I would agree with the other review that Posner is a pretty standard professor for the social sciences, but I wouldn't say that is a bad thing. His lectures are clear and organized. My advice would be to definitely take notes on what he is saying as his slides are mostly just supplementary. The workload was not overwhelming. I would make an effort to stay on top of the readings as that makes the essay work much easier. Definitely take this class! I learned a lot.

I felt like professor posner was really engaging with his lectures but my only qualm with this class is the variability in TA harshness. If you have a lenient TA who is willing to hear your arguments out and actually allows participation, you will likely do well. If that is not the case, you might be unfairly penalized and not get a grade that reflects your understanding of the material.

tldr: the TA matters A LOT

I never write BruinWalk reviews, but I genuinely feel the need to emphasize how incredible this class was. I believe Professor Posner is the best professor I've had at UCLA so far. If I could give him 10/5 stars, I would. In his lectures, he engages with his students by discussing the material instead of relying on slides, which requires students to take notes. I believe that this approach requires more motivation and attentiveness than a class where students can simply go home and copy the slides; however, in my opinion, it is a much better way to learn the material. He is such an engaging lecturer, and he is so knowledgeable about the content. I truly wanted to clap after every lecture because of how inspiring and incredible Professor Posner is. On top of being an incredible professor, he is such a kind soul who truly cares and listens to his students. My TA assigned me a grade for the midterm that I was unhappy with, so I submitted a regrade request to the professor along with a note explaining why I believed I deserved a higher score; he then reevaluated my work and awarded me the score I felt I deserved. Additionally, during this distressing time marked by the ICE protests, he chose to make the final exam optional. Thus, he not only cares about the success of his students but their safety as well.

I would highly recommend this class! Posner is an engaging lecturer and TA Dan Harker was amazing, I would also recommend him. The class was very interesting and also pretty easy. The midterm paper was based on an interesting novel that wasn’t very long and was easy to connect to the course. The midterm and final exams were a lot of writing and definitely required studying but they were very fair. The professor sends out a list of terms to study and if you truly study them well and have attended class regularly then you can do well. It is important that you come to class because lectures are not recorded and the slides posted are mostly just pictures. Also a lot of the concepts he asks about on the final aren’t things you can find enough about online. I went to every lecture but didn’t do any readings and I did well, I just did the necessary readings that I needed to understand certain terms from the final study guide as part of my studying.

Professor Posner is one of the more disorganized professors within the PS department at UCLA. His lectures were all over the place, with no direction or direct focus on a subject, and me and other students would often be lost in his lectures. His tests were also extremely, tough, and both him and the TAs were no help whatsoever. He only passed me because he felt bad for failing my two exams, which I thought I actually did well in. Definitely do not recommend at ALL

I did not like this class. The content itself was okay (although confusing at times), but I did not like how he taught. He uses slides, but only for images; in other words, he does not have words on his slides, and you are required to listen to him lecture for an hour and fifteen minutes straight. At some point, you are bound to doze off during an hour and fifteen minute lecture, and when you stop listening for only a minute, it’s hard to figure out where you are in the lecture. Obviously, this is subjective, and some people may like how Posner teaches. Personally, I just do not do well with straight listening, so I didn’t have the best time. Aside from that, you can tell that Posner is a good guy and very clearly loves to teach. 
Here’s the grading breakdown:
MIDTERM ONE: worth 25% of your grade. The first midterm is an in-class bluebook exam where you identify 6 terms. Basically, Posner wants you to say what the term is and the importance of the term in the context of the course. Posner will provide a list of roughly 30-40 terms a week before the exam and you will study the terms on that list. On the exam day, Posner hands out a paper with 8 terms on it. Of those 8 terms, you pick 6 terms and identify them. 
MIDTERM TWO: worth 25% of your grade. The second midterm is given a week after the first midterm. This midterm is a take home essay and is supposed to be around 5 pages. Posner will post a prompt, and you have 30 hours to complete the midterm. 
FINAL: worth 35% of your grade. A 50-question multiple choice scantron exam. 2/3 of the questions involve content from the second half of the quarter, and 1/3 of questions involve content from the first half of the quarter. PLEASE NOTE — Posner changed the exam format, given that our TAs were striking. Originally, the final exam was going to be a bluebook exam where we were to identify 4-5 terms (similar to the first midterm), answer 2 short answer questions, and answer 1 essay question. If you take this class, you will most likely NOT have the multiple choice final exam; you will probably have the bluebook exam that was originally scheduled before the strike ensued. 
PARTICIPATION AND ATTENDANCE: worth 15% of your grade. This grade depends on your TA. My TA, Paul Bahk, graded this with 10% being actual attendance and 5% being if you participated in the discussion sections. The participation and attendance split will vary depending on your TA.
My biggest complaint about this class was that when Posner gave out the midterm and final terms, a lot of the terms were ones we hadn’t gone over yet. Our classes were Tuesdays and Thursdays, so he would post the terms list on BruinLearn/Canvas on the Tuesday before class, and he would talk about new terms that would be on our midterm and final the Tuesday and Thursday before the exam date. It’s difficult to study terms when you have not learned them yet, and, in my opinion, a little unfair to test us on terms we learned less than 7 days ago. 
To sum it up, I did not like this course. The Bruinwalk reviews made the class seem easy, but it was much more difficult than anticipated. Posner assigns many readings and often introduces 2-4 new terms per lecture. Although this class is labeled as a Methods and Models course, it is more of an International Relations course. If you like IR courses, then you will like this course. If you don’t like IR courses, you will probably not enjoy this class.

Dont take this class if you are looking for an easy polsci class. The only plus about this class is that there are no homework assignments but honestly they would have been helpful to manage your grade. Posner writes nothing on his slides and assigns too many readings. If you do not pay attention to every detail of the lecture, you won't have any way of learning it because he doesn't post recordings either. Both him and the TAs grade exams way too hard and expect you to be an expert and on point about everything that is taught. If you have Meghan Cox as Ta, she will grade way too harshly. The content was interesting but there was little leeway to improve anything in this class.

If you want to do good in this class you need to go to the lectures, because that stuff is all over the tests and essays that he wants from you.

Professor spews the most neoliberal, pro-capitalist, pro-colonial approach to international development that I have ever heard. TA Daniel Carnahan was really self absorbed and graded way harder than the other TAs- if you have him switch out.

Posner lectures really well and his explanations make even the more complex readings very digestible (highly recommend going to lecture first before doing the readings for this reason). There were no required textbooks which was really nice. All readings are posted and there's a decent amount some weeks, but it's never unmanageable.

I thought that the exams were really fair. The midterm was a take-home essay answering a prompt which asks you to draw on material from throughout the course. The other portion was just answering a few ID terms in class, and all potential ID terms are given ahead of time. The final was similar, except it was all in class and there was an additional portion of FRQs.

I was a little concerned going into this class because I had Jacques as my TA and saw the negative reviews about him from previous quarters, but Jacques was a great TA this quarter! He had us work together during discussions to identify key points of readings, help each other with ID terms before exams, and he'd give us exam pointers as well as detailed explanations about more difficult concepts.

Overall highly recommend this class - workload and exams are reasonable and the material itself is super interesting.