Elective Requirements

Meeting the Elective Requirements

All Government Department concentrators are required to take at least 3 Government electives; concentrators who take a methods course besides Government 50 are required to complete one additional elective course. The list below details ways to meet this requirement. Concentrators can meet up to 2 of their 3-4 elective requirements by taking classes at the Harvard Kennedy School, but only using courses preapproved by the Department of Government.  

Please note: The list below is intended for concentrators, not students interested in the secondary field in Government. Not all of the courses below will count toward the secondary field. For the list of courses that meet secondary-field requirements, please visit Secondary Field.  

Government Elective Courses for Concentration Credit, AY 2024-25

**New for Spring 2025: A full list of undergraduate Spring 2025 courses that meet the Government elective requirement for concentrators (and potentially other requirements) is available as both a sortable spreadsheet (Excel) and a printable chart (pdf).

All Government Department courses (except Gov 91r, Supervised Reading and Research) count for Government elective credit. Gov 92r may be taken more than once, but only one semester may count as a Gov elective.

The following FAS courses have been approved for elective concentration credit in Government. Except as noted, these courses may not count for subfield credit. If there is a course that you think should count toward the Government Department requirements and it is not on this list, please contact the Undergraduate Program. The list of HKS courses that can be used to meet up to 2 of the elective requirements (see above) can be found here.

If there is a course that you think should count toward the Government Department requirements and it is not on this list, please fill out this form to petition to have it counted.  

Please note: The list below is intended for concentrators, not students interested in the secondary field in Government. Not all of the courses below will count toward the secondary field. For the list of courses that meet secondary-field requirements, please visit Secondary Field.  

Classics

• Classical Studies 190: Rhetoric, A User’s Guide: from Ancient Greece to Contemporary America (Greenwood)

Environmental Science and Public Policy

• ESPP 78: Environmental Politics (Jasanoff)

General Education

• GENED 1032: What is a Republic? (may also count for American subfield) (Carpenter)
• GENED 1092: American Society and Public Policy (may also count for American subfield) (Skocpol)
• GENED 1123: Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Zeghal) 
• GENED 1200: Justice (may also count for Theory subfield) (Sandel) 

Modern Middle East

• MME 100: The Modern Middle East, Real and Imagined: An Introduction (Zeghal)
• MME 102: Shi’a Islam and Politics in the Middle East (Sagha)
• MME 107: Regional Order, U.S. Wars, and the Politics of Iraq and Afghanistan (Sagha)
• MME 108: History of Modern Iran and Turkey (Sagha)

Social Studies

• Social Studies 98LR: Liberal Democracy and its Critics (may also count for Comparative subfield)  (Ziblatt)

Sociology

• Sociology 1023: Political Sociology (Mandic)