SOCS 647	  								   	summer 2011
DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP:
POLITICS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

INSTRUCTOR:	   Peter Rutland, prutland@wesleyan.edu; tel. 2483.

ASSESSMENT:       1)   Four 3-5 page assignments, two due by 6 August and two by 13 August. [10 points each]
		    2)   Final paper due on August 28. [40 points]
 		    3)   Class participation, including familiarity with the required readings. [20 points]

THE CLASS:	    Meets 9.00-5.00, 15-19 August.

I have adapted this class from 13 weeks to fit the one week format. This has some disadvantages – I would prefer to have students write the case studies after I have given lectures on different approaches.  But this should also work.

GOALS OF THE COURSE

The world’s political systems are increasingly polarized between countries that have ‘made it’ into liberal democracy and market capitalism, and those that remain mired in poverty, stagnation, inequality and war. But only by studying individual countries can we understand the variety of political and economic systems and the complexity of the modern world, despite the homogenizing process of globalization. One of the main goals of the course is therefore to teach some appreciation for the specifics of individual countries, how their historical trajectory has shaped the political institutions and values that are in operation today. 

At the same time the course aims to provide a conceptual framework, a box of tools in order to help answer the question of who rules, and how, in each of the world’s 195 countries. In fact you will be offered three theoretical frameworks, prisms through which to view the world. Each of these theories is both descriptive and normative - they both describe the world and make a value judgment about what is right and wrong.  The three theories we will examine are: 1) Liberal democracy or pluralism; (2) Marxism and the theory of imperialism; and (3) Elite theory. 

The course alternates between discussion of these conceptual approaches and country case studies. We will try to survey the whole range of political systems currently in operation, looking at the First World (Europe and Japan), what used to be the Second World (Russia and China), and the Third World (India, Iran, South Africa). The goal is to learn how to sift through the record and grasp the unique historical, cultural and institutional factors that are key to understanding the political dynamics of a given country. 

Note that this course is Comparative Politics, focusing on political process within a given country. A different field of political science, International Relations, deals with global issues and institutions that go beyond a state’s borders.

READINGS

Required books:		Robert Dahl		Polyarchy (Yale University Press, 1972)
Jeff Kopstein & 		Comparative Politics: Interests, Identities and Institutions 
  	  Mark Lichbach (eds) 	   (Third Edition: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
			Karl Marx & F. Engels	The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classic edition, 1998)

All the readings on the syllabus (except these books) have hyperlinks that will take you direct to the article on the web or in the Wesfiles folder for this course.  If you have any problem accessing the readings, please email me!
Required readings are the first items listed for each class. 
Supplementary readings are extra sources that I will be discussing in class. The more of them you are able to read, the more you will get out of the class. 
There are many novels and movies that raise the issues in this course. These two will discussed in the class:
George Orwell, 1984  (1948)  		Maria Vargas Llhosa, The Feast of the Goat (2002)

THE ASSIGNMENTS

Students are expected to write four 3-5 page assignments and submit them by email to the instructor before the class begins.

Beware of plagiarism i.e. using material not written by yourself and without clear attribution to the source. 
Always include “quotation marks” if you copy material from a website or other source. 

1)	Theoretical approaches

Write two critical book reports on each of two of the three theoretical approaches being discussed in the course: liberal democracy (Dahl); Marxism (Communist Manifesto); and elitism (Higley).  I would like these to be emailed to me by 6 August.
There is no need – nor space, in 3-5 pages – to write a summary of the theory. Rather I am looking for your own personal and critical reaction to the author’s approach. Do you find it relevant or irrelevant to understanding 21st century world politics? What did you find new or interesting in the work? What for you are its strong points and weak points? 

2)	Case studies

Each student will write case studies of two randomly assigned countries beyond the major countries discussed in class.  You can ask to change your allotted country if you have a strong desire to do a particular country. I would like these to be emailed to me by 13 August.
Each paper should be 3-5 pages long, consisting of a summary of the political history of the country and an explanation of how the current political system works. Who rules, and how? Is the political situation stable or unstable?  What are the threats to stability?  
Evaluate each country from the standpoint of democratic theory:
-	If they are a democracy, how does their system compare to that of the US? Is it weaker in some respects, and stronger in other respects? 
-	If it is not a democracy, what would have to happen for it to become a stable democracy?

WEB SOURCES

Here is a list of some of the most useful sites, in roughly descending order of importance.

