability Statement and the Access Guide for People with Disabilities, which gives details about the accessibility of most University build-ings, can be found on the web site at: www.admin.ox.ac.uk/eop/disab. Local information on access and resources can be found on the Philosophy Faculty website at www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk. Further information and advice are available from the Univer-sity’s Disability Office at [email protected]. The Disability Co-ordinator for the Phi-





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losophy Faculty is Dr Hilla Wait, Tel: (2)76927, E-mail: [email protected]. The Disability Officer for the Department of Politics and International Relations is Mr Andrew Melling, Tel: (2)78727, E-mail: [email protected]. Observations or complaints concerning disablement issues should be addressed via college and departmental complaints procedures. Complaints Procedures

The University complaints and academic appeals policy is provided in Appendix C. It is the policy of the departments/faculty responsible for the teaching of PPE to deal with all com-plaints from individuals fairly, promptly, and in confidence. Complaints concerning college matters should in the first instance be referred to your college authorities. Complaints con-cerning University matters, including all centrally-provided lectures and classes, should normally be addressed in the first instance to the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Phi-losophy or to the Heads of the Departments of Politics and International Relations or of Eco-nomics. In the case of harassment, complaints should be made to the individuals named in the paragraphs above in this section of the Handbook. Alternatively, students can approach the Secretary of the Faculty of Philosophy or the respective Directors of Undergraduate Stud-ies in Politics or Economics. The names of all these officers are set out in Appendix D.

Note that although tutorial and class teaching for the option papers in Economics is arranged by the Economics Department, any complaints should first be taken to the college tutor, as for other tutorial teaching. The college tutor will take the matter up with the option tutor and/or the convenor in the first instance, and if not satisfied will ask the Director of Undergraduate Studies to take up the issue. If the matter is still not satisfactorily resolved, the college Senior Tutor should be informed (either by the undergraduate concerned, or the college tutor) who will then take up the issue with the Director of Undergraduate Studies and/or the Head of Department.

In addition, the University’s Proctors provide a special forum for dealing with complaints. They have power to investigate directly complaints from any member of the University and to take appropriate measures to provide redress. Details can be found in the Proctors’ and Assessor’s Memorandum, which sets out complaints procedures, and provides further in-formation on disciplinary procedures, equal opportunities policy, harassment, disability and other welfare issues.

It is important to remember, in a collegiate University, that even on matters relating exclu-sively to University teaching and examining, your college tutor, or your college’s Senior Tu-tor and its other officers concerned with welfare, provide an immediate and well-informed source of advice about the best procedure to adopt. Illness and personal issues

If illness, or other personal issues such as bereavement, seriously affect your academic work, make sure that your tutors know this. If at all possible choose a Fellow of your college in whom to confide - otherwise it will be difficult for the college to help. Help may involve: excusing you tutorials for a while; sending you home; asking the University to grant you



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dispensation from that term’s residence (to qualify for the BA you must reside and study in Oxford for nine terms - or six if you have Senior Status - and a term for that purpose means forty-two nights); or permitting you to go out of residence for a number of terms, with consequent negotiations with your funding body as appropriate.

If illness or other issues have interfered with preparation for a University examination, or have affected you during the exam itself, your college will, if appropriate, report the fact to the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, who will pass the information to your examiners ‘if, in their opinion, it is likely to assist the examiners in the performance of their duties’. Your college also reports to the Proctors if illness, disability or other factors have prevented you from attending part of a University examination, or makes it desirable that you should be examined in a special place or at a special time. The college officer concerned is the Senior Tutor. You must deal with your Senior Tutor, never with the examiners. Give the Senior Tutor as much notice as possible; in particular, examinations specially invigilated in a special place (usually your college) take a lot of organising, and the deadline for getting permission in respect of foreseeable problems such as dyslexia is Second Week of the term of the examination. In the case of illness or disability, you will probably need a medical certificate; college doctors have the relevant University forms. Scholarships, Prizes and Grants

After your first year you will be eligible for a scholarship or exhibition from your college, on academic criteria which the college decides and applies. The University administers a number of trust scholarships, mostly narrow in remit and none specifically for PPE subjects; they are listed in the University’s Statutes, Decrees and Regulations (the ‘blue book’), which you can consult in your college office or a library.

University prizes are listed in a supplement of the University Gazette each year, which can be found on the university website. Those particularly concerning PPE are as follows. (1) The Henry Wilde Prize, value about £500, is offered for an outstanding performance in the Philosophy subjects in one of the Final Honour Schools; and a Gibbs Prize, value up to £100, is offered for an outstanding performance in the philosophy subjects in PPE. No applications are needed. (2) Gibbs Prizes in Politics are awarded for the best performance in Politics written papers in PPE and for the best Politics thesis in PPE. (3) Hicks/Webb Medley Prizes are awarded for the best Economics performance (value £300) and the best Economics thesis (value £150) in one of the Final Honour Schools. No applications are needed. (4) The Gladstone Memorial Essay Prize, value about £500, is awarded for a thesis on some subject connected with recent British History, Political Science, or Economics, or with some problem of British policy - domestic, imperial or foreign - in relation to finance or other matters, submitted for the Honour School in History, History and Economics, or PPE. No application is needed. (5) The Arnold Historical Essay Prize, value about £500, is awarded for the best thesis in History, which may be a PPE thesis. (6) The Sara Norton Prize, value about £600, is offered for an essay within the field of the political history and institutions of the USA; candidates must apply by March and submit by May; details in the University Gazette. (7) The Duns Scotus Prize in Medieval Philosophy, value £150, may be awarded each year, if there is a candidate of sufficient merit, by the examiners of the Medieval Philosophy paper in any of the Final Honour Schools involving Philosophy. No special application is required. (8) The


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Elizabeth Anscombe Thesis Prize (value £100) is awarded each year to the best Final Honour Schools Philosophy Thesis across all Final Honour Schools involving Philosophy. No special application is required.

The Access to Learning Fund is provided by the UK government to assist ‘Home’ undergraduates and postgraduates who are in financial difficulty. Application forms are available from your college or can be requested from Student Financial Support by emailing [email protected]. The University Hardship Committee also makes grants and loans for the relief of unexpected financial hardship, which must have been unforeseeable at the time of admission. It meets once a term (Week 6 in Michaelmas and Hilary, and Week 4 in Trinity). Application forms are held in your college office and must be submitted by your college two weeks before the Committee meeting (Thursday of Week 4 in Michaelmas and Hilary, and Thursday of Week 2 in Trinity).


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6. The Future

Taking your Degree

Once your name has appeared on the PPE Class List or Pass List, you may ‘supplicate’ for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, that is, ask to be ‘presented’ to the Vice-Chancellor or the Vice-Chancellor’s deputy, either in person or in absentia as you choose. Your college presents you, and you must apply through it. If you wish to be presented in person, you must apply many months in advance: there are about a dozen ceremonies each year (usually in the Sheldonian), but they are heavily booked. You may ask your college for up to three tickets entitling guests to attend a degree ceremony, and your college will probably invite you, and possibly your guests, to lunch on the day. Dress is sub-fusc, and you must also make sure that you have, perhaps by loan from your college, an undergraduate gown, mortar board or cap, and also a BA gown and hood. The same procedure applies to the degree of MA, for which you may supplicate - together with or after your BA - in or after your twenty-first term from matriculation. Proceeding to Further Study

If you are considering graduate study, the beginning of your final year is the latest time by which you should research the various degrees on offer and choose the ones that appeal to you. At that time you might also discuss the options with your tutors. Most applications for graduate study, particularly to institutions in the northern hemisphere, must be submitted by December or January. Deadlines are often strictly enforced and the competition for a place on a particular degree may be intensive. Your initiatives are likely to fail if they are not completed in good time.

Every year a number of PPE finalists apply to continue their studies at Oxford. There are three main application deadlines at Oxford, though many degrees participate in only one or two of the deadlines: you will be able to find a comprehensive list of deadlines, as well as information about the application process, in the Graduate Studies Prospectus at http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/index.html.

Graduate students must secure their own funding to cover fees and maintenance, both of which can be costly. The closing dates for some fellowships and scholarships, especially those overseas, may fall in advance of the application deadline for your chosen degree programme, and the competition for funding can also be fierce, so it is important to research the deadlines for these opportunities and to plan your applications in a timely manner.

There are two UK Government funding bodies: the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). They provide studentships to a small number of UK students (fees and maintenance) and EU students (fees only). You can find out more information about them, including which one supports your chosen discipline, at www.ahrc.ac.uk and at www.esrc.ac.uk. Both research councils now operate a quota system, which means that your department selects the successful studentship

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nominees. You will need to check the local procedures for AHRC and ESRC studentship applications at the institution to which you intend to apply.

If you are applying to continue your studies at Oxford, you should indicate your wish to be considered for an AHRC studentship on the graduate application form (all students who are eligibre for anESRC studentship are automatically considered). The department to which you are applying will consider all students who ask for awards and will contact directly those whom it chooses.

In addition to Government funding bodies, other sources can also provide funding to graduate students. You may find the following links helpful:

Humanities Division funding information: www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/prospective_students/graduates/funding

Social Sciences Division funding information: www.socsci.ox.ac.uk/studying_at_oxford/funding

Oxford Funding Database: www.ox.ac.uk/feesandfunding/ Careers

A wide range of careers is available to PPE graduates, and in recent years employers have recruited very actively. You are strongly recommended to start thinking carefully about your career plans early in your course. The University’s Careers Service (www.careers.ox.ac.uk) is at the disposal of all students, while studying and for four years after they leave Oxford. Their advice is that students should contact them early in the second year to be able to take full advantage of the extensive range of resources available through them. The Careers Service is located at 56 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PA (Tel: 274646). It is open from 09.00 to 17.00 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday and Fridays, and on Thursdays from 10.00 to 19.00 in weeks 1 to 8 of Michaelmas Term, and 10.00 to 17.00 for the remainder of the year.

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: Outline of papers in PPE

The Preliminary Examination in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

Introduction to Philosophy

The purpose of the course is to introduce you to some central philosophical issues and to help you to acquire some concepts and ways of thinking which will be useful if you continue with the study of Philosophy, or even if you do not.

The course has three parts, I General Philosophy, a topic-based introduction to key issues in epistemology and metaphysics, II Moral Philosophy, studied in connection with J. S. Mill: Utilitarianism, and III Logic, studied in connection with a course designed especially for Ox-ford students, based on a manual by Dr Volker Halbach of New College. In the preliminary examination you are required 'to show adequate knowledge' in at least two of these. Your college tuition may cover all three or only two parts; the decision may be your tutor's or left partly to your choice. In any case you are free to attend lectures on all three parts.

Logic (usually taught in college classes) is the study of patterns of valid inference, and in-volves some study of a formal system. Students are required to do exercises and proofs in a formal system, and also to understand the relation between the elements of the formal system and the kinds of inference and argument used in ordinary language. Even if you do not plan to answer questions from the Logic section of the examination paper, you are likely to find it useful in further philosophical study to have some familiarity with a formal logical language and the ability to use it to investigate logical relationships and to understand its use by oth-ers.

In parts I and II (usually taught in tutorials or small groups) students are introduced to cen-tral issues in philosophy. General Philosophy introduces students to key topics in epistemol-ogy and metaphysics, including knowledge, scepticism, perception, induction, primary and secondary qualities, the relation of mind and body, personal identity and free will. Moral Phi-losophy is studied in conjunction with J. S. Mill’s Utilitarianism and involves the study of an influential but controversial moral theory, with discussions of subjects such as happiness and pleasure, the criterion of right action, the role and foundation of moral principles, and justice. Students learn how to read and to evaluate philosophical writings, how to identify the au-thor's arguments and conclusions, and are encouraged to think critically and write lucidly about the issues discussed.


