Legislative Simulation

Catalog description

Designed to be a total “immersion” into legislative politics and policy making, particularly the California State Senate, this is a course on the California state legislative process. Designed to help students understand the formal and informal hierarchies of influence, norms, expectations for behavior, complicated rules, and traditions. These factors affect the goals of individual members of the legislative process and how members act to achieve their goals. At the same time, the legislature is part of a larger political system. Members work in the context of constituent desires, interest group activity, the mass media, and electoral politics. The goal of this class is to learn how this system works, and how it interacts with the policy environment, by looking at it from the inside. The core of the class is a simulation of the California State Senate, where students act as legislators, lobbyists, and journalists.