Freedom House			Annual country reports.
BBC country profiles		Archive of recent articles on each country in the world. Note also the handy 
				chronology of major political events.
CIA World Factbook		Basic facts.
State Department country notes	Detailed descriptions of institutions and recent events.
New York Times 			Search the NYT for recent articles using the country box on the right. 
Encyclopedia Britannica 		Type in a country’s name and you will find a summary article plus on the top left 
				a button ‘Year in review’ analyzing the major political events each year.
The Economist			File of articles on individual countries – not updated since April 2010.
Open Democracy			European site with lively articles about democratic prospects around the world.
Human Development Report	Development statistics, from the United Nations Development Project. 
Gapminder			Click on Gapminder World to load a striking graphics program using HDR data.

Useful academic journals:   	Current History 		The Journal of Democracy	 	World Politics					Comparative Politics	Comparative Political Studies
Monday				THE ROOTS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY		
morning
			
	We start with a general discussion. We are living in a democracy - but what exactly is a democracy?  
We begin by looking at the roots: Athenian direct democracy, and the modern version combining individual 
	rights and representative government that emerged in the 18th century (see the essay by Benjamin Constant).  	What is unique about the US constitution? 
How relevant is Tocqueville’s model of American civil society in the 1830s? Was it historically accurate? 
What can it teach us about democracy in the contemporary world?

Supplementary reading:
	Aristotle			Politics (350 BC), Book 4 
		James Madison		The Federalist Papers (1787) no. 10
		Benjamin Constant    	The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to That of the Moderns 	(1816)
	Wikipedia		‘Human Rights’						
		Alexis de Tocqueville  	Democracy in America (1836)

Monday			THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY
afternoon

	How did democracy evolve as the right to vote expanded during the 19th and 20th centuries? 
	Why did it take so long for women to get the vote?
	What is Anthony Down’s ‘median voter theorem’?
	What is the relationship between capitalism and democracy? 
	How does Freedom House measure democracy in the contemporary world? 
		
Core reading:		
Robert Dahl		Polyarchy (Yale University Press, 1972)
	Philippe Schmitter  	‘What Democracy Is...and Is Not,’ Journal of Democracy, 2/3, 
	 & Terry Lynn Karl	 summer 1991

Supplementary reading: 
		Anthony Downs		An Economic Theory of Democracy (1958) ch. 8	
		Robert Putnam		‘Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital,’ Journal 
					 of Democracy, 6/1, Jan 1995
Caroline Pateman		‘Three questions about womanhood suffrage,’ from Caroline Daley & 
					  Melanie Nolan (eds.) Suffrage and Beyond, 1995
		Russell Dalton et al	‘Understanding democracy,’ Journal of Democracy, 18/4, Oct 2007
Seymour M. Lipset	‘The social prerequisites of democracy revisited,’ American 
					  Sociological Review, vol. 59, Feb 1994
John Keane		The Life and Death of Democracy (2009)
Charles Tilly		Democracy (2007)

Tuesday			THREE MODERN DEMOCRACIES
Morning
					(1) BRITAIN

	What are the differences between the US and British democratic traditions? 
	How does a parliamentary 	system differ from a presidential system? 
	What was Thatcherism?  What did New Labour stand for? How is the Tory-Lib Dem coalition working out?

Core reading:
		Jeff Kopstein &Marc  Lichbach 	Comparative Politics (2003) ‘Introduction,’, ch. 1 on Britain 
		Vernon Bogdanor	‘The historic legacy of Tony Blair,’ Current History, March 2007

Tuesday				(2) JAPAN
morning	

	Japan was the first non-European country to modernize itself. After the defeat of Japanese imperialism, it 
	became a democracy – and a close US ally. How successful is the Japanese political and economic model? 
	Japanese parliamentarism works through patronage and consensus: just how democratic is Japan?

Core reading:
		Kopstein & Lichbach 	Comparative Politics, ch. 4 on Japan

	Supplementary reading:
		Steven Vogel		‘Japan’s long road to competitive politics,’ Current History, Sept 2010
Donald Horowitz		‘Electoral systems: a primer for leaders,’ J. of Dem, 14, 4, Oct, 2003  

Tuesday 				(3) INDIA
afternoon		

	India made the transition from colonial rule to become the world’s largest democracy. How can a country 
	that is so poor, and so divided by religious and ethnic strife, sustain itself as a democracy?

	Core reading:
		Kopstein & Lichbach 	Comparative Politics, ch. 8 on India
		Amartya Sen       		 ‘Democracy as a universal value,’ Journal of Democracy, 
					   10/3, July 1999
	Supplementary reading:
		Ashutosh Varshney 	‘India: Why democracy survives’ Journal of Democracy, 9/3, July 1998  		Sumit Ganguly		‘Six decades of independence,’ Journal of Democracy, 18/3, July 2007
		Sumit Ganguly		‘India’s multiple revolutions,’ Journal of Democracy, 13/1, Jan. 2002 
		Indrani Bagchi		‘A tale of two Singhs,’ Current History, April 2011

Wednesday 			MARXISM AND IMPERIALISM
morning	

	According to Marxists liberal democracy is a fraudulent theory that masks domination by the capitalist 
	class, and national politics as subordinate to an international system of global imperialism. 
	What solutions does Marxism propose? 