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Introduction to Politics

This course introduces students to the empirical and theoretical study of Politics, to some of the key concepts of the discipline and to major methods of contemporary analysis. Section (a), entitled “Theorizing the Democratic State” introduces you to some of the main concepts which inform theoretical and empirical discussion of democracy, such as, liberty and power, and to the role of ideology in interpreting and linking them. It also identifies some of the core normative issues which arise in democratic politics, such as the desirability of democracy itself and the legitimate scope of state authority in a democracy. It also introduces you to the major theoretical frameworks used to explore the distributions and exercise of power in a democratic state, including Marxist, pluralist and public choice approaches. It also provides an introduction to the work of some of the major political thinkers who have considered these questions, especially Rousseau, Tocqueville, Mill and Marx. Section (b), entitled “Analysis of Democratic Institutions”, focuses on the practice of democracy, and especially its institutions, processes and political outputs. It asks you to think about the nature and functioning of institutions and rules in a liberal democracy; to consider their aims and how well they realise them; and to identify the effects they have on the design and implementation of public policies. This part of the course also encourages you to consider the necessary and sufficient conditions of democratic government and political stability. These questions may be approached both by the close study of four contemporary political systems (the United States of America; the United Kingdom; France; Germany) and also by the comparative study of a range of countries. In the examination, you will be required to answer four questions, of which at least one must be drawn from each of the two sections. Candidates choosing to answer two questions from section (b) must show knowledge of at least two of the following political systems: the United States of America; the United Kingdom; France; Germany. Candidates choosing to answer three questions from section (b) must show knowledge of at least three of the following political systems: the United States of America; the United Kingdom; France; Germany. There will be a range of questions sufficiently broad to afford a reasonable choice to candidates who have studied the topics “country by country”; to those who have studied them comparatively; and those who have done something of each. In addition to these two Sections, the Department provides lectures in research approaches methods in the study of politics in Michaelmas Term. These lectures introduce students to key approaches to work in all aspects of politics. Introductory Economics

This course is compulsory for those taking PPE Prelims, and is shared with students taking Prelims in Economics and Management, and History and Economics. For those who are intending to continue with Economics it provides an introduction to economic analysis, equipping you with the concepts and tools which will be developed further in the later years of the course. The course covers both microeconomics and macroeconomics, and includes the mathematical techniques used in Economics, mainly simple algebra and calculus. For those who will not carry the study of Economics beyond Prelims it is designed to provide a reasonably complete perspective, at an introductory level, of microeconomic and macroeconomic issues and how economic analysis tackles them. While A-level economics and A-level maths will be helpful, many students will not have one or other, or even either,

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of these. The microeconomics part of the course covers the functioning of the market economy: the decisions of households, who have wants and budget constraints; the behaviour of firms, who employ labour and capital and choose their level of output; and the functioning of markets under competition and monopoly. The macroeconomics part of the course looks at the determination of national income and employment, monetary institutions and the money supply, inflation, the balance of payments and exchange rates, and macroeconomic policy. The paper is divided into two sections and you must answer three questions for Part A which requires detailed answers on particular topics and one for Part B where broader essay style questions are set.

The Final Honour School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

For your second and third years you may choose to continue with all three subjects or to pur-sue only two of them. This is a matter you should discuss with your college tutors. There are various requirements to take particular papers, and restrictions on the option papers you can take, and these are listed in detail in Appendix B. What follows here is an outline of what the individual papers involve. You may well find it helpful to look at recent examination papers (available on the departmental websites) to help build up a picture of what is involved in the various papers. If you find the examination questions interesting you are more likely to find working on the paper engaging. 1. Philosophy

Formal requirements: Students must take two core subjects: 103 Ethics, and one of papers 101 History of Philosophy, 102 Knowledge and Reality, 115 Plato: Republic, or 116 Aristotle: Ni-comachean Ethics. In your choice of further subjects you should be guided by the Normal Pre-requisites (see below). You may only take 199 (Philosophy Thesis) if you are taking at least three other Philosophy subjects. You may take only one from 106 and 124. You may not take both of 117 and 118, or both of 110 and 111.

Bi-partite Politics and Economics students may take any one Philosophy subject (except 199, Thesis in Philosophy), but should be guided by the Normal Prerequisites (see below).

The official syllabuses for subjects may be found in the Grey Book (Examination Regulations, the web-link to which is in the appendix to this Handbook), and it is these which form the framework within which exam questions on a paper must be set. But to help your choices, see below brief, informal descriptions of the subjects, followed in some cases by a suggested in-troductory reading. You should always consult your tutor about your choice of options, not-ing also the advice in the next paragraph.

Normal Prerequisites (indicated by NP):

In what follows, you will find that some subjects are named as ‘normal prerequisites’ for the study of others. For instance: 112 The Philosophy of Kant (NP 101) means that those study-ing 112, Kant, would either normally be expected to have studied 101 (History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant), or to have undertaken relevant background reading in the History of


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Philosophy, as suggested by their tutor. In some cases alternatives are given as the prerequi-site, e.g. 107 Philosophy of Religion (NP 101 or 102) means that those studying 107, Philoso-phy of Religion, would normally be expected either to have studied 101 (History of Philoso-phy) or 102 (Knowledge and Reality), or to have undertaken relevant preparatory work in one or other of those areas, as suggested by their tutor. In cases of doubt students are encour-aged to consult their tutors and establish with them, in their individual circumstances, what the best options are.

101. History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant: The purpose of this subject is to enable you to gain a critical understanding of some of the metaphysical and epistemological ideas of some of the most important philosophers of the early modern period, between the 1630s and the 1780s.

This period saw a great flowering of philosophy in Europe. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, often collectively referred to as "the rationalists", placed the new "corpuscularian" science within grand metaphysical systems which certified our God-given capacity to reason our way to the laws of nature (as well as to many other, often astonishing conclusions about the world). Locke wrote in a different, empiricist tradition. He argued that, since our concepts all ultimately derive from experience, our knowledge is necessarily limited. Berkeley and Hume developed this empiricism in the direction of a kind of idealism, according to which the world studied by science is in some sense mind-dependent and mind-constructed. Kant sub-sequently sought to arbitrate between the rationalists and the empiricists, by rooting out some assumptions common to them and trying thereby to salvage and to reconcile some of their apparently irreconcilable insights. Reading the primary texts is of great importance.

The examination paper is divided into three sections and students are required to answer at least one question from Section A (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and at least one from Section B (Locke, Berkeley, Hume). Section C will contain questions on Kant; students taking paper 112 may not attempt questions from this section.

R.S.Woolhouse, The Empiricists

J.Cottingham, The Rationalists (both O.U.P. Opus series).

102. Knowledge and Reality: The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine some central questions about the nature of the world and the extent to which we can have knowl-edge of it.

In considering knowledge you will examine whether it is possible to attain knowledge of what the world is really like. Is our knowledge of the world necessarily limited to what we can observe to be the case? Indeed, are even our observational beliefs about the world around us justified? Can we have knowledge of what will happen based on what has happened? Is our understanding of the world necessarily limited to what we can prove to be the case? Or can we understand claims about the remote past or distant future which we cannot in princi-ple prove to be true? In considering reality you will focus on questions such as the following. Does the world really contain the three-dimensional objects and their properties - such as red buses or black horses - which we appear to encounter in everyday life? Or is it made up rather of the some-

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what different entities studied by science, such as colourless atoms or four-dimensional space-time worms? What is the relation between the common sense picture of the world and that provided by contemporary science? Is it correct to think of the objects and their proper-ties that make up the world as being what they are independently of our preferred ways of dividing up reality? These issues are discussed with reference to a variety of specific ques-tions such as 'What is time?', 'What is the nature of causation?', and 'What are substances?' There is an opportunity in this subject to study such topics as reference, truth and definition, but candidates taking 102 and 108 should avoid repetition of material across examinations. However, if your answers are well-crafted and relevant to the specific question set, this is unlikely to be a problem.

Jonathan Dancy, Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (Oxford), chs. 1-3; Michael J. Loux, Metaphysics (Routledge)

103. Ethics: The purpose of this subject is to enable you to come to grips with some questions which exercise many people, philosophers and non-philosophers alike. How should we de-cide what is best to do, and how best to lead our lives? Are our value judgments on these and other matters objective or do they merely reflect our subjective preferences and viewpoints? Are we in fact free to make these choices, or have our decisions already been determined by antecedent features of our environment and genetic endowment? In considering these issues you will examine a variety of ethical concepts, such as those of justice, rights, equality, virtue, and happiness, which are widely used in moral and political argument. There is also oppor-tunity to discuss some applied ethical issues. Knowledge of major historical thinkers, e.g. Ar-istotle and Hume and Kant, will be encouraged, but not required in the examination.

John Mackie, Ethics (Penguin), chs. 1-2.

104. Philosophy of Mind (NP 101 or 102): The purpose of this subject is to enable you to ex-amine a variety of questions about the nature of persons and their psychological states, in-cluding such general questions as: what is the relation between persons and their minds? Could robots or automata be persons? What is the relation between our minds and our brains? If we understood everything about the brain, would we understand everything about consciousness and rational thought? If not, why not? Several of these issues focus on the rela-tion between our common sense understanding of ourselves and others, and the view of the mind developed in scientific psychology and neuroscience. Are the two accounts compatible? Should one be regarded as better than the other? Should our common sense understanding of the mind be jettisoned in favour of the scientific picture? Or does the latter leave out some-thing essential to a proper understanding of ourselves and others? Other more specific ques-tions concern memory, thought, belief, emotion, perception, and action.

Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge) chs. 1-3.

106. Philosophy of Science and Social Science (NP 101 or 102): The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study topics in the philosophy of science in general, and topics in the phi-losophy of social science in particular.

In the broadest sense the philosophy of science is concerned with the theory of knowledge and with associated questions in metaphysics. What is distinctive about the field is its focus


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on "scientific" knowledge, and the metaphysical questions - concerning space, time, causa-tion, probability, possibility, necessity, realism and idealism - prompted by such a focus. This branch of philosophy is therefore concerned with distinctive traits of science: testability, ob-jectivity, scientific explanation, and the nature of scientific theories. Whether economics, soci-ology, and political science are "really" sciences is a question that lay people as well as phi-losophers have often asked. The technology spawned by the physical sciences is more im-pressive than that based on the social sciences: bridges do not collapse and aeroplanes do not fall from the sky, but no government can reliably control crime, divorce, or unemployment, or make its citizens happy at will. Human behaviour often seems less predictable, and less explicable than that of inanimate nature and non-human animals, even though most of us believe that we know what we are doing and why. So philosophers of social science have asked whether human action is to be explained causally or non-causally, whether predictions are self-refuting, whether we can only explain behaviour that is in some sense rational - and if so, what that sense is. Other central issues include social relativism, the role of ideology, value-neutrality, and the relationship between the particular social sciences, in particular whether economics provides a model for other social science. Finally, some critics have asked whether a technological view of 'social control' does not threaten democratic politics as usu-ally understood.

Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge); Alexander Rosenberg, Philosophy of Social Science (Westview).

107. Philosophy of Religion (NP 101 or 102): The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine claims about the existence of God and God's relationship to the world. What, if any-thing, is meant by them? Could they be true? What justification, if any, can or needs to be provided for them? The paper is concerned primarily with the claims of Western religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), and with the central claim of those religions, that there is a God. God is said to be omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation and so on. But what does it mean to say that God has these properties, and are they consistent with each other? Could God change the past, or choose to do evil? Does it make sense to say that God is outside time? You will have the opportunity to study argu-ments for the existence of God - for example, the teleological argument from the fact that the Universe is governed by scientific laws, and the argument from people's religious experi-ences. Other issues are whether the fact of pain and suffering counts strongly, or even conclu-sively, against the existence of God, whether there could be evidence for miracles, whether it could be shown that prayer "works", whether there could be life after death, and what phi-losophical problems are raised by the existence of different religions. There may also be an optional question in the exam paper about some specifically Christian doctrine - does it make sense to say that the life and death of Jesus atoned for the sins of the world, and could one know this? There is abundant scope for deploying all the knowledge and techniques which you have acquired in other areas of philosophy. Among the major philosophers whose con-tributions to the philosophy of religion you will need to study are Aquinas, Hume and Kant.

M. Peterson and other authors, Reason and Religious Belief, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press)

108. The Philosophy of Logic and Language (NP Prelims/Mods Logic): The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine some fundamental questions relating to reasoning and

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language. The philosophy of logic is not itself a symbolic or mathematical subject, but exam-ines concepts of interest to the logician. If you want to know the answer to the question 'What is truth?’ this is a subject for you. Central also are questions about the status of basic logical laws and the nature of logical necessity. What, if anything, makes it true that nothing can be at the same time both green and not green all over? Is that necessity the result of our conven-tions or stipulations, or the reflection of how things have to be independently of us? Philoso-phy of language is closely related. It covers the very general question how language can de-scribe reality at all: what makes our sentences meaningful and, on occasion, true? How do parts of our language refer to objects in the world? What is involved in understanding speech (or the written word)? You may also investigate more specific issues concerning the correct analysis of particular linguistic expressions such as names, descriptions, pronouns, or ad-verbs, and aspects of linguistics and grammatical theory. Candidates taking 102 as well as 108 should avoid repetition of material across examinations. However, if your answers are well-crafted and relevant to the specific question set, this is unlikely to be a problem.

