Not a very hard class, but tedious. Never went to lecture and still got a B+. My TA showed us movies in discussion and the whole thing was kind of a joke. Def not the easiest course ever, but if you try I'm sure it would be

A very strange class. Basically, Professor Alexander tries to force the political history of Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, and Spain into easily compared and contrasted bullet points. Alexander is obsessed with the idea of relating the ideas, interests, and institutions that affect policy in these 5 countries, expect to hear these terms ad nauseum and be sure to understand them the way Gerard wants you to or your TA is going to grade you poorly. In many ways, this class seems to attempt to straddle the gap between a first year-level intro course in comparative politics and a more in-depth lecture series on western european domestic politics since world war I. I'm not sure it was entirely successful, as often times lofty and broad ideas were awkwardly shoehorned into a few narrow categories. As for Alexander, he's an enthusiastic but somewhat ineffective lecturer in a large class. He infuriatingly insists on lecturing to word documents, which he always forgets to scroll through and then fires past 2 pages of important points that you can't get anywhere else. He also has a habit of getting hung up on something simple or even irrelevant in the first 30 minutes of lecture, leading to rushed explanations of key topics. The amount of reading for the class is preposterous given what you're ultimately required to know for the papers and exam. Both the central textbook and the dozens of Collab readings will often go unmentioned in lecture and discussion. Ultimately, knowing 10 or so collab readings fairly well will give you everything you need to know for all assignments. Overall, if you're clever about how you take this class you can do very well with very little work. However, the lectures don't offer much insight outside of the confines of what Professor Alexander wants you to write about, so that class has little bearing on other courses I've taken on European politics. Sarah Eskew is a friendly and fair TA, she can clear up something for you if Gerard has confused the class, and your TA's opinion is the only thing that really matters for your class grade in this instance.

Good class; learned a lot, and it was worthwhile.

Great class. Alexander is really passionate and interesting. You don't really have to do all the readings. I would suggest going to lecture and focusing on the readings he mentions in class.

This class has a shit ton of reading (more than my other two classes put together). Alexander is really passionate about the topic and you can see that from how fast he talks, how much info he tries to fit in 50 mins and how many times he digresses into little anecdotes (that were helpful, at least for me, in remembering the info). There are two 4 pages double spaced papers and a final that is pretty much formatted like the midterm papers. I never did the readings, skipped three classes and got an A-.

Professor Alexander is fantastic. He is very fun and entertaining and makes the material fun to learn if you aren't already interested. Class is not particularly difficult. Focus on the readings that your TA emphasizes and go to lecture and you'll be fine. One of my favorite politics classes here at UVa

Don't take it if you don't have to. This guy is a tough, tough grader, and while he is knowledgable about his field, it is not a rewarding experience. You will come out with a better understanding of Western European political structures, but the class isn't worth it.

Honestly, favorite class at UVA. Loved the material, and the professor. Yes, Gerard tended to dive extremely in to certain things that weren't the most relevant or helpful, but he would always get us he material we needed to know one way or another. You'll spend half the semester covering Britain and France, which is unfortunate because you get so little time to do Germany, Italy, and Spain. But there was never a time where I didn't think the material was interesting. It's a ton of work, with tons of reading assigned before every class. You don't have to do all of them, I would just read the first half of a some of them and as long as you got the jist, you're good to go. But when those essays come, sit down, and spend every day you can working on them. Catch up on the readings during that time, and treat that essay like it's everything, because they'll make the difference between B's and A's. If you can develop your argument well and in an organized way, you will get above a B+. But you honestly can't wait until the last minute. Final isn't bad at all, some essays and ID's. TLDR- work super hard on the essays and enjoy this class!

One of my favorite courses taken at UVA, taught by one of my favorite professors. Concerning professors who teach the same course each year, tweaking it each time, this course is perhaps the best-refined course I have taken in my time at UVA. The professor has the course down to a science. He also happens to be one of the best lecturers I have encountered as an undergrad. He spends the first few lectures relaying some basic theory of comparative politics, before engaging in a sequential study of 5 countries in Western Europe, ending the semester with a brief look at the European Union. The five countries studied are: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Three issues are of interest when studying each country: democratic stability, party systems, and political economy. The professor (somewhat questionably) approaches history scientifically, seeking to gain some explanatory power as regards the varying historical outcomes in post-WWII Western Europe. The professor offers three potential explanations (ideas, interests, institutions) for the three issues at hand. Lectures are rich, straightforward, and fascinating. Discussion section left a bit to be desired. My TA, Olyvia, made the most of what was a relatively undefined meeting requirement. She always solicited our feedback and was open-minded about the activities we might fill our time with. The nature of discussion section ranged from discussion of lecture and the readings to group work to watching first-hand videos on Western European politics. 20% of the course grade came from attendance at and participation in discussion section. The remainder of the course grade was divided between two papers (25% each) and a final exam (30%). The prompts for the papers were straightforward. You were given an issue area (democratic stability, party systems, political economy) and made to explain historical outcomes regarding that issue area using whichever argument (ideas, interests, institutions) made the most sense to you. You could pull examples from any countries that had been studied up to that point. Though the lectures were useful for framing the question at hand, it was essential that you back up your ideas with quotes from the readings. Therefore, it was important to do the readings not only for purposes of discussion section, but also for use when writing the essays. The final exam also had a couple of essays of this sort (though you had to prepare for all essay possibilities, as you did not learn the essay prompts until sitting for the exam, whereas with the take-home essays you had a week after receiving the prompt to write them). The final exam also had a section for IDs, which was pretty straightforward. All in all, the course was extremely interesting and fun, as well as challenging without being difficult. I absolutely would recommend this course to any student with any interest in history or politics.

I would recommend this course, with some caveats. First of all, Alexander is an excellent lecturer, and the material he presents is fascinating. However, he does tend to repeat himself at times and go on tangents that really are not relevant to the material we were tested on. Also, Alexander would give up to 200 pages of reading for one lecture -- which is excessive and the majority of it never even applied to what we were discussing in lecture. Secondly, the discussion section for this class was the single most useless discussion section I have ever encountered at my time at the University. My TA (Olyvia) was terrible. Our discussion section included things like watching The Crown and The Iron Lady -- both are excellent programs, so thanks for the Netflix recommendation, Olyvia, but watching them didn't really help improve my grade at all. When I went to her office hours to discuss my first essay, she looked at my outline for 10 seconds and said "looks good" without even reading it. When I asked for clarification about one of my points, only then did she actually take the time to read it and said "ohhhh, yeah. You should definitely rework that entire section." I ended up getting a B+ on the essay, which she told me was an "excellent grade" because Alexander wanted a B- as the average for the class. Previous grade distributions on vagrades.com didn't support that to be true. There were no grades recorded for the entire semester in Collab, and a substantial part of your final grade is participation. Olyvia told us that if we were honest in our self-evaluations that we would get an A (I later found out that she gave me an 89?). I had no clue what my participation grade or final grade breakdown was until after the semester ended, so I emailed Olyvia about it, and she took five days to respond. Conveniently for her, she wanted until the day after final grades were due to reply. Take the class, but be wary of the fact that your TA controls your entire grade. Make sure to get a good one.