Course: Politics MPhil (Comparative Government)

In the first year, you must complete the core classes and tutorials in comparative government and a programme of research methods training, which includes core courses in statistics and research design and specialised elective courses.

Progression to the second year is conditional on satisfactory performance in the first.

In your second year you must write a thesis and complete two specialist option papers. Options that have been offered in recent years include:

• Collective Political Violence
• Comparative Political Economy of Advanced Democracies
• The Politics and Government of China
• EU Foreign Policy
• The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Immigration

Please note, these options are illustrative only. Second year options are subject to change year-to-year, and we cannot guarantee these will be offered in the year you take the course.

For information on how the course is assessed, please visit the University’s MPhil in Comparative Government listing.

Teaching for your course is designed and delivered by academics, highly respected for their research in Politics and International Relations.

Graduate teaching and supervision at Oxford is provided by your academic department—in this case, DPIR—although some graduate teaching may take place on college premises.

The majority of graduate teaching at DPIR takes the form of either one-to-one supervision meetings with your Academic Supervisor or tuition in small groups (as with classes and seminars). However, lectures are also used alongside small-group teaching in the delivery of some Research Methods training courses.

• empirical and theoretical knowledge of the major topics and perspectives within Political Science, based on a broad understanding of the scholarly literature relevant to the course;
• an understanding of research skills appropriate to the subject, including quantitative and qualitative methods – these skills having been used in individual research in the 30,000-word thesis;
• a breadth of learning from participation in a range of intellectual activities provided by a major postgraduate teaching university;
• the spirit and practice of analytical enquiry; 
• experience of presenting and critiquing seminar papers and essays;
• skills and knowledge appropriate for further research work.