Mark Sainsbury, 'Philosophical Logic', in Philosophy, a Guide through the Subject, edited by A. C. Grayling (Oxford).

109. Aesthetics (NP 101 or 102 or 103 or 104 or 115): The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study a number of questions about the nature and value of beauty and of the arts. For example, do we enjoy sights and sounds because they are beautiful, or are they beautiful be-cause we enjoy them? Does the enjoyment of beauty involve a particular sort of experience, and if so, how should we define it and what psychological capacities does it presuppose? Is a work of art a physical object, an abstract object, or what? Does the value of a work of art de-pend only upon its long- or short-term effects on our minds or characters? If not, what sorts of reasons can we give for admiring a work of art? Do reasons for admiring paintings, pieces of music and poems have enough in common with one another, and little enough in common with reasons for admiring other kinds of things, to support the idea that there is a distinctive sort of value which good art of every sort, and only art, possesses? As well as general ques-tions such as these ones, the subject also addresses questions raised by particular art forms. For example, what is the difference between a picture and a description in words? Can fiction embody truths about its subject-matter? How does music express emotions? All of these questions, and others, are addressed directly, and also by examining classic texts, including Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Hume's essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ and Kant's Cri-tique of Aesthetic Judgement.

Malcolm Budd, Values of Art (Penguin)

110. Medieval Philosophy: Aquinas: The purpose of this subject is to introduce you to many of Aquinas’s central ideas and arguments on a wide variety of theological and philosophical topics. These are studied in translation rather than in the Latin original, though a glance at Aquinas's remarkably readable Latin can often be useful. Candidates are encouraged to care-fully read and analyse Aquinas’s texts and to focus on the philosophical questions they raise. The subject will be studied in one of two sets of texts (The fathers of the English Dominican Province edition, 1911, rev. 1920):

Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, 2-11, 75-89, which will cover the following topics: arguments for the existence of God; God’s essence and existence; God and goodness; God and time; the


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soul in relation to the body; individual intellects; perception and knowledge; free will; the soul and knowledge.

Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia IIae 1-10, 90-97, which will cover the following topics: natural and supernatural happiness; voluntary action; the will; natural and universal law; human law.

Anthony Kenny, Aquinas; F.C. Copleston, Aquinas; B. Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (O.U.P.)

This paper will include an optional question containing passages for comment. This subject may not be combined with subject 111.

Paper 116, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics is a good background for this option.

111. Medieval Philosophy: Duns Scotus and Ockham (NP 101 or 108): Duns Scotus and Ockham are, together with Aquinas, the most significant and influential thinkers of the Mid-dle Ages. The purpose of this subject is to make you familiar with some fundamental aspects of their theological and philosophical thought. As to Scotus, these include the proof of the existence and of the unicity of God (the most sophisticated one in the Middle Ages) and the issues about causality that it raises, the theory of the existence of concepts common to God and creatures (the univocity theory of religious language), the discussion about the immateri-ality and the immortality of the human soul, and the reply to scepticism. As to Ockham, they include nominalism about universals and the refutation of realism (including the realism of Duns Scotus), some issues in logic and especially the theory of “supposition” and its applica-tion in the debate about universals, the theory of intellectual knowledge of singulars and the question of whether we can have evidence about contingent properties of singulars, the na-ture of efficient causality and the problem of whether we can prove the existence of a first ef-ficient cause. These are studied in translation rather than in the Latin original, though a glance at the Latin can often be useful. Candidates are encouraged to carefully read and ana-lyse Scotus’s and Ockham’s texts and to focus on the philosophical questions they raise.

Texts: Scotus: Philosophical Writings, tr. Wolter (Hackett), chapters II-IV, pp. 13-95 (man’s natural knowledge of God; the existence of God; the unicity of God); Five texts on the Mediae-val Problem of Universals, tr. Spade (Hackett), pp. 57-113 (universals, individuation).

Ockham: Philosophical Writings, tr. Boehner (Hackett), pp. 18-27 (intuitive and abstractive cognition); pp. 97-126 (the possibility of natural theology, the existence of God); Five texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals, tr. Spade (Hackett), pp. 114-231 (universals).

R. Cross, Duns Scotus; M. McCord Adams, William Ockham, vol. 1.

This subject may not be combined with subject 110

112. The Philosophy of Kant (NP 101): The purpose of this paper is to enable you to make a critical study of some of the ideas of one of the greatest of all philosophers.

Immanuel Kant lived from 1724 to 1804. He published the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, and the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals in 1785. The 'Critique' is his greatest work and, without question, the most influential work of modern philosophy. It is a difficult but enor-mously rewarding work. This is largely because Kant, perhaps uniquely, combines in the

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highest measure the cautious qualities of care, rigour and tenacity with the bolder quality of philosophical imagination. Its concern is to give an account of human knowledge that will steer a path between the dogmatism of traditional metaphysics and the scepticism that, Kant believes, is the inevitable result of the empiricist criticism of metaphysics. Kant's approach, he claims in a famous metaphor, amounts to a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. Instead of looking at human knowledge by starting from what is known, we should start from our-selves as knowing subjects and ask how the world must be for us to have the kind of knowl-edge and experience that we have. Kant thinks that his Copernican revolution also enables him to reconcile traditional Christian morality and modern science, in the face of their appar-ently irreconcilable demands (in the one case, that we should be free agents, and in the other case, that the world should be governed by inexorable mechanical laws). In the ‘Ground-work’ Kant develops his very distinctive and highly influential moral philosophy. He argues that morality is grounded in reason. What we ought to do is what we would do if we acted in a way that was purely rational. To act in a way that is purely rational is to act in accordance with the famous ‘categorical imperative’, which Kant expresses as follows: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’.

Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Macmillan);

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (Hutchinson).

Roger Scruton, Kant.

113. Post-Kantian Philosophy (NP 101 or 102 or 103 or 112): Many of the questions raised by German and French philosophers of the 19th and early 20th centuries were thought to arise directly out of Kant's metaphysics, epistemology and ethics: Hence the title of this subject, the purpose of which is to enable you to explore some of the developments of (and departures from) Kantian themes in the work of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Students typically focus their study on only two chosen authors.

Hegel and Schopenhauer delineate global, metaphysical systems out of which each develops his own distinctive vision of ethical and (especially in the case of Hegel) political life. Nietzsche's writings less obviously constitute a ‘system’, but they too develop certain ethical and existential implications of our epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Husserl will interest those pupils attracted to problems in ontology and epistemology such as feature in the Cartesian tradition; his work also serves to introduce one to phenomenology, the phi-losophical method later developed and refined by Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.

In Heidegger and Sartre, that method is brought to bear on such fundamental aspects of hu-man existence as authenticity, social understanding, bad faith, art and freedom. Merleau-Ponty (who trained as a psychologist) presents a novel and important account of the genesis of perception, cognition and feeling, and relates these to themes in aesthetics and political philosophy. While this is very much a text-based paper, many of the questions addressed are directly relevant to contemporary treatments of problems in epistemology and metaphysics, in aesthetics, political theory and the philosophy of mind.

Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (O.U.P.).


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114. Theory of Politics (NP 103): In order to understand the world of politics, we also need to know which views of politics and society people have when they make political decisions, and why we recommend certain courses of action rather than others. This purpose of this subject is to enable you to look at the main ideas we use when we think about politics: why do we have competing views of social justice and what makes a particular view persuasive, possibly even right? What happens when a concept such as freedom has different meanings, so that those who argue that we must maximise freedom of choice are confronted with those who claim that some choices will actually restrict your freedom? Is power desirable or harm-ful? Would feminists or nationalists give a different answer to that question? Political theory is concerned with developing good responses to problems such as: when should we obey, and when should we disobey, the state? But it is also concerned with mapping the ways in which we approach questions such as: how does one argue in favour of human rights? In ad-dition, you will explore the main ideologies, such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism, in order to understand their main arguments and why each of them will direct us to different political solutions and arrangements.

Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (O.U.P.)

115. Plato, Republic: Plato’s influence on the history of philosophy is enormous. The purpose of this subject is to enable you to make a critical study of the Republic, which is perhaps his most important and most influential work. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and others including the outspoken immoralist Thrasymachus, it is primarily concerned with questions of the nature of justice and of what is the best kind of life to lead. These questions prompt discussions of the ideal city - which Karl Popper criticised as totalitarian -, of education and art, of the nature of knowledge, the Theory of Forms and the immortality of the soul. In studying it you will encounter a work of philosophy of unusual literary merit, one in which philosophy is presented through debates, through analogies and images, including the fa-mous simile of the Cave, as well as rigorous argument, and you will encounter some of Plato’s important contributions to ethics, political theory, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and aesthetics. You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a ques-tion requiring comments on chosen passages (see appendix G), as well as a choice of essay questions.

Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic, Introduction and ch. 1.

Set translation: Plato: Republic, trans. Grube, revised Reeve (Hackett).

116. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: The purpose of this subject is to give you the opportunity to make a critical study of one of the most important works in the history of philosophy. Like Plato in the Republic, Aristotle is concerned with the question, what is the best possible sort of life? Whereas this leads Plato to pose grand questions in metaphysics and political theory, it leads Aristotle to offer close analyses of the structure of human action, responsibility, the vir-tues, the nature of moral knowledge, weakness of will, pleasure, friendship, and other related issues. Much of what Aristotle has to say on these is ground-breaking, highly perceptive, and still of importance in contemporary debate in ethics and moral psychology.

You are expected to study the work in detail; the examination contains a question requiring comments on chosen passages (see appendix G), as well as a choice of essay questions.

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J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher, ch. 10.

Set translation: Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics translated and with notes by T.H. Irwin (Hack-ett) second edition.

117. Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein (NP Prelims/Mods Logic): The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study some classic texts from which emerged modern logic and philoso-phy of language. Frege invented and explained the logic of multiple generality (quantifica-tion theory) and applied this apparatus to the analysis of arithmetic. Russell continued this programme, adding some refinements (the theory of types, the theory of descriptions), and he applied logic to many traditional problems in epistemology. Wittgenstein's Tractatus out-lined an ambitious project for giving a logical account of truths of logic (as tautologies).

The texts are dense and sophisticated, but they are elegant and full of challenging ideas. Abil-ity to understand logical symbolism is important, and previous work in philosophical logic would be advantageous.

Anthony Kenny, Frege (Penguin) and Wittgenstein (Penguin); J. O. Urmson, Philosophical Analysis.

118. The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein (NP 101 or 102 or 108 or 117): The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study some of the most influential ideas of the 20th century. The main texts are Wittgenstein’s posthumously-published Philosophical Investigations and The Blue and Brown Books. These writings are famous not just for their content but also for their distinctive style and conception of philosophy. There is much critical discussion about the relation between those aspects of Wittgenstein's work.

Wittgenstein covers a great range of issues, principally in philosophy of language and phi-losophy of mind. In philosophy of language, one key topic is the nature of rules and rule-following. What is involved in grasping a rule; and how can I tell, in a new case, what I have to do to apply the rule correctly? Indeed, what makes it the case that a particular move at this stage is the correct way of applying the rule; is there any standard of correctness other than the agreement of our fellows? Other topics include: whether language is systematic; the rela-tion between linguistic meaning and non-linguistic activities; whether concepts can be illu-minatingly analysed. In the philosophy of mind, Wittgenstein is especially famous for the so-called ‘private language argument’, which tries to show that words for sensations cannot get their meanings by being attached to purely internal, introspective, ‘private objects’. Other, equally important, topics include the nature of the self, of introspection and of visual experi-ence, and the intentionality (the representative quality) of mental states. Most generally, can we (as Wittgenstein thought) avoid Cartesianism without lapsing into behaviourism?

