Research Guides: Open Educational Resources: Politics

Open Text Collections

MERLOT - Political Science Textbooks
MERLOT is a collection of online resources curated by a community of faculty, staff, and students of higher education. This subset of the MERLOT collection features openly licensed textbooks for use by students and faculty. MERLOT allows its users to rate materials and comment on specific resources.
BC Open Textbooks - Political Science
OpenStax (Rice)
OpenStax believes that everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to teach. Offers thousands of textbooks, all easily accessible online and downloadable to almost any device, anywhere, anytime.
Cornell Open - Political Science
A global open access portal for both new and classic out-of-print titles from the distinguished catalog of Cornell University Press.

Open CourseWare

Open Yale - Political Science Courses
Yale has been home to some of the world’s foremost political scientists and the current faculty includes diverse practitioners of all the major methodologies of political science.
MIT Open CourseWare - Political Science
The Political Science Department today provides high-quality graduate training emphasizing research and apprenticeship relations with faculty members; excellent in international relations and comparative politics; an orientation toward issues of public policy both domestic and international; and a chance to interact with scientists, engineers and other social scientists at MIT.
Open Culture - Political Science Courses
Get 1,300 free online courses from the world's leading universities -- Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford and more. You can download these audio & video courses (often from iTunes, YouTube, or university web sites) straight to your computer or mp3 player.
OpenLearn - Society, Politics & Law
Produced by The Open University, a world leader in open and distance learning, all OpenLearn courses are free to study.
Saylor Academy - Political Science Courses
Saylor Academy is a non-profit organization sponsored by the Saylor Foundation focused on bringing "freely available education to all." Founded in 1999 by Michael Saylor, they have created online courses curated from open content found on the Web. The courses are marketed toward students who just want to learn, and are working on some methods for offering credentials.
American Government (Lumen Learning)
This course teaches the origins and key functions of the American government. Topics include the Constitution; American federalism; civil liberties; civil rights; public opinion and its role in American democracy; voting and elections; the roles of the media, political parties, interest groups, and lobbying; the three branches of government; state and local government; bureaucracy; and the arenas of domestic and foreign policy.
Boundless Political Science (Lumen Learning)

International Politics

International Relations Theory (open textbook)

Published in 2017, “The first half of the book covers the theories that are most commonly taught in undergraduate programmes. The book then expands to present emerging approaches and offer wider perspectives."

International Relations (open textbook)

Open textbook, 2016, "designed to be a ‘Day 0' introduction to International Relations. As a beginner's guide, it has organized into 2 parts (The Basics and Global Issues) and 18 chapters. PDF format.

E-International Relations (multiple open textbooks)

A variety of open access and openly licensed textbooks on both general and specific international relations and foreign policy issues. Each book is free to download, PDF format.

American Government

FAU Textbook (2013)

American Government and Politics in the Information Age (2016)

OpenStax American Government

American Government by The Independence Hall Association

Democracy in Brief

Civic Life

American Government, 2e (OpenStax textbook)

OpenStax textbook, revised Feb. 2019, "designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American Government course."

Constitution Resources

Library of Congress: Constitution Resources

Cornell Law School Constitution with Annotations

Text Resources

Political Science

A Primer on Politics (Creative Commons)

Introduction to Political Science (Saylor Academy)

A survey course that introduces the student to the discipline's concepts, terminology, and methods and explores instances of applied political science through real world examples.

A Primer on Politics (open textbook)

Open textbook adapted by T. M. Sell, past president of the PNW Political Science Association. Organized into 10 chapters.

POLSC101: Introduction to Political Science (Saylor course)

Saylor course "will survey the different ways in which political scientists study the phenomena of politics and will deepen your understanding of political life as both a thinker and a citizen."

POLS 101 – Intro to Political Science (Open Course Library)

SBCTC open course, last updated in 2017. Replaces textbook with online, mostly free, resources: readings, videos, screencasts and more. Includes assessments, discussion questions, and quizzes.

POLSC221: Introduction to Comparative Politics (Saylor course)

Saylor course that "focuses on the formal, public sphere of politics and power relations through a systematic study and comparison of types of government and political systems." Organized into 7 units + student study guides.

Research

Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration

3rd ed. (University of Oklahoma/Open Textbook Library)

Intro to Research Methods in Political Science

CalPoly Professor John Korey offers a free web-based textbook on Research Methods in Political Science that includes links to statistical data to be used with SPSS.