Core reading:
		Karl Marx and		The Communist Manifesto (1848)  
		 Frederick Engels 	  

	Supplementary reading:
Phil Gasper		‘The meaning of the Manifesto today,’ Socialist Worker, 18 Nov 2005
	Karl Marx  		‘The future results of the British rule in India’ (1853)
		Vladimir Lenin		Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), ch. 7  
The entire text is online here.
		Andre Gunder Frank	The Development of Underdevelopment (1966)  

Wednesday 				 RUSSIA		
afternoon		

	The Soviet Union tried to build a state on Marxist principles. Their system was copied in two dozen other 	countries, usually with disastrous results. How did the Soviet system work? What is a ‘totalitarian’ regime? 	Why did Gorbachev launch perestroika - and why did it fail?  Where is Russia headed today?

Core reading:
		Kopstein & Lichbach 	Comparative Politics, ch. 5 on Russia
	Leslie Holmes		‘Totalitarianism,’ International Encyc. of Social & Behavioral Sciences

	Supplementary reading:
		Dmitri Trenin		‘The legacy of Vladimir Putin,’ Current History, Oct 2007
		Peter Rutland		‘Russia’s flawed democracy,’ Current History, Oct 1998
Peter Rutland		‘What was communism?,’ Russian History, 37/4, 2010, 427-47
	Robert Orttung		‘Russia 2011,’  Freedom House, 2011
Lilia Shevtsova		‘Medvedev’s Potemkin modernization,’ Current History, October 2010

Wednesday 				 CHINA
afternoon		

	What were the differences between Chinese and Soviet socialism? Why is China, unlike Russia, still a
	 Leninist state? How come China has done a better job of managing the transition to capitalism than Russia?
	 Will China become a democracy in the near future?

	Core reading:
Kopstein & Lichbach	Comparative Politics, ch. 6 on China
		Henry Rowen		‘When will China be free?,’ Journal of Democracy, 18/3, July 2007
New York Times		China 2011 (collection of news reports)

	 CHINA Supplementary reading:
		
Andrew Walder		‘Why China’s regime has staying power,’ Current History, Sept 2009
		Martin Dimitrov		‘The resilient authoritarians,’ Current History, Jan 2008
		Bruce Dickson		‘The future of China’s party state,’ Current History, Sept 2007
		Orion Lewis		A China Model? Understanding the Evolution of a ‘Socialist 
		& Jessica Teets		Market Economy,’ (2009)

Thursday				ELITE THEORY
morning		

	There is a third theory that combines some elements of liberalism and Marxism, while rejecting most of the
ideas in these theories. Elite theory provides a framework for explaining the persistence of authoritarianism. 
Why have there been so many military coups? Why are authoritarian leaders so adept at clinging to power? 
Why do some launch modernizing reforms and not others? 
When do revolutions occur? Can they succeed?

Core reading:	

Samuel P. Huntington    	Political Order in Changing Societies (1971) pp. 1-58
		G. Field and John Higley	Elitism (1980), pp. 1-68  
		‘Coup d’etat’		govintelligence.com

Supplementary reading:

Alan Wolfe		‘The power elite now,’ American Prospect, 10/ 44, 1999 
Timur Kuran 		‘Now out of never:  Element of surprise in the East European revolution                                                        of 1989,’ World Politics, 44, Oct 1991, 7-48
Jim de Fronzo		Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements (1991), ch. 1.

Thursday				SOUTH AFRICA 
afternoon

	A major triumph for democracy was the more or less peaceful collapse of the apartheid regime. Why did the 
	Afrikaners agree to give up power? 	
What are the challenges facing democracy in South Africa? Can it be a model for other African states?  
What does the South African case tell us about the relative merits of Liberal, Marxist and Elite theories?

	Core reading:
		
Kopstein & Lichbach 	Comparative Politics, ch. 10 on South Africa
				 
	Supplementary reading:

Antoinette Handley	‘The new South Africa,’ Current History, May 2004
		Mark Rosenberg		‘South Africa 2010,’ Freedom House, 2010
		R.W. Johnson		‘Zuma’s first year,’ Current History, May 2010
		Robert Mattes		‘South Africa: democracy without the people?’ Journal of Democracy, 
					 12/1, Jan 2002
Thursday 				IRAN  
afternoon 

	Iran had a revolution in 1979, a political earthquake as significant as 1917 or 1989. It introduced a unique 
	modern theocracy and brought Islam back into play as a political force. 