The texts: try Philosophical Investigations paras 1-80; Blue Book pp. 1-17; Saul Kripke: Wittgen-stein on Rules and Private Language (Blackwell); Marie McGinn: Wittgenstein and the Philosophi-cal Investigations (Routledge, 1997, in the Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks series)

119. Formal Logic (NP Prelims/Mods Logic): This subject is precisely what its name suggests, an extension of the symbolic logic covered in the Prelims/Mods logic course. Only in highly exceptional circumstances would it be appropriate to do this subject without first having done Prelims/Mods logic, indeed without first having done it very well, and for feedback


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about this, it would be advisable to consult your Prelims/Mods logic tutor. Formal Logic is an extremely demanding and rigorous subject, even for those who have Mathematics A- Level. If you lose your way in it, there is liable to be no way of avoiding disaster. But granted these caveats, the subject is a delight to those who enjoy formal work and who are good at it. Its purpose is to introduce you to some of the deepest and most beautiful results in logic, many of which have fascinating implications for other areas of philosophy. There are three sections. The first, Propositional and Predicate Logic, is the most closely related to the material cov-ered in the Prelims/Mods course. The other two sections are: Set Theory, which includes the rudimentary arithmetic of infinite numbers; and Metamathematics, which includes some computability theory and various results concerning the limitations of formalization, such as Gödel's theorem. Candidates will be permitted to select questions from any of the three sec-tions, and will be required to answer three questions in all.

George S. Boolos and Richard C. Jeffrey, Computability and Logic (Cambridge, 3rd edn.)

120. Intermediate Philosophy of Physics: The purpose of this subject is to enable you to come to grips with conceptual problems in special relativity and quantum mechanics. Only those with a substantial knowledge of physics should offer this subject, which is normally available only to candidates reading Physics and Philosophy.

122. Philosophy of Mathematics (NP 101 or 102 or 108 or 117 or 119 or 120): What is the rela-tion of mathematical knowledge to other kinds of knowledge? Is it of a special kind, concern-ing objects of a special kind? If so, what is the nature of those objects and how do we come to know anything about them? If not, how do we explain the seeming difference between prov-ing a theorem in mathematics and establishing something about the physical world? The purpose of this subject is to enable you to examine questions such as these. Understanding the nature of mathematics has been important to many philosophers, including Plato, Aris-totle, and Kant, as a test or as an exemplar of their overall position, and has also played a role in the development of mathematics at certain points. While no specific knowledge of mathe-matics is required for study of this subject, it will be helpful to have studied mathematics at A-level, or similar, and to have done Logic in Prelims/ Mods.

Stephen F. Barker, Philosophy of Mathematics (Prentice-Hall).

124. Philosophy of Science (NP 101 or 102): Philosophy of science is applied epistemology and applied metaphysics. It is theory of scientific knowledge and scientific method, including elements in philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics. It deals with metaphysical questions – about space, time, causation, ontology, necessity, truth – as they arise across the board in the special sciences, not just in physics. Questions of method include questions of the theory-observation distinction, testability, induction, theory confir-mation, and scientific explanation. They also include theory-change, whether inter-theoretic reduction, unification, or revolutionary change. They are at once questions about scientific rationality, and connect in turn with decision theory and the foundations of probability. They connect also with metaphysics, particularly realism: theory-change, scepticism, fictionalism, naturalism, the under-determination of theory by data, functionalism, structuralism, are all critiques of realism.

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The subject also includes the study of major historical schools in philosophy of science. The most important of these is logical positivism (later logical empiricism), that dominated the second and third quarters of the last century. In fact, some of the most important current schools in philosophy of science are broadly continuous with it, notably constructive empiri-cism and structural realism. The syllabus for this subject contains that for Part A of 105 and 106. Don Gillies, Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century (Blackwells) James Ladyman, Understanding Philosophy of Science (Routledge)

125. Philosophy of Cognitive Science (NP 102 or 104): This paper covers some of key ques-tions about the nature of the mind dealt with by a variety of cognitive scientific disciplines: experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics and computational modelling of the mind. Studying this paper will provide insight into the ways that contemporary scientific advances have improved our understanding of aspects of the mind that have long been the focus of philosophical reflection. It will also introduce you to a range of theoretical issues generated by current research in the behavioural and brain sciences.

The core topics are:

• Levels of description and explanation (e.g. personal vs. subpersonal, functional vs. mechanistic, mind vs. brain)

• Cognitive architecture, modularity, homuncular functionalism

• Conceptual foundations of information processing: rules and algorithms, tacit knowl-edge (e.g. of grammar), competence vs. performance

• Nature and format of representations: representationalism vs. behaviourism, the com-putational theory of mind and language of thought, connectionist alternatives

• The scientific study of consciousness, including the role of subjects’ reports, non-verbal and direct measures; neural and computational correlates of consciousness; and the problem of distinguishing phenomenal and access consciousness empirically

The lectures will also cover philosophical issues raised by some areas of cutting-edge re-search, such as: agency and its phenomenology; attention and neglect; cognitive neuropsy-chology; concepts; delusions; dual-process theories; dynamical systems, embodied and em-bedded cognition; evolutionary psychology and massive modularity; forward models and predictive coding; imagery; implicit processing (e.g. blindsight, prosopagnosia); innateness (e.g. concept nativism); language processing and knowledge of language; perception and ac-tion (e.g. dorsal vs. ventral visual systems); spatial representation; theory of mind / min-dreading; unity of consciousness. Lectures may also cover some historical background (e.g. the cognitive revolution).

For those studying psychology, neuroscience, linguistics or computation, the paper is a cru-cial bridge to philosophy. But you do not need to be studying a scientific subject to take this paper, as long as you enjoy reading about scientific discoveries about the mind and brain.


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The paper will be of great interest to philosophers without a scientific background who want to understand the benefits and limitations of bringing scientific data to bear on deep issues in the philosophy of mind.

Recommended pathways:

Although there are no absolute prerequisites, it would be beneficial to study FHS 102 Knowl-edge and Reality and/or FHS 104 Philosophy of Mind in conjunction with this paper. For those doing so it would be useful to have begun work on one or both of those papers first.

Background reading

Martin Davies, ‘An approach to philosophy of cognitive science’, in F. Jackson & M. Smith (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford: O.U.P., 2005). An ex-panded version is available online at the Philosophy Faculty Weblearn site, in the Under-graduate Section, under ‘Reading Lists’.

Clark, A. (2001), Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Oxford, OUP).

126. The Philosophy and Economics of the Environment: (Can also be taken as an Economics subject, see Economics entry 321 below)

150. Jurisprudence: This paper, from the Final Honour School of Jurisprudence, may be taken by PPE FHS students as a subject in Philosophy.

The subject can be taken either as one of the PPE candidate’s (three to five) Philosophy pa-pers, or as the one Philosophy subject which Politics/Economics students can elect to take. Candidates offering the Jurisprudence subject are prohibited from combining it with Theory of Politics (i.e., with either subject 114 or 203). Tutorial provision will be subject to the avail-ability of Law tutors and will be organised on the normal college basis; tutorials will be given at the same time as they are normally given to Law students (in either Hilary or Trinity terms); and PPE students will normally be included in tutorial groups of 2 or 3 with Law stu-dents.

198. Special subjects: As specified in the regulations for Philosophy in All Honour Schools including Philosophy in the Grey Book.

199. Thesis: As specified in the regulations for Philosophy in All Honour Schools including Philosophy in the Grey Book. 2. Politics

These notes give an introduction to the various Politics subjects. Further details, including course outlines, rubrics, and reading lists are available on the Politics website (www.politics.ox.ac.uk), and from the Courses Manager, Department of Politics and Interna-tional Relations, Manor Road Building, Oxford.

You should choose your core subjects with care. The choice of two from five core subjects is deliberately permissive. In the first year, you acquire the basic tools of political analysis, but

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the discipline of Politics consists of several distinct schools of analysis, none of which is self-evidently more fundamental than the others. The core papers are each designed to enhance your ability to conceptualise, to compare, and to develop analytical skills. In a joint honours degree, to require you to take papers covering all approaches would leave no space for choice and specialisation. Your choice of core subjects will however have a bearing on your subse-quent work in Politics, and you are strongly advised to consult your college tutor and option-paper tutors before selecting any optional subject. For a number of options, it is helpful, though not essential, already to have taken a related core subject. Thus the study of political systems in particular areas or countries is based on issues that are raised in Comparative Government and Political Sociology; several subjects in the area of political theory are most readily tackled with the background provided by Theory of Politics; the two optional subjects in International Relations follow most naturally from the core paper, as to a lesser degree, do those in Sociology from the core paper in Political Sociology. The Department sets no ‘normal prerequisites’ (papers you should normally have studied before studying others) similar to those in Philosophy. It prefers to leave final decisions on the appropriateness of particular choices to the individual, in conjunction with college tutors, and to leave open the possibility, where you might otherwise lack sufficient background, that you attend additional lectures or follow a course of directed vacation reading covering important material from the relevant core subject.

A. Core subjects:

201. Comparative Government: This course is a comparative study of the main political insti-tutions through which contemporary societies are governed. These include constitutional frameworks, executives, legislatures, bureaucracies, constitutional courts, systems of de-volved power, electoral systems, political parties, and party systems. The course also consid-ers some of the main political processes that affect governance and regime stability, such as styles of leadership, processes of regime transition and democratisation, and patterns of pol-icy-making. Through reference to the distinct methodological approach used by different scholars in studying these phenomena - socio-cultural and behavioural approaches, the vari-ous 'institutional' schools, and rational-choice analysis - students acquire an understanding of the utility and limits of these individual schools of analysis. The course builds on the country-based institutional knowledge introduced in the first-year course (Introduction to Politics). In the first year, the focus is on single-country analysis of broad themes in the recent historical development of specific countries. In Comparative Government, the approach is explicitly comparative. It provides students with an understanding of key concepts and tools of empiri-cal political analysis, and in this way also prepares them for the more specialised study of specific regions or single countries that follow as options later in the PPE syllabus. While the main instruction is via the usual mixture of lectures and tutorials, students should note that the range of knowledge covered makes the lectures even more vital than they might be for some courses. The lecture course has been increased to twenty lectures, and students are therefore expected to treat it as a commitment running right through the academic year. The course also involves two compulsory Department run classes to assist students in dealing with some of the broader comparative and theoretical themes.

202. British Politics and Government Since 1900: This course consists of the close study of political developments in Britain since 1900 and the major academic debates surrounding


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them. It allows students to study a single political system in depth, over a period long enough both to make visible long-run processes of social, economic and political change, and to permit comparisons and contrasts to be drawn between the situations of political actors at different times. It is also a period with an extraordinarily rich and rewarding academic litera-ture, which encourages students to explore problems of evidence and interpretation, and to consider a range of explanations, based on different scholarly traditions, for the same events. These include techniques and methods as diverse as archivally-based historical analysis, po-litical biography and political science modelling. Among the topics covered are the decline of the Liberal Party and the rise of the Labour Party; the political effects of the two world wars and the widening franchise; the development of the institutions and procedures of modern government; the changing party system under mass democracy; the challenges and failures of political extremism; the domestic impact of foreign policies such as appeasement, decolo-nisation and European integration; the challenges posed to modern governments by relative economic decline, and efforts to transform the system such as tariff reform, social democracy and Thatcherism.

203. Theory of Politics: The course is designed to acquaint students with the political concepts central to the theoretical, normative and interpretative analysis of politics. The study of concepts such as liberty, justice, authority or power provides the foundation for understanding the nature of political thought. These concepts underpin the study of politics in general and are therefore crucial to enhancing the awareness of the relation between political thought and action. Students are also directed towards discursive ideologies displaying complex conceptual arrangements such as liberalism or socialism. The course is devised so as to develop a manifold range of skills necessary for constructing critical arguments in political theory, for working with problems of consistency and justification, for analysing the complexities of the usage of political language, for understanding the principal forms through which political thought presents itself, both as theory and as ideology, and for appreciating the main current and recent debates that command attention in the field. To those ends philosophical, ideological and historical analyses are all appropriate, and the merits of each type may be assessed and contrasted. Students are therefore encouraged to explore different ways of approaching these issues, though they are also enabled, if they so wish, to choose a specific strategy from among these approaches. Students are also invited, in consultation with their tutors, to balance a broad appreciation of the field with a development of their own interests within the wide choice of available concepts and ideologies. The literature to which they are directed is therefore diverse, encompassing classical texts, seminal philosophers and theorists, significant journal articles, and typical examples of ideological debate. Both substantive arguments and methodological issues are consequently aired. By extending the initial understanding of political thought gained by students in the first year introduction to politics, or by building on other related introductory lectures and subjects, the course provides the basis for specialization in political theory, as well as tools that other specializations may draw upon. It will enable students to reflect on the principles underlying politics, to make reasoned assessments of political discourse, and to develop their own arguments at a requisite degree of sophistication.

