PS 140a with Professor Tusanovitch is a fairly easy class especially if you are a political junkie. The class initially goes over the nuts and bolts of the US legislative branch before delving into deeper theories and concepts regarding policymaking, and legislating. The lectures where clear, but they were quite dry and boring, but Professor Tusanovitch really cares if his students understand what he is talking about.

The class is broken up grade wise like such
30% Midterm
10% Section
30% Assignments
30% Final

Section is mandatory and the professor has an arcane policy stating that you have to attend the section you enrolled in despite other sections being offered. This is like other classes where TAs allow you to go to earlier or later sections if you can't make it. However you are allowed one miss.

The Assignments are two graded "short papers" with one being a research assignment on a obscure/notable congressional race and analyzing media coverage. The other project due during week 10, is an assignment looking at a legislative roll call and analyzing it using DW-Nominate. The assignments are fairly easy but if you don't conduct good research I would recommend starting early.

The exams are four section tests with a with a multiple choice section, identifications, short answers, and a short essay. The professor gives a study guide that shows which IDs are fair game. While the professor was not clear on what to focus on, the tests were fair and focus mostly on the big ideas discussed in the class. Note that the final is cumulative, and longer than the midterm, but was not that bad.

Overall if you are a poli-sci major take this class because while it may not be an easy A if but some effort you should get one. Also I found that while there were many readings, the exams didn't really test on them, and you should be find if you know the main concepts associated with them.

I like Professor Tausanovitch. Basically going to class and taking decent notes will get you through the tests. The homework assignments, which essentially weigh as an exam when considered together, are pretty easily graded. In this class you have the opportunity to get much more out of the class than what is demanded; the exams often disregard entire weeks of content - particularly the final. However, doing the readings and going to office hours will unlock a breadth of knowledge about Congress. I would take his class again, and would recommend him to others.

Mostly boring class, even for those who are actually interested in the subject matter. A lot of the course focuses on congressional strategy, which is already pretty intuitive to those who remotely pay attention to what tends to happen with major legislation proposals (e.g., congressional moderates have all the power, filibuster and veto points severely constrain the ideological space for any given proposal, etc.). Other subjects touched upon include lobbying, fundraising, committees, procedure, public-opinion, and ideology—with an eye towards political polarization when discussing most of these matters.

Tausanovitch is clearly smart, but doesn't put a lot of thought into how he lectures—which is disappointing. Students who already know a lot about the subject can get a pretty easy A without attending the (super boring) lectures. I think this class is of about average difficulty and workload for those who are less experienced.

This was the first polisci class I took at UCLA. The professor made it an incredibly engaging experience and was definitely a great introduction to the pre-major. You will do well if paying attention and attending the lectures, but there is studying required for success on exams.

Professor Tausanovitch has nothing to do with the class besides being the professor it is listed under, it is all based on the TA (Kenton Card for Fall 2019). Kenton was not very organized, and not very helpful- I found the meetings to be a waste of time. It's nice that students can get academic credit related to an internship but do not assume this is an easy A just because there is not lecture - it is a decent amount of work to do the weekly essays as well as prepare the final research paper. I think if I had known the details, I would have not found it worth it to do it while doing my internship and would have rather taken an additional poli sci class where I could have learned a new topic.

Overall, I found this class to be really easy and the grading to be extremely lenient. For someone that actually did the readings, I will say that the lecture readings were completely useless as they weren't really tied to the lecture (sometimes he wont even mention them) and are not important for the midterm or final. If you took AP gov or an equivalent government course, I would just focus on taking note of the lecture slides to get you through exams (if you haven't taken a gov course before, you might want to consider reading the textbook, but the content is fairly easy for the most part). As for the section readings, I would encourage to read these because you are quizzed on them during discussion (only 3 questions each / 2% of the grade). The section readings were not very interesting, but I found them to get better as the class goes on (more because I figured out what information to avoid reading and what to be more attentive to). In terms of the 5 page essay assigned, the graders are very nice (the mean was like a 93 with the lowest score being a 78) and you could totally do it in a day and still expect a good grade as long as you put some type of effort into it. The midterm and final were really easy (a lot of common sense tbh) and are easy to get good grades on as long as you study the lecture slides. The lectures for the most part are pretty boring. Tausanovitch is extremely qualified in his field, although is not very engaging. I would tend to sleep through some lectures. Overall, I found this to a good introductory POLI SCI course and would strongly encourage others to take it for a pre req or GE.