Core reading:
		
Kopstein & Lichbach 	Comparative Politics, ch. 9 on Iran

	Supplementary reading:
		
Bahman Baktiari		‘Iran’s conservative revival,’ Current History, Jan 2007
		Max Rodenbek		‘An American in Iran,’ New York Review of Books, 17 Jan 2008
		Marjane Satrapi		Persepolis (2003)

Friday 				ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY
morning 

What kinds of political system are found in Moslem countries?  What are the dynamics of paternalistic 
systems? What is the impact of oil wealth on democracy?
For many years political scientists debated where there were so few democracies in the Islamic world. Recent decades have seen robust democracies emerge in Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh. But still there were no examples in the Arab world. 

Core reading:

	Eva Bellin		‘The robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East,’ Comparative 
			  Politics 36/2, 2004, 139-157
Pippa Norris & 		Islam and the West: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Hypothesis, 2002
	 Ronald Inglehart

Supplementary reading:

Larry Diamond		“Why are there no Arab democracies?” Journal of Democracy 21/1, 
			  Jan 2010, 93-112
Fares Braizat		‘What Arabs think,’ Journal of Democracy, 21/4, Oct. 2010, 131-138
	Kavita Ramdas		‘Feminists and fundamentalists,’ Current History, March 2006
		Vali Nasr		‘The rise of “Muslim Democracy,”’ Jr. of Democracy, 16/2, Apr 2005
		Adrian Karatnycky	‘Moslem countries and the democracy gap,’ Jr. of Dem, 13/1, Jan 2002
	Michael L. Ross		‘Does oil hinder democracy?’ World Politics, 53: 3, 2001, 325-361

Friday 					THE ARAB SPRING
morning 
		The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya caught everyone by surprise. Why did they break out? 
		How important were social media in these revolutions? 
What are the prospects for stable democracies emerging in the Arab world?

Core reading:
New York Times		Egypt 2011 (collection of news reports)
New York Times		Tunisia 2011 (collection of news reports)
					Egypt: The Demonstrator’s Handbook (2011)
Larry Diamond		‘Liberation technology,’ Journal of Democracy, 21/3, July 2010, 69-83
Tina Rosenberg		‘Revolution U,’ Foreign Policy, 16 February 2011.

               Supplementary reading:
	               Malcolm Gladwell              ‘Small Change. Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” The New Yorker,  	October 4, 2010 
Robert Farris &		“Madison and the smart mob,” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 32: 2, 
Bruce Etling 			2008
Jared Keller		‘Evaluating Iran’s ‘Twitter revolution,” Atlantic, 21 June 2010

Friday					THE FUTURE
afternoon
What are the prospects for democracy world-wide?  Can democracy survive and prosper?
Can it meet the challenges of ethnic conflict, poverty, inequality, and environmental decay? 
Is Zakaria correct in seeing a contradiction between individual rights and electoral democracy?
Has the global war on terror been good, or bad, for the cause of liberty? 

Core reading:

	Arch Puddington			‘Freedom in the world 2011,’ Freedom House
	Fareed Zakaria     		‘The rise of illiberal democracy’ Foreign Affairs, 76/6 Nov 97
		Martin Wolf			‘Lunch with Francis Fukuyama,’ Financial Times, 27 May ‘11

		Supplementary reading:
	
Ian Shapiro			‘The state of democratic theory,’ in Ira Katznelson (ed.),
		          		 Political Science. The State of the Discipline (2002), 235-65
Jane Jaquette			‘Women and democracy,’ Jour. of Democracy, 12/3, Jul 2001 
	Thomas Carothers		‘Democracy’s sober state,’ Current History, Dec 2004
Larry Diamond			‘Why democracies survive,’ Journal of Democracy, 22/1, 
				Jan. 2011. 
Alejandro Toledo			‘Democracy with development,’ Journal of Democracy, 21/4, 
				  Oct. 2010. 
Michael Bratton			‘Anchoring the “D word” in Africa,’ Journal of Democracy, 
				  21/4, Oct. 2010. 
Alan Wolfe			Does American Democracy Still Work? (2006)
		Samuel P. Huntington.		The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Cent. 1991
		Lisa Anderson (ed) 		Transitions to Democracy (1999)
		Adam Przeworski  & M. Alvarez	Democracy and Development  (2000)  
	Ronald Inglehart 			Modernization and Post-Modernization (1997)