214. International Relations: The aim of this core subject is to introduce PPE students to the academic study of International Relations and to develop a broad knowledge and understanding of the major issues in international relations, concentrating on the period since

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1990. The subject seeks to strike a balance between empirical knowledge and theoretical understanding. Those taking the subject will have the opportunity to study some of the major questions in contemporary international relations (e.g. the role of the United Nations and of alliances such as NATO; the impact on international relations of globalization and of democratization; the development of European integration; the international impact of civil wars and humanitarian disasters; and problems that arise from national self-determination and attempts to promote human rights). But they will also develop a broad knowledge of the most important analytical and theoretical tools that are needed to make sense of these questions. This knowledge of the principal theories and concepts is intended to tie in closely with work for the Further Subjects in International Relations (International Relations in the Era of the Cold War [subject 213] and International Relations in the Era of the Two World Wars [subject 212].

220. Political Sociology: The course builds on some of the concepts, theories and knowledge introduced in the Politics Prelims syllabus - notably the study of electorates, parties and interest groups, and the study of the interaction of political ideas such as democracy with political processes. In this Final Honour School subject students will study in more detail the major theoretical approaches to social class, race and ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, states, interest groups including unions, parties, movements and single issue campaigns, and the interrelationships between culture, economy, social structure, and political processes and institutions. The theoretical approaches will be critically assessed in the light of empirical evidence from a range of countries, and also put in the context of the philosophically rigorous analysis of power and change. To aid students in attaining a comprehensive grasp of the field of study, they will have the opportunity to look at ‘approaches’ such as structuralism, rational choice theory, political culture theory, and the historical and comparative perspective as such, as well as studying the application of these to the specific topics mentioned. Thus by the end of the course students should have an understanding of recent sociological explanations of political processes and events, a grasp of the competing approaches in the field, an understanding of the main methods of data collection and analysis, and an appreciation of the role of models and theories in sociological knowledge.

B. Further subjects:

NB. The Politics WebLearn site contains a guide to Politics options, gives details of when and how each is taught. (https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/socsci/politics/ teaching/redesign_und) It is updated by the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Hilary Term.

204. Modern British Government and Politics: The course aims to provide a specialist knowledge of contemporary British government and politics. It provides candidates with both an awareness of the most significant debates in the academic literature and of different methodological approaches to the subject and a thorough understanding of the issues and controversies surrounding the operation of British government. This involves the study of the UK electoral system, political parties and voting behaviour; of the organisation and political activities of the executive, legislature, judiciary and civil service; of the powers of Parliament and local government; of the devolution of power to regions of the UK; and of the political influence of the media and pressure groups. The interaction of these political institutions


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with the European Union is also studied. Current and recent proposals for reforming the constitution are a particular focus of attention. The course includes the examination of a wide range of primary documents, including parliamentary papers and government reports. It aims to provide candidates with the ability to retrieve and analyse official information and other primary documents and to place them in historical and political context. On completion of the course candidates will be familiar with the detailed workings of British governmental institutions, with decision-making processes in government and the evolution of strategies for managing the public sector, and with the political dynamics of the system.

205. Government and Politics of the United States: This subject seeks to provide students with a basic understanding of American exceptionalism, of the United States’ political institutions, and of selected areas of public policy, and a good knowledge and understanding of the scholarly literature in the field. It covers the constitution; federalism and separation of powers; the presidency; congress; the federal courts; the federal bureaucracy; parties and the party system; electoral politics; political culture; mass media; interest groups; state and local politics; processes of policy formation and implementation, especially as related to urban policy, economic policy, race, and civil rights. It enables students to use data drawn from the large resources available (inter alia) in the Harmsworth Library (in the Rothermere American Institute) and the Law Library to form their own interpretations of governmental processes, to refine the skill of thinking rigorously and critically for themselves, and thus to contribute more fully to tutorials and classes held in other subjects in Politics.

206. Politics in Europe: This paper is a comparative study of the national party and institutional systems of Europe, and of comparative issues in European politics, including democratisation, institutional relations, political economy and party politics. Candidates are expected to show a broad knowledge of European politics, and may where appropriate include reference to the UK in answers, but should not answer any questions mainly or exclusively with reference to the UK.

207. Politics in Russia and the Former Soviet Union: Candidates will be required to show knowledge of the transformation of the Soviet system from 1985, and an understanding of the politics of countries of the former Soviet Union with respect to their formation, post-Soviet transitions, regime types, institutional arrangements, party systems, electoral processes, ethnic and clan composition, political economy, corruption, and the influence of external factors.

208. Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa: This course will enable students to acquire a knowledge and understanding of the recent history and contemporary politics of particular African countries; to analyse their political processes and institutions, to situate them in their social and economic context; and to examine the political conditions and consequences of economic policies. Students will be expected to study the politics of at least three African countries in some detail. These should include one or both of South Africa and Nigeria. They will also be expected to read material on other countries relevant to the study of specific themes and topics dealt with in tutorials and in a weekly class. These include the politics of democratization, structural adjustment, labour and unions, agricultural policy, gender, class and ethnicity. The course will allow students to extend their understanding of comparative politics, and particularly of issues common to Africa and other regions they may be studying,

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of political theory, of political sociology and of international relations by raising relevant questions in African circumstances. Students will acquire a more informed and critical understanding of African countries, which often appear to be far-away places of which we know little. Students may use this course as a foundation for further work in and about Africa in journalism, business, government, NGOs and academic research. It will contribute to their wider education as informed citizens.

209. Politics in Latin America: The aim of this subject is to study the major issues in the politics of Latin America. The subject will focus on the politics of a number of major countries, but in a way that leads to comparisons between them. The countries will include Mexico. Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Venezuela - chosen because they all represent interesting problems to the student, and because they have accessible literature in English. The broad theme that links these countries together is the study of the conditions that facilitate or hinder the consolidation of political stability. This subject will examine institutional approaches to the study of Latin American politics, and will draw upon the political sociology and the political economy of the countries concerned, as well as upon the international context. Attention will be paid to the politics of the military; to the politics of economic stabilisation; to the nature of the governing elites; and to questions of political participation of the major social groups.

210. Politics in South Asia: This course introduces students to the nature of political change in the major South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) in the period after independence from colonial rule. The subject is intended to educate students in the most significant themes and issues in contemporary South Asian politics, through the study of illustrative cases taken from the various countries of the region. The subject also seeks to enable students to develop a critical engagement with the analytical literature on South Asia, in particular, and on the ‘Third World’ or ‘developing countries’, more generally. While each of the major South Asian countries is studied separately, students are, at the same time, encouraged to analyse political developments comparatively. The course examines the nature of the post-colonial state and the evolution of political institutions and party politics, with a focus on the functioning of democracy and the tendencies towards authoritarianism or martial rule. The interface of democratic politics with the political economy of the ‘developmental’ state is also addressed. The course also explores the development of ‘movement’ politics or social movements as an important element of the democratic process. The course gives attention to social organisation, culture and identities as they bear on politics. In particular, the politics of gender, class, caste, religion and ethnicity are emphasised. The course engages with the evolution of political ideologies, especially those of nationalism and ‘development’, which have played significant roles in the political history of post-colonial states. The course is expected to enable second and third year students to develop the ability to construct rigorous arguments on South Asian politics, based on empirical knowledge and informed by a critical awareness of the scholarly literature on the subject. This course will prepare students to undertake post graduate studies on South Asia and the ‘Third World’, and for careers in journalism, diplomacy, national and international ‘development’ organisations, NGOs and ‘Think Tank’ or consultancy organisations, which specialise on the ‘Third World’ and the field of ‘development’.


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211. Politics in the Middle East: The course aims to give the student a wide-ranging and sophisticated introduction to the domestic political dynamics of the contemporary Middle East and its wider social relations. The course is organised thematically, with weekly topics including the nature of the state, political economy, the military, democratisation, succession and gender. The thematic emphasis gives the student maximum flexibility to concentrate on whichever countries most interest him/her. The geographical scope of the course is inclusive, covering North Africa, Turkey and Iran, as well as the core countries of region. It is expected that the student will complete the course knowing six or seven countries in some depth. The course is designed to relate to the discipline of politics in general, eschewing the notion that the Middle East is somehow unique and mysterious; students are encouraged to bring their knowledge of political concepts to bear in the course. Inter-regional comparisons are also encouraged, with students who have studied other parts of the developing world especially welcome. The course has been designed both for the generalist, who may go on to work in business, government, journalism or the professions, and for the budding specialist who may then proceed to a Masters in Middle Eastern studies. Please note that demand sometimes outstrips teaching supply on this paper.

212. International Relations in the Era of the Two World Wars: This course is the study of central issues in the international history of a period which had a profound influence on the subject of international relations. Students are introduced through the study of historical topics to the major debates and different theoretical approaches. These include Realist, Liberal, and Marxist views of the international system, levels of analysis, decision making processes and the role of individual leaders, the concepts of the balance of power, collective security, and détente and the concert of powers, isolationism and appeasement. The course also considers the impact of total war on the international system, causes of regional instability (nationalism, imperialism), the inter-action of different regional theatres in an evolving global international system, the role of financial and economic factors, revolutionary ideologies (Communism and Fascism), and the ‘learning process’ as it affected policy-making in and immediately after the Second World War. The course enables students to consider the major theories and concepts of international relations critically in relation to the historical evidence, on which several of the theories were based, and to draw on a rich academic literature. It develops the skill of analysing empirical material in a way which is both informed by theory and sensitive to the complexity of the evidence. The course is closely related to the core subject International Relations and to the option International Relations in the Era of the Cold War.

213. International Relations in the Era of the Cold War: The course covers the international relations of a period (1945-91) crucial for the evolution of today’s world. These have always generated much writing of high quality, which is now further enlivened by the progressive release and assimilation of archive material; and the period now appears sufficiently self-contained for scholars to be able to step back and gain perspective by viewing it as a whole. The course links strongly with the Politics ‘core’ ‘International Relations’ course, providing factual context and tests for many of that subject’s theoretical approaches to international relations, and also valuable background for its treatment of the post-1990 ‘contemporary’ scene. The ‘Cold War’ subject also links back to the Further Subject ‘International Relations in the Era of Two World Wars’, especially as many post-war statesmen were avowedly seeking

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to avoid the mistakes of that earlier period, and it provides case studies useful for the ‘Government and Politics of the United States’ Further Subject.

215. Political Thought: Plato to Rousseau: The objective of this subject is to introduce students to some of the canonical texts in political thought and to help them to develop an appreciation of their significance for their own time and for contemporary political theory. The subject is designed to enhance students’ skills in reading and interpreting texts and to develop their appreciation of the richness of the traditions of political thought in the West which will contribute to their broader understanding of the discipline. The subject allows students to choose from a range of classical texts in the history of political thought and also offers a number of supplementary topics which encourage students to examine issues raised by these texts in the context of related discussions in the wider cannon of political thought. In both cases, the subject encourages students to develop skills in reading and critically reflecting on the arguments of complex works of political philosophy. It offers students the opportunity to develop an appreciation of the intellectual context in which the texts were written and/or to discuss the arguments of the texts in relation to issues in contemporary political theory. Students, in consultation with their tutors, may follow one or other of these options exclusively so long as they are able to demonstrate a sound grasp of the arguments of the texts on which they answer questions. The subject permits students to take either a narrow focus, concentrating on a few thinkers in depth, or aiming for a wide coverage of many. Either approach, however, relies on developing the capacity to grasp both the way particular texts work as arguments, and to gain some independent critical purchase on the arguments themselves. Students are also encouraged to examine different methods of interpretation in the History of Political Thought.

