Political Manipulation in World Politics

Political manipulation is the shaping of what people know, how they interpret it, and what they feel about it in order to shift political outcomes in the manipulator's favor. This course examines how states, leaders, parties, movements, and platforms manipulate attitudes in world politics: which attitudes they target, which tactics they use, what those tactics do to international outcomes, and what, if anything, makes publics resistant. It draws on public opinion research and political psychology, and it treats manipulation as a practical problem for policy analysts as much as a normative one. The same theories that explain how manipulation works are the ones that allow an analyst to recognize it, anticipate it, and counter it.

The course proceeds in four units. Unit 1 (Weeks 1–3) establishes what manipulation is, how it differs from persuasion, influence, and power, and what it targets: attitudes, and the psychology of attitude change. Unit 2 (Weeks 4–6) moves to world politics and asks whose foreign policy attitudes exist to be manipulated, how those attitudes change when people hold them as members of nations, and what manipulated attitudes do to international outcomes. Unit 3 (Weeks 7–11) works through the manipulator's toolkit, framing, misinformation, social media and artificial intelligence, and emotion, and closes with the evidence on resisting manipulation. Unit 4 (Weeks 12–14) applies the course to three current issues, nationalist propaganda, human rights, and historical memory, in sessions built around the group policy briefings.

The course is open to SIPA graduate students and to undergraduates in the Global Affairs and Public Policy major, and it sets distinct academic requirements for the two cohorts (see Requirements for Graduate and Undergraduate Students below). Graduate students lead discussion and produce a team policy memo and briefing. Undergraduates write weekly response posts, take a take-home midterm and final examination, and document the policy analysis process of the group they join.