The Rise and Fall of Democracies around the World
The late 1980s was an exciting period for students of comparative politics, as it saw an explosion in the number of countries seeking to become more democratic – including Taiwan. However, several of the newly-democratic nations of the 1980s are now under non-democratic governments once again, and many political scientists are beginning to wonder whether even well-established democracies such as the United States might be facing what they call a “democratic recession.” In this course we will:
- Explore problems of definition and measurement in democratization studies;
- Read key theories of democratic transition;
- Consider evidence about how a democratic transition affects a nation’s political, economic, and social conditions; and
- Consider the evidence for a “democratic regression.
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