216. Political Thought: Bentham to Weber: This subject is designed to acquaint students with the transition from classical political philosophy to modern social theory --- that is, to introduce them to major theories developed from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty century, theories which (a) explored the nature and direction of social and economic change in Europe and (b) grappled with the moral and political issues raised by social and economic change. The subject enables students to study in depth a range of important texts, helping them to develop the skills required to identify and comment critically on the principal arguments contained in those texts. Students are also encouraged to appreciate the intellectual and historical context in which the texts were written. Students may, in consultation with their tutors, choose between a number of approaches to this subject. They may concentrate on a smaller number of named theorists in greater depth or aim for a broader coverage of many theorists by way of topics. Thus, they may approach the subject by choosing a number of clusters of thinkers (e.g. Bentham and Mill, Hegel and Marx, Weber and Durkheim, Saint-Simon and Tocqueville). Or they may focus on topics such as individualism and community, centralisation, the idea of progress, science and religion, by reading further primary texts in addition to those specified in the reading list. These further texts can include both additional works by the named thinkers and works by other relevant writers, for instance those who pre-date the named thinker and who were particularly influential for him, contemporary writers whose work was pertinent and, in some cases, later writers. In any event, students will be expected to demonstrate detailed and critical acquaintance with the major texts, and to analyse some of the main issues of contention, or agreement, in the period covered by the subject. This subject will enable students to read


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complex texts with discrimination and attune themselves to the variety and depth of modern social and political debates in an historical perspective.

217. Marx and Marxism: The course, unusual in being devoted to a single intellectual and political tradition, gives students the opportunity to develop a deep and systematic understanding of Marxist theory and practice. Depending on their interests, and reflecting the interdisciplinary breadth of the Marxist tradition, students are able (in consultation with their tutors) to concentrate on one or more of Marxist philosophy, politics, sociology and economics. Similarly, although all students are required to cover the essentials of Marxist theory with reference to the key writings of Marx and Engels, the course permits students to strike their own balance between concentrating on these texts - and their interpretation and evaluation - and considering the theoretical contributions of later Marxists. While most attention is devoted to issues in Marxist theory, students are also expected to approach Marxism as a practical, political ideology, with concrete political consequences. In all cases, the course teaches students to be able critically to evaluate, not just to show knowledge of, the Marxist tradition.

218. Sociological Theory: The course permits students to specialise in and develop their understanding of theoretical perspectives, some of which will have been introduced by the core course in Political Sociology. Although it includes the ideas of some of the ‘Founding Fathers’ of sociology - Marx, Weber, and Durkheim - the course is not primarily focussed on the history of sociological thought or on any particular texts. (Foundations of Modern Social and Political Thought (216) is an author- and text-based subject covering these and others). It rather attempts to encourage critical and analytical engagement with live issues in the assessment of a range of theoretical perspectives such as: rational choice; social exchange; functionalism; Marxism; symbolic interactionism; ethnomethodology; feminism. These are studied in relation to a number of substantive explananda such as: social order and integration (what holds society together?); social norms and roles (where do informal rules come from and why do people comply with them?); social change (is there an underlying dynamic to the historical process?); class and stratification (what generates systematic social inequality and what are its consequences?); deviance (in what circumstances and why do people contravene laws or less formal social rules?) The course also allows students to study more abstract or methodological issues such as: the relation between social structure and individual agency; strategies for integrating macro- and micro-sociology; the merits and limitations of different research methods; the nature and aims of sociological theorising. (Students particularly interested in these more abstract issues might consider Philosophy of Science and Social Science (106)). The course is devoted exclusively to the understanding and evaluation of sociological theories. Since this depends on considering such theories in relation to the empirical facts, processes or institutions that they seek to explain or illuminate, the course requires students to be familiar with relevant empirical studies. (Students interested in a course essentially devoted to empirical rather than theoretical sociology might consider taking Sociology of Industrial Societies (219)).

219. Sociology of Industrial Societies: The aims of the course are to introduce students to the major contemporary theories and central concepts relevant to the study of industrial societies, to show how such theories can be tested against the empirical data, and to give students some knowledge of the relevant comparative literature and thus place the study of

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contemporary British society within a broader cross-national perspective. One focus of the course is on the study of social stratification, with a particular emphasis on the debates over stratification by social class, gender, ethnicity and national identity. The second focus is on social change, especially with regard to debates over the withering away of social class, the growth of individualism, the process of secularisation, and the changing nature of the contemporary family. By the end of the course students should have gained a good knowledge of the scholarly literature and debates in the fields of stratification and mobility, gender and so on; they will have gained some empirically-based knowledge of the ways in which British society is similar to or different from other contemporary advanced societies; and they should understand how to test theories of industrial society against the empirical evidence.

222. Labour Economics and Industrial Relations: (Can also be taken as an Economics subject, see Economics entry 307 below)

223. The Government and Politics of Japan: This course provides a study of one of the very few nations outside the Western world whose politics appears to be stably based on democratic principles and a democratic constitution. It introduces students to Japanese political history since 1945 and the social context of Japanese institutions and policy-making, enabling them to understand the vicissitudes of Japanese experience in the last twenty years: from the 1980s, when Japanese exports were seen as threateningly ultra-competitive in Europe, North America and elsewhere, through the more difficult 1990s and 2000s which have precipitated a concentrated debate on “restructuring” both of the economy and of the political system. The course covers the constitutional framework and structure of government; parliamentary and local politics; the electoral and party systems; the role of corporate interests and pressure groups; the bureaucracy; foreign policy. It aims to provide an understanding of the major debates on the nature of Japanese liberal democracy, and to some of the main interpretive models: “bureaucratic polity”, “developmental state”, “iron-triangle dominance by bureaucrats, business leaders and politicians”, “patterned pluralism” etc. The underlying principle of the course is that Japanese politics is just as capable of being understood empirically as is any other political system, so long as preconceptions are not allowed to get in the way of understanding. No previous knowledge of Japan is required.

224. Social Policy: The course enables students to develop a critical understanding of welfare states, different approaches to social policy, and definitions and explanations of problems such as poverty, deprivation, and social exclusion. It permits students to draw on different perspectives in their previous study of, for example, public economics or political theory. Students are expected to read widely in the empirical research literature on policy formulation and implementation and to make themselves familiar with current statistics and reports. The course encourages students to engage with both theoretical principles and empirical evidence across a range of issues and policy areas such as: the development and problems of welfare states; voluntary effort and the informal sector; the mixed economy of welfare; citizenship, rights, markets and welfare; the impact of demography on social policy; poverty, inequality, deprivation and social exclusion; urban policy and inner cities; underclass and welfare dependency; income maintenance; family policy; health policy; housing policy and homelessness; education policy; ageing societies. Principles, concepts and institutions are analysed on a cross-national basis. Where specific policy areas are examined,


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the focus is on contemporary Britain. However, the policies of EU member states and other countries are considered when these have a bearing on British arrangements.

225. Comparative Demographic Systems: (Can also be taken as an Economics subject, see Economics entry 315 below)

226. Quantitative Methods in Politics and Sociology: Candidates will be expected to show an understanding of applications of quantitative methods in politics and sociology including the following: the principles of research design in social science: data collection, the logic of causal inference, and comparative method; major statistical methods and concepts: types of random variables, independence, correlation and association, sampling theory, hypothesis testing, linear and non-linear regression models, event-history analysis, and time-series. Can-didates will also be expected to interpret information and show familiarity with major meth-odological debates in Politics and Sociology.

227. Politics in China: This course will enable students to acquire a knowledge and understanding of the recent history and contemporary politics of China. China has been in transition from the long rule of Mao Zedong since 1978, and its politics and society have transformed radically during that period. Students will gain an understanding of the Chinese Communist party (the most powerful Communist party left in the world), looking at its historical background before analysing its current strategy to remain in control of China in the post-Cold War era. The reform era under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin will be analysed through a variety of themes, including elite politics and the Tian’anmen crisis of 1989, rural reforms, urban culture, and gender. China’s new status as a regional power in international relations will also be examined, as well as its relations with Taiwan and Hong Kong, two very different Chinese societies. This course will allow students to develop a strong knowledge of one of the world’s most important countries, and could serve as stimulation for further work in and about China in journalism, business, government, NGOs and academic research. Please note that demand sometimes outstrips teaching supply on this paper.

228. The Politics of the European Union: This paper focuses on the study of the history, institutions, and policy processes of the European Union. It includes analysis of the history and theories of the European integration process. Candidates are expected to show knowledge of politics of the European Union, including the main institutions of the EU, decision making procedures and specific policies, as well as relations between the EU and the rest of the world. The paper also focuses on democracy in the European Union and the impact of European integration on the domestic politics and policies of the member states.

297. Special Subject in Politics: Where offered, Special Subjects are examined like most other papers in Politics: by three hour unseen examination, in which three questions must be an-swered. What is distinctive about them is that their subject matter is likely to be more nar-rowly defined than is the case with other papers, and may be closely linked to the specialist research areas of the members of staff who teach them. What they offer therefore is the op-portunity, hitherto only available to those writing theses or supervised dissertations, to study an area of political studies in greater depth. Special Subjects will only be available to under-graduates in Michaelmas Term of their third year. The range of Special Subjects available will

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be announced at the beginning of the fourth week of Hilary Term via the website and notice-boards of the Department of Politics and International Relations and circulated to Politics tu-tors at colleges admitting undergraduates. The teaching provided for a Special Subject will be equivalent to the teaching provided for a normal Politics paper. Some special rules apply to the Special Subject and these are set out in full in the Examination Decrees. No candidate may offer more than one Special Subject. A Special Subject may not be offered by candidates also offering a thesis (199, 299, 399) or a Supervised Dissertation (298). Depending on the avail-ability of teaching resources, not all Special Subjects will be available to all candidates in every year. There might be other further subjects which it would not be possible to offer alongside it. For example, if there were a Special Subject on The U.S. Supreme Court, it might be restricted to candidates not taking Government and Politics of the USA. Any such restrictions would be announced at the same time as the Special Subject’s introduction. There may also be restrictions on the numbers of students permitted to take a given Special Subject. These re-strictions would also be announced in advance, and a fair means of deciding who could take the Special Subject (e.g. a ballot) would be used in the event of excessive numbers. [None cur-rently available.]

298: Supervised dissertation in Politics: see the separate entry under Section One of this Handbook. [None currently available.]

299: Thesis in Politics: see the separate entry under Section One of this Handbook.

3. Economics

These notes give an introduction to the various Economics subjects. Further details, including course outlines, rubrics, teaching arrangements and reading lists are available on the Economics website (www.economics.ox.ac.uk).

Core subjects in economics: All students continuing with Economics must take three compulsory core subjects in Economics as part of their Finals. These three papers - Quantitative Economics, Microeconomics and Macroeconomics - will have shorter syllabuses and exams and will be weighted to contribute as much to a student's overall Finals mark as two full-length papers. (Note that the shorter papers were examined for the first time in 2010; in previous years there were two full-length core papers, in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics.) From October 2012: these three core subjects will be examined full weight papers. 300. Quantitative Economics core course: This is a compulsory course for all PPE (and EM and HE) finalists. The lectures and classes will be given in Trinity Term. The QE course is designed to give students a good understanding of the rationale for and intuition about the application of statistical methods to the analysis of a range of applied economics issues, such as the economics effects of education or the behaviour of aggregate consumption. Topics covered will include descriptive statistics, basic statistical distributions and applications to economic data, sampling and hypothesis testing, regression analysis and the testing and interpretation of regression results, time series modelling and empirical applications of these methods in micro and macroeconomics. The exam will include questions covering

http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/�


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econometric methods, the practical application of these methods and the interpretation of applications in the applied econometrics literature. 301. Macroeconomics core course: This is a compulsory course for all PPE (and EM and HE) finalists. The lectures are given in Hilary Term. The course will introduce you to the ideas and tools of modern macroeconomic analysis, and show how these tools can be applied to issues in macroeconomic policy. The Macroeconomics paper in Finals will contain two sections. Part A will consist of shorter questions designed to ensure that students demonstrate a reasonable coverage of the syllabus. Part B will consist of questions requiring longer answers showing more detailed knowledge of particular topics. You will be required to answer questions from both sections. The course will cover: macroeconomic theories and their policy implications; macroeconomic shocks and fluctuations; unemployment and inflation; exchange rates, interest rates and current account; intertemporal adjustment, growth theory and monetary and fiscal policy. 302. Microeconomics core course: This subject is compulsory for all PPE (and EM and HE) finalists. The lectures are given in Michaelmas Term. The Microeconomics paper in Finals will contain two sections. Part A will consist of shorter questions designed to ensure that students demonstrate a reasonable coverage of the syllabus. Part B will consist of questions requiring longer answers showing more detailed knowledge of particular topics. You will be required to answer questions from both sections. The course aims to introduce you to some of the fundamental ideas and tools of modern microeconomic theory and their applications to policy issues, such as competition and environmental policies. The course will cover: Risk, expected utility theory; welfare economics and general equilibrium, public goods and externalities; game theory and industrial organisation; information economics and applications of microeconomics. Option subjects in economics:

In Hilary Term of your second year there will be an “Economics Options Fair”, at which, one of the tutors teaching on each option will be available to give an introduction to the content of the course, and answer questions on its organisation and teaching arrange-ments.

