Professor Panagia was an extremely helpful and interesting professor, who had a variety of ideas to contribute to the class. Your grade is based off of only four essay assignments and participation, so you have to be good at writing papers (max word count was 1000 though, so nothing bad). I went to office hours the first week, and my TA's office hours once, and got an A- in the course, however I know people who went more often who did better, so I would take advantage of the opportunity. My TA wasn't the most helpful, but overall I didn't find the course too challenging. A couple of warnings-
The professor absolutely truly does NOT lecture on the essay assignments. That is 100% true. You have to go to lectures because you want to learn more about the philosophers and are genuinely interested in the subject, because ultimately it will not help you write your paper.
I did not find this course particularly challenging, but that is because I have studied philosophy over four times in the past two years. If you have never taken philosophy before, it might be much harder for you to be able to interpret the works correctly AND apply it to politics without stumbling on one of the essays. Possibly dangerous, since each essay is 20% of your grade.
Overall, if you genuinely like the subject, the professor is humorous and brilliant when it comes to subject material, and I enjoyed the course immensely.

Overall, it was an interesting class and Panagia is an engaging lecturer. His lectures do not explicitly link back to the papers, so you need to do some research and thinking on your own to answer the prompts. This should've been an easy A, but my TA had ridiculous expectations for the papers compared to other TAs and the questions on his pop quizzes are unreasonable. I still cannot fathom why he thinks we need to memorize quotes or minor details from the texts in order to show that we understand the main contentions of the authors (which is all we really need to get out of the texts in order to write the papers). Do NOT get Naveed as your TA. He is not only unreasonable, but also unprofessional. I went to his office hours and he was so distraught from the presidential election results that he did not even attempt to properly address my questions. Complete waste of my time.

As PoliSci major, I enjoyed the class. The professor's an engaging lecturer, and he brings a lot of clarity to the readings, which can be tough to understand at times, especially what their relevance is to political science. The assignments consist of four papers, which have fairly challenging prompts, so it helps to go to lecture to really get the material. There are also some other small grades, like him randomly taking attendance once, a participation grade in discussion, and small pop quizzes in discussion which are easy to ace if you've done the reading. Anyway, I'd recommend taking the class if you have an interest the subject, as Panagia is a very capable professor, and the class has definitely increased my interest in political theory.

As one of the reviewers stated below, it's 4 essays over the entire quarter, each one 3 pages long.
Lectures are generally boring, just with the professor babbling on about philosophical stuff, so you can skip those to save you the boredom.
The textbooks are mostly just classical novels you can get for a couple of bucks, and are really only needed for citing in your essays.
For my TA, I chose Jared, who was pretty laid back and was okay with you using electronics during section.
As for my essays, I started/finished each one within a day of the dates they were due and got 17/19/19/19 out of 20, with just a simple quote from each of the books needed for each essay.
Take this class if you want yourself an easy A provided you have a good TA to grade the essays.

JUST DON'T TAKE IT

This class consists of 4 essays and participation in discussion. Don't be fooled it's a challenging class and Is more of a philosophy class than political science. I would definitely not take it if it is your first class in poly sci. With the grade only being 4 essays it's challenging to get a good grade if you don't do well on one, but having the right TA can make all the difference. I had Aerick and he was great so if you do take the class try to get him

This class was very manageable. I received an A, but I went to every office hour my TA had, The grade consists of 8 essays and thats it, and the TAs grade it with a rubric from Panagia, so go to office hours and they will help you. I didn't go to lecture, I just read the 5 pages of the book that mattered (out of the 60 that were assigned) and then went to office hours and I passed the writing assignments. Good way to start off Poli. Sci.

Final grade: A

I really enjoyed having Professor Panagia. He always came to lecture with a great sense of humor and was overall enjoyable to listen to (and had great outfits). The readings were extensive but going to discussion definitely helped and your grade was based on 8 essays (300-500 words) and participation in discussion. It was overall a relatively easy class but if you failed anymore than 2 of the essays your grade would seriously suffer. I recommend going to office hours in order to gauge what your TA is looking for in the essays. Personally, I passed all 8 essays and did not find it difficult to write on the prompts given, but I also went to office hours almost every week.

This was the first class that I took at UCLA an I straight up loved it. Panagia made the material (which I previously thought would be boring) very intriguing and accessible. Lectures were helpful, but honestly where I got most of my fodder for essays was in my discussions with him during office hours. I went to office hours almost every week, and because of that, the essays were exponentially easier for me. The readers were sometimes dry, but Panagia made sure to make them at least a little more clear.

I passed all 8 essays and got an A in the class.

I was able to learn very much about philosophy, improve my ability to read antiquated works, and discover the origins of many political ideas by taking this course. However, attendance was taken far too seriously.