Seminar in Comparative Democratization

Course Description

Summary

Against a background of what is often described as a worldwide democratic recession or regression, this advanced seminar surveys current theoretical debates, empirical analyses, and policy conversations on the emergence, survival, challenges, breakdowns, and prospects of global democratization. Themes to be explored include: conceptualizing and measuring varieties of democracy and authoritarianism; democracy and human rights; historic and ongoing waves and modes of transitions between democracy and autocracy; causes and consequences of democratic dysfunction and malaise in established democracies such as India and the United States; the unique complexities or particularities of post-conflict or post-civil war democratization; the case for democracy, the possibilities of democratization, and the future of international democracy assistance in an era of authoritarian reaction and resurgence; and case studies of successful, failed, fragile, ambivalent and precluded democratizations across countries and regions of the Global South and Global North.