303. Microeconomic Theory: Rigorous study of core elements of microeconomic theory. Topics may (but not necessarily) include: decisions making under risk and uncertainty; theory of search under uncertainty; models of contracting under asymmetric information; theory of general economic equilibrium; theory of social choice. A descriptive list of the topics will be published on the Economics Web site before the beginning of the year in which the course is taught and examined. Questions will be set requiring candidates to solve problems and demonstrate conceptual understanding of core elements of microeconomic theory.

304. Money and Banking: This course covers a range of topics in modern monetary economics, starting from microeconomic explanations for the existence of money and then proceeding to aggregate models of price and output fluctuations, the monetary transmission mechanism, the conduct of monetary policy, explanations for hyperinflation episodes and the

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relationship between monetary policy and asset returns. Each topic starts with the presentation of a core theoretical model and some extensions. The focus of the lectures then turns to relevant empirical work in the field. The applied topics covered include (i) how best to separate cause and effect in the aggregate relationship between the interest rate, output and the price level; (ii) heterogeneity in the responses of banks and firms to monetary policy shocks; (iii) explanations for inflation performance across countries and through time; (iv) the impact of monetary policy on the yield curve.

305. Public Economics: Public Economics is a very wide-ranging discipline, concerned with the principles underlying most aspects of economic policy. The course covers both principles and applications. It starts by developing the welfare-theoretic foundations of policy analysis, the rationale for government intervention and the constraints on government action. Taxation and government expenditure are considered extensively. On the revenue side of the public accounts we consider the principles involved in tax design and analyse different types of taxes, including social insurance systems. On the expenditure side the course assesses the rationale for major categories of public spending, including health, education and pensions.

306. Economics of Industry: This popular course centres on the behaviour of private sector firms. It builds on the analysis of oligopoly behaviour developed in the Microeconomics core course, extending this to provide a comprehensive industrial organization analysis. Implications of firm behaviour for social welfare are considered throughout. The course includes empirical evidence from studies of real markets. The major themes of industrial and competition policy are covered, including oligopolistic price competition, product differentiation, strategic entry deterrence and predatory behaviour, advertising, price discrimination, vertically related markets, R & D, technology races, the relationship between market structure and profitability, and the analysis of mergers.

307. Labour Economics and Industrial Relations: The aim of the paper is to understand: the behaviour of employees and employers and of collective groups which they may form; how the labour market works and the macroeconomic and distributional outcomes it produces; the policies and practices of organisations towards their employees; government policy towards labour issues. Students are encouraged to take an international comparative perspective on the individual topics. As the above indicates, the paper is a mixture of Macro and Micro. However, it allows a much more intensive study of distributional matters, of policy and of applied issues more generally than do these two core papers. Other special subjects that fit well with this option are OECD and Public Economics. For PPE students this paper counts as either an Economics or a Politics special subject. Partly because of this, it encompasses a wider range of topics than many other special subjects. Accordingly a rather bigger choice of questions is available on the Finals paper. The paper is not sectionalised and your choice is not restricted by whether you are deeming this an Economics or a Politics option. For Economics and Management students there is a “sister” optional paper in management – Employment Relations. Examiners ensure that the two Finals exams contain an optimal degree of overlap. 308. International Economics: With the increasing internationalisation of economic life the study of International Economics has much to offer in helping to think about global developments. The course will analyse the determinants of international trade, including the


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implications of imperfect competition in international markets; the cases when a protectionist policy towards international trade may be appropriate; regionalism in international trading arrangements; the fundamental determinants of the balance of payments and exchange rates; the theory and evidence relating to exchange rate behaviour and to alternative exchange rate arrangements; the international context within which domestic macroeconomic policy is designed and conducted; international macroeconomic linkages; and the importance of international macroeconomic policy co-ordination. 309. Command and Transitional Economies: The goals of this course are to lead you to an understanding of the theory and functioning of the traditional command economy, attempts to reform it in the direction of market socialism, and the complex process of transition to a market economy. You will be expected first to learn about the evolution of the command economy in the pre-World War II period in the USSR (War Communism, New Economic Policy, Stalinist Central Planning) and in the post-war period in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China. But emphasis will be placed on knowledge of the features and policies of the main variants of the command system (e.g. central planning, performance of state enterprises, fiscal and monetary policies, foreign trade), rather than details of economic history or experience of countries. The second subject area includes the 1965 reform and perestroika in the USSR, the New Economic Mechanism in Hungary, self-management in Yugoslavia, and post-1978 reforms in China. The third area comprises the theory of the transition from command to market systems, as well as policies and economic developments in the major countries after 1989. The main countries to be studies are Russia, Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic. Although most questions in the exam will deal with the Soviet Union/FSU and Eastern Europe, at least two will relate fully or partially to the economy of China.

310. Economics of Developing Countries: Economic development for the world’s poorer nations is a self-evident challenge, which demands serious economic analysis. This course introduces you to key areas of development economics, relating analysis to conditions in developing countries, and exploring some of the major economic policy issues relating to developing countries. The topics covered include: theories of growth and development; poverty and income distribution; human resources, labour markets and employment; industrialisation and technology; agriculture and rural development. Familiar topics which have to be adapted to the situation in developing countries also include monetary and fiscal issues; inflation; foreign trade and payments; foreign and domestic capital; the role of economic aid. An overarching theme is the role of government in development and the operation of markets. While the approach taken in the course is analytical, you will be expected to have an interest in the problems and policies of particular regions or countries, and use knowledge of actual situations to inform and illustrate the analysis. Note: Planning and transition in China and a number of ex-Soviet economies are at present excluded from this subject as they are part of the course on Command and Transitional Economies. 311. British Economic History since 1870: This subject analyses the record of the British economy since 1870 from an economist’s perspective. A continuing theme is the assessment of the extent and sources of the decline of the British economy. For the period 1870-1918 topics of particular interest include British overseas investment and changes in agriculture,

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both of which played a significant role in developments here and abroad. The analysis of the inter-war period begins from a review of the industrial problems of the British economy, and then covers the return to the Gold Standard in 1925, the great depression and unemployment, including the departure from gold in 1931, and the sources and nature of the economic recovery in the 1930s. The post-1945 period brings the ‘Keynesian Revolution’, demand management and the role of fiscal policy. Economic growth in the ‘golden age’ was tarnished by price and wage inflation, followed by rising unemployment and the slowdown in output and productivity growth beginning in the 1970s.

314. Econometrics: Econometrics is concerned with the application of statistical theory to the analysis of economic data and the estimation of economic relationships. This course covers both an introduction to econometric theory and methods, and a range of applications, including the use of computer software packages. In the theory of econometrics the following topics are covered:

• Multiple regression: interpretation, estimation, inference, prediction. Both cross-sectional and time series implementations will be discussed. A variety of econometric topics will be considered drawn from the following list: maximum likelihood, endogeneity and instrumental variables, unit roots and cointegration, limited dependent variable models, duration models and panel data models.

• Application of the introduced econometric methods to economic problems.

Part of the teaching for the course involves the use of the computer and standard software packages to actually “do” econometrics, and to give experience of the various theoretical techniques covered in the lectures.

315. Comparative Demographic Systems: The course deals with the major subject areas and controversies in contemporary demography. Students will gain an understanding of major contemporary demographic trends, the theories advanced to account for them and their practical importance. These include: the status of demographic transition models, theories of low fertility and of divergent mortality in the industrial world; the prospects for welfare systems in ageing societies, new forms of family and household and their future; the realities and prospects of mass migration. Population growth, economic development, environmental pressures and new threats to health in the post war third world will receive attention, and the future of world population as growth rates slacken and poor societies begin population ageing. Intended and unintended consequences of government actions on demographic phenomena, and the historical origins of Europe’s distinctive demography will be emphasised. On the technical side of the subject, by the end of the course students will know the limitations and origins of demographic data, the advantages of measuring demographic phenomena through different indices and the use of models in population analysis. They will be able to perform elementary operations in the analysis of fertility and mortality, including methods of standardization, the construction and manipulation of the life table and simple population projection. Only elementary arithmetic ability is needed, but sympathy for arguments presented as graphs, numbers or simple expressions is important. No previous demographic knowledge is required. This subject provides an unusual opportunity to combine numerical analysis of human populations with an interdisciplinary comparative analysis of population change at micro and macro level.


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316. Economics of OECD Countries: This course analyses developments since 1945 in the major OECD economies. A comparative framework is used to examine overall developments, centring on the USA, Japan and Europe. Students may then specialise in one of the major ar-eas. Broad topics covered in comparative perspective include economic growth in the ‘golden age’; the growth and productivity slow-down starting in the 1970s; the rise of unemployment; the inflation of the 1970s and the disinflation of the 1980s and the international monetary sys-tem. Within Europe the course focuses on the process of European integration, its results and challenges. It also looks at features of individual economies such as the ‘German model’ and the ‘Swedish model’. The US section covers issues such as the ‘new economy’ of the 1990s, macro-economic policy and the causes of inequality. The Japanese section includes the transi-tion from rapid growth to stagnation, the Japanese labour market and financial systems.

317. Economic Decisions within the Firm: (Currently suspended)

318. Finance: This course covers the topics of asset pricing and corporate finance. It starts with examining how assets (which can mean anything that represents a title to a stream of uncertain money payments for some designated current and future periods) are valued in the marketplace. For example, we will study how the value of investment projects, firms, risk-free securities, common stocks, options and other contingent claims are priced in the real world. We will then move on to study how companies make investment and financing deci-sions and how these decisions will affect the valuation of the company. The course will as-sume a basic knowledge of calculus and probability.

319. Game Theory: Strategic-form games and extensive-form games. Solution concepts. Games with incomplete information. Applications and topics which may (but not necessarily) include bargaining, auctions, global games, evolutionary games, cooperative games, learning, games in political science. The paper will be set in two parts. Candidates will be required to show knowledge on both parts of the paper.

1. Part A. Questions will be set requiring candidates to solve problems involving the core elements of game theory.

2. Part B. Questions will be set requiring candidates to solve problems in and show knowledge of specific applications and topics in game theory.

320. Mathematical Methods: (for first examination in 2011) The paper will cover mathe-matical tools such as Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential and Difference Equations, Prob-ability and Statistical Inference and their applications to Economics. Applications will not re-quire knowledge of material covered in other optional papers but will assume knowledge of the core first and second year papers. A detailed syllabus will be published every year.

321. The Philosophy and Economics of the Environment: The aims of this paper are to pro-vide students with (i) an understanding of the philosophy and economics of the environment, and (ii) the ability to analyse critically key conceptual and applied issues in this field using both a philosophical approach and the theoretical and empirical tools of economics. At the end of the course, students should have a knowledge of the philosophy and economics of the environment, including justice and goodness, theories of value, decision-making under un-certainty, market failures, international environmental agreements and the politics of the en-vironment, intergenerational ethics and discounting, the choice of instruments, how human

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life and how nature may be valued, and the foundations of cost-benefit analysis (including methods for valuing non-market goods). The paper will cover, as appropriate, applications to environmental problems such as climate change, acid rain, and local water and air pollution. The course will be taught and examined in an interdisciplinary way. This paper is available to all PPE students taking economics in the second and third year.

399. Thesis: See Section One of this Handbook.


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APPENDIX B: Examination Regulations 2011

The published Examination Regulations, the ‘Grey Book’, can be out of date, because it goes to print in the summer and the legislative cycle continues to just before the start of Michael-mas Term.

