The title of this class is vague, so know that it's a survey of historical approaches to regulation (especially business regulation) in America, starting with the railroads, antitrust movement, moving through WW1, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, and going up through the modern day.

I personally found the material relatively interesting, but be forewarned that he really does just read off of cluttered slides.

Fortunately, both the midterm and final consist of IDs and essay questions that are posted at the beginning of the quarter, so you can start your study guide early. Keep in mind that, although the assigned readings are never, ever, ever discussed in lecture, some of the exam questions will reference concepts or expect examples given only in the books and not brought up in lecture. For those specific questions, make sure to crack open the relevant books before the test.

Professor James is a clear lecturer, though the slides he uploads are sometimes cluttered and overwhelming, it takes a simple few minutes to weed out the extra unneeded ones. He provides the study guides for both the midterm and final at the beginning of the quarter with all of the "IDs" that will be on the exams. There are a lot of them and it seems like a lot of extra memorization, but as you begin to understand the concepts and can connect the ideas, it becomes much easier. You can easily memorize what you need to in the weeks leading up to the exam.

This is the second course I've taken with this professor and I fell that he is one of the better professors that I have taken. This class requires a lot of memorization. It includes a lot of economics topics so that made it a bit harder to understand. Overall great professor and great class.

Let's be honest: if you're considering taking this class, you're probably at the bottom of the barrel in terms of what's been taken on MyUCLA. The good news: this class (despite its boring title) is really straightforward. Professor James is a very clear lecturer and has designed this course very fairly (gives you the study guide for the midterm and final on day 1). He also is probably the most caring professor I've across at UCLA -- he really wants you to understand the content and succeed. It was really refreshing to have a professor that cared about undergrads.

The downside is the tests are basically rote memorization (you'll have to memorize roughly 15 terms for each test, 3-4 of which you're tested on). However, if you cram the week before, it really isn't too bad -- this is coming from someone who hates memorization-based tests.

In sum, this class is surprisingly good. Maybe even better than some "interesting" Pol Sci classes I've taken here workload-wise. I'd recommend taking it if you're looking for a straightforward class to satisfy a requirement.

This course was challenging and lacked clarity. It was difficult to return to the classroom following the start of the quarter being online. Professor James did little to ease this stress. The lack of a hybrid option and limited flexibility when responding to Covid was upsetting. While the class content can be interesting and the exams were straightforward, it was a lot to memorize. Professor James gives incredibly long lectures with many slides. The class grades is mainly composed of the midterm and final exams, which you'll do well on if your TA is nice and if you can memorize information easily. For me, this was possible, but also very time consuming. I feel like the biggest thing I learn in this course was how to memorize information, which is disappointing.

I took this class during an online quarter (Winter 2021); however, I found it to be one of the more intimidating, yet surprisingly succinct courses I took this quarter. I took this along with 140B, a class Professor James also instructed. Honestly, this class was extremely fair in presentation and preparation. Professor James gives you EXACTLY the material that he will test you on for the Midterm and Final (~20 questions in total, 4 for the exam with an additional essay question for final). The class course grade is 10% section participation, 40% midterm and 50% final. For the midterm and final, it is ESSENTIAL to at minimum prepare some variation of a coherent response for each question. You would do fine with simply looking up each key term in his lecture presentations and creating connections with those terms and other general themes in the class. What I am saying is this class is an EASY A if you are willing to put in the work. If you're the type of person to do things last minute - you may struggle when the end of the quarter rapidly approaches; however, if you pace yourself and write mini-paragraphs on each topic that pertains to each question, it is incredibly simple. That being said, it is very important to use any "example" answers he provides for the midterm and final to heart; depending on who your TA is, they generally want to see some connection of terms to other concepts, examples clearly defined and its relevance to the grand theme of the development of the American political economy. Definitely recommend if you are a person who has a bit of free time every week and is willing to do the busy work of going through his rather dense PowerPoints to locate terms. Finally, while his lecture presentations are rather lengthy (110+ slides), you do not need to write EVERYTHING down. You should only scan for the terms/topics which are relevant for the midterm/final. Everything else he presents is simply "supporting scenarios" or additional explanations and evidence to fully illustrate a point. Professor James is, in general, also a really charming person in his own right.

this is a doable class. a bit tedious since professor James literally just reads off his slides. the concepts are interesting but his class is not engaging and will often bore you. midterm is 40%, final is 50%, and participation 10%. the exams are easy if you study (a lot) since there is a lot of info to memorization. he gives study guides for them since day 1 so do them early!

Great class and professor. The only three grades are section participation, the midterm, and the final. For both the midterm and the final, Prof James gives the in-class test's essay prompts out ahead of time so it's super easy to get a good grade if you just have a good idea of what to write. Overall, this is a great class and I will be taking another class with Prof James in the future.

Honestly a really TEDIOUS class. Super boring material, super boring lectures by a professor that just reads the slides and doesn't really engage with the audience (which very very quickly dwindles since everything you need is on the slides and the class is podcasted). The IDs and essays for the midterm are given to you ahead of time in study guides but they're a pain in the ass to memorize in the depth that some of the TAs require. Overall, an insanely boring, tedious, and horrific experience you really shouldn't put yourself through. Take another class that is more interesting and doesn't have such horrific time crunched exams.