An electronic version of the up-to-date Regulations for PPE is available at:

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/

APPENDIX C: Complaints and Academic Appeals within the De-partment of Politics and International Relations, the Department of Economics and the Faculty of Philosophy

1. The University, the Social Sciences Division, the Department of Politics and Interna-tional Relations, the Department of Economics and the Faculty of Philosophy all hope that provision made for students at all stages of their programme of study will make the need for complaints (about that provision) or appeals (against shortcomings in any form of assessment) infrequent.

2. However, all those concerned believe that it is important for students to be clear about how to raise a concern or make a complaint, and how to appeal against the outcome of assessment. The following guidance attempts to provide such information.

3. Nothing in this guidance precludes an informal discussion with the person immedi-ately responsible for the issue that you wish to complain about (and who may not be one of the individuals identified below). This is often the simplest way to achieve a satisfactory resolution.

4. Many sources of advice are available within colleges, within faculties/departments and from bodies like OUSO or the Counselling Service, which have extensive experi-ence in advising students. You may wish to take advice from one of these sources be-fore pursuing your complaint.

5. General areas of concern about provision affecting students as a whole should, of course, continue to be raised through Joint Consultative Committees or via student representation on the faculty/department’s committees.

Complaints

3.1 If your concern or complaint relates to teaching or other provision made by the fac-ulty/department, then you should raise it with the Director of Undergraduate Studies


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or with the Director of Graduate Studies as appropriate. Within the fac-ulty/department the officer concerned will attempt to resolve your concern/complaint informally.

3.2 If you are dissatisfied with the outcome, then you may take your concern further by making a formal complaint to the University Proctors. A complain may cover aspects of teaching and learning (e.g. teaching facilities, supervision arrangements, etc), and non-academic issues (e.g. support services, library services, university accommoda-tion, university clubs and societies, etc). A complaint to the Proctors should be made only if attempts at informal resolution have been unsuccessful. The procedures adopted by the Proctors for the consideration of complaints and appeals are described in the Proctors and Assessor’s Memorandum (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/proctors/info/) and the relevant Council regulations (www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/).

4. If your concern or complaint relates to teaching or other provision made by your college, then you should raise it either with your tutor or with one of the college officers, Senior Tutor, or Tutor for Graduates (as appropriate). Your college will also be able to explain how to take your complaint further if you are dissatisfied with the outcome of its consideration.

Academic Appeals

5. An appeal is defined as a formal questioning of a decision or an academic matter made by the responsible academic body.

6. For undergraduate or taught graduate courses, a concern which might lead to an appeal should be raised with your college authorities and the individual responsi-ble for overseeing your work. It must not be raised directly with examiners or assessors. If it is not possible to clear up your concern in this way, you may put your concern in writing and submit it to the Proctors via the Senior Tutor of your college. As noted above, the procedures adopted by the Proctors in relation to complaints and appeals are on the web (www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/).

7. For the examination of research degrees, or in relation to transfer or confirmation of status, your concern should be raised initially with the Director of Graduate Studies. Where a concern is not satisfactorily settled by that means, then you or your college authority may put your appeal directly to the Proctors.

8. Please remember in connection with all the cases in paragraphs 5-7 that:

(a) The Proctors are not empowered to challenge the academic judgement of examin-ers or academic bodies.

(b) The Proctors can consider whether the procedures for reaching an academic deci-sion were properly followed; i.e. whether there was a significant procedural ad-ministrative error; whether there is evidence of bias or inadequate assessment;

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/�

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/�


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whether the examiners failed to take into account special factors affecting a candi-date’s performance.

(c) On no account should you contact your examiners or assessors directly.

9. The Proctors will indicate what further action you can take if you are dissatisfied with the outcome of a complaint or appeal considered by them

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APPENDIX D: Key Contacts

PPE Administrator

Ms Liz Griffith 88564

Email: [email protected] Philosophy

Chair of the Faculty Board: Professor Terry Irwin 72730 Chair of the Faculty: Dr William Mander 71028 Director of Graduate Studies: Dr Paul Lodge 82883 Director of Undergraduate Studies: Professor Ralph Wedgwood 76334

from Hilary Term 2012: Dr Thomas Johansen 87145 Curator of the Philosophy Centre: Dr Dan Isaacson 76929 Honorary Librarian: Dr Lizzie Fricker 76044 Administrator and Faculty Board Secretary: Mr Tom Moore 76928 Undergraduate Studies Administrator: Mr James Knight 76925 Politics and International Relations

Head of Department: Professor Stephen Whitefield 88560 Deputy Head of Department: Dr Paul Martin 77987 Chair of the Sub-faculty: Dr Stuart White 79747 Director of Undergraduate Studies: Dr Lois McNay 70651 Director of Graduate Studies in Politics: Prof David Miller 78569 Director of Graduate Studies in IR: Professor Jennifer Welsh 70649 Administrator: Ms Janice French 85942 Courses Manager and Graduate Studies Administrator: Mrr Andrew Melling 78727 Undergraduate Studies Administrator 88568 Politics Graduate Studies Officer: Ms Samantha Rainbird 85947

Email: [email protected] Economics

Head of Department: Professor Kevin Roberts 78601 Director of Undergraduate Studies: Professor Margaret Stevens 71092 Director of Graduate Studies: Professor Peter Neary 71085 Administrator: Ms Gillian Coates 71088 Undergraduate Administrator: Ms Katherine Cumming 71098


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Sociology

Head of Department: Dr Tak Wing Chan 86176 Director of Graduate Studies: Professor Federico Varese 81150 Administrator: Ms Vicky Bancroft 86170 Social Policy and Intervention

Head of Department: Professor Martin Seeleib-Kaiser 70355 Course Director (Comparative Social Policy): Professor Martin Seeleib-Kaiser 70355 Undergraduate social policy option course convenor: Ms Fran Bennett 70321 Administrator: Ms Katherine Gardiner 70330 Courses Administrator: Ms Bryony Groves 70326 Libraries

Social Science Library, Manor Road Building 71093 Philosophy Library, 10 Merton Street 76927 Social Sciences Division (Hayes House, 75 George Street)

Enquiries 14850 Head of the Division: Professor Roger Goodman 14853 Secretary to the Division: Dr Saira Shaikh 82574 Nightline 70270

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APPENDIX E: Oxford Web Addresses

1. Oxford University Regulations and Codes of Conduct

(i) University Regulations for degrees in Politics and International Relations

www.politics.ox.ac.uk

This is on the DPIR website and contains only certain relevant parts of the Examination Regulations. Please note that you must also consult the printed volume issued by the University, Examination Regulations 2011. The contents of this volume have not yet been made available on the web.

(ii) Oxford University Statutes and Regulations website

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/

This contains numerous useful documents but not yet the Examination Regulations. See eg:

Regulations Relating to the Use of Information Technology Facilities

(iii) Notes of Guidance issued by the Educational Policy and Standards Committee

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/epsc/guidance/index.shtml

This contains up-to-date versions of the following:

Learning and Teaching Strategy

Notes of Guidance on Examinations and Assessment

Notes of Guidance on Introduction of New Courses and Major Changes to Existing Courses

This site also gives information on Access to Teaching and Learning for Students with Disabilities.

(iv) Oxford University Diversity and Equal Opportunities Unit

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/eop

This contains numerous useful documents, including information on disability, and on racial equality. It also contains:

Code of Practice Relating to Harassment

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/epsc/guidance/index.shtml�

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/eop�


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(v) Oxford University Proctors’ Office

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/proctors

This contains information about complaints procedures and numerous other matters. See especially:

Essential Information for Students

Council Regulations 31 of 2002 (about complaints procedures: See para 48 onwards for Appeals concerning higher degrees involving research)

(vi) Oxford University Research Services

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rso/integrity/

This contains several key documents, addressing interesting issues including plagia-rism and outside consultancies.

Academic Integrity in Research: Code of Conduct and Procedure Public Interest Disclosure: Code of Practice and Procedure Statement of Policy and Procedure on Conflict of Interest

(vii) Oxford University Safety Office

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/safety/oxonly

This contains several documents that may be relevant to health and safety aspects of the work of staff and students, including:

Foreign Travel (University Policy Statement S1/03 Safety in Fieldwork (Guidance Note S7/95)

The ‘Safety in Fieldwork’ document contains advice on ‘practical work carried out by staff or students of the University for the purpose of teaching and/or research in places which are not under University control, but where the University is responsible for the safety of its staff and/or students and others exposed to their activities.’

(viii) Information on Data Protection

www.admin.ox.ac.uk/councilsec/dp/index.shtml

This contains information on a key piece of UK legislation, the Data Protection Act 1998.

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/proctors/pam/section13.shtml�

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rso/integrity/�

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/safety/oxonly�

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/councilsec/dp/index.shtml�

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2. Other useful Oxford University websites

(i) Dates of term www.admin.ox.ac.uk/admin/dates.shtml

(ii) International Office

www.ox.ac.uk/students/international_students/

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/admin/dates.shtml�


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APPENDIX F: Departmental Code of Conduct The Department of Politics and International Relations is committed to promoting and main-taining a positive, supportive and professional work and study environment for students, staff, visitors and all associates of the Department and University (whether employed or oth-erwise). All members of the Department – staff, students and associates – must abide by the University’s Equal Opportunities policies and Code of Practice relating to harassment and should treat everyone, whether inside or outside the Department, equally, with respect and without distinction, regardless of role or status. Department staff, whether established, non-established or administrative, must act at all times honestly, conscientiously, reasonably and in good faith, having regard to their responsibilities, the interests of the Department and Uni-versity, their legal obligations and the welfare of colleagues and students. The Department regards as unacceptable any behaviour that is contrary to these commit-ments. All complaints of improper conduct or treatment will be treated seriously and in con-fidence. Anyone who believes they have been treated improperly should, in the first instance, speak informally to their line manager, the Harassment Officers, the Academic Administra-tor, or, where appropriate, the Head of Department. Complaints that are substantiated, or cannot be resolved informally, may lead to formal grievance or disciplinary action as out-lined in both Department and University policies. Contacts:

Harassment Officers: Prof Martin Ceadel (79505) Dr Gwendolyn Sasse (88689) Courses Manager: Mr Andrew Melling (78727) Administrator: Ms Janice French (85942)

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APPENDIX G: Advice on answering “gobbets” or commentary questions in Philosophy

If you are offering Philosophy at PPE Finals, you may well be taking one of the papers in An-cient Philosophy, that is to say 115 Plato’s Republic or 116 Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. These papers include a compulsory commentary or “gobbets” question, where you are ex-pected to comment on and elucidate certain passages of text. The advice below is reproduced from the handbook for Literae Humaniores (or “Classics”), and concerns how to go about a “gobbets” question in Philosophy:

The first requirement is to identify the argumentative context of the passage, e.g. `This passage occurs in Socrates' response to Thrasymachus' claim that the ruler properly so-called is expert in promoting his own advantage; in reply Socrates urges that all exper-tise aims to promote the advantage of that on which the expertise is exercised, hence the expert ruler must aim to promote, not his own advantage, but that of the subject'. You should then set out the specific contribution of the passage to the argumentative context, e.g. a sub-argument (in which case the steps of the argument should be set out), or a distinction (in which case you should clearly state what is being distin-guished from what), or the introduction of some key concept, which should be clearly elucidated. Where appropriate, elucidation should be followed by criticism; thus if the passage contains a fallacious or unsound argument, or a faulty distinction, the flaw should be briefly identified. If the significance of the passage goes beyond the immediate argu-mentative context (e.g. in introducing a concept which is important for a wider range of contexts) that wider significance should be indicated. Wider significance may be in-ternal to the work as a whole, or may extend beyond it, for instance by relating to some theme central to the thought of the author (such as Plato's Theory of Forms or Aris-totle's Categories) or to some important topic in modern philosophy. Your primary fo-cus in philosophy gobbets should be on argumentative and conceptual content. Details of sentence construction, vocabulary etc should be discussed only in so far as they af-fect the content thus conceived. The same goes for the identification of persons etc named in the passage; note that where the passage is taken from a Platonic dialogue it will usually be relevant to identify the speaker(s). It is vitally important to observe the time constraints imposed by the number of pas-sages to be translated and commented on. Brevity, relevance and lucidity are crucial. It is especially important not to be carried away in expounding the wider significance of the passage (see above); a gobbet should not expand into an essay on the Theory of Forms or the problem of universals. Use your own judgement on how much you can afford to put in.

ppe handbook 2011-2012

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