POLITICAL SCIENCE 790:395:13
Prof. Jan Kubik
M (2:15-5:15)
211 HICKMAN HALL
OFFICE: 505 HICKMAN HALL
E-mail: kubik@rci.rutgers.edu
Tel: (848) 932-9261
Office hours: Monday, 10:00 -12:00 and after class
Democratization and Protest Politics in the Globalizing World
(Syllabus: version 2.0)
SPRING 2014
Winston Churchill once famous quipped: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for
all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” (from a House of Commons speech,
November 11, 1947). Many people around the world share this assessment, as they rise to challenge
dictatorial regimes. The popular wave of protests helped to bring down the communist regimes in
Eastern Europe and Eurasia in 1989/91. Since then the world experienced at least two major waves
of mass protest: the color revolutions in the early 2000s (mostly in the countries of the former
Soviet Bloc) and the so-called Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa. In all of these
protest waves the demand for democracy was on the banners of the protestors. And yet, in many of
these societies the establishment of democracy proved to be very difficult; sometimes one
authoritarian regime replaced another.
It seems to be easier to take down the unwanted regime than to build a new, more democratic one.
The fully-fledged and stable democracy seems to be difficult to construct and maintain, although
many people around the world covet it with passion; its imperfect forms, democracies with
adjectives, are common and many countries experience authoritarian reversals. Democratic
systems have been prone to crises and breakdowns, and their “quality” has varied tremendously
across time and space. Recently there have been many debates about democracy’s weaknesses and
its peculiar tendency towards “exhaustion,” both in the well-established democratic states and the
newly democratizing ones. In many countries, trust in democratic institutions is declining and there
is also a lot of talk about democratic deficit, both at the level of states and in the international
arena.
The course is designed to familiarize students with: (a) the basic ideas of the literature on protest
politics and social movements, (b) dominant current attempts to define and measure democracy, (c)
the state of knowledge on the relationship between protest politics and democratization in the
globalizing world. Hence, we will spend some time studying globalization and the relationship
between democracy, capitalism’s changing form, and globalization.
This class is conceived as a workshop/seminar, therefore each student is expected to be actively
involved and work, with his/her team members on research projects (explained below). I am
inviting you to my “kitchen,” to observe how a researcher develops the topic, reviews the literature,
prepares research tools, conducts research, and writes up the results. I hope that our conversations
will help us become better researchers and more careful thinkers.
For the last several years I have been working on the relationship between democracy and civil
society (including protest politics and social movements). During the last quarter of the
twentieth century civil society became one of the most celebrated and debated concepts in the
social sciences. The concept has been used to discuss the fall of state socialism and the emergence of
postcommunist politics, postcolonial power struggles in Africa, the “democratic deficit” in the
Western world, and post-authoritarian politics in South and Central America. It has been
constructed, deconstructed, reconstructed by the whole army of philosophers, political scientists,
anthropologists and sociologists and yet there is no consensus of what this concepts means and
which real life phenomena are denoted by it. I will continue my work on developing a better
understanding of the situation of civil society in the post-communist countries, but you are invited
to pursue your own interests, as long as you stay focused on the country you will be asked to chose
and conceptualize your work within the main topic of the class: the relationship between
democratization and protest politics (and civil society) in the globalizing world.
REQUIREMENTS
Students are required to attend all seminar meetings and read the materials according to the
schedule. Please provide me with a written explanation of each absence. Poor attendance (more
than two absences) will lower your grade. The final grade will be based on a portfolio that MUST
include four elements: (1) a record of attendance, preparation, and participation (25%), (2) three
short essays and/or reviews (25%), (3) team report (25%), and (4) individual country report (25%).
Participation and preparation will be assessed in two ways: (a) student’s active participation in class
discussions (including providing comments on other people’s work) and (b) the execution of the
individual and group reports.
Each student is responsible for completing four assignments:
(1) Three short reviews (3 pages each, double-spaced) on the assigned books and articles.
(2) Contribution to a brief (15 minutes) report on the group project and the relevant current
events in their region the group studies. Presentation of these reports will take place during
the last 2-3 meetings of the class.
(3) Group report. The class will be divided into several research teams. For example, each
team may (a) select a region (Latin America, South East Asia, Western Europe, East Central
Europe, former Soviet Union, etc.), (b) work on it for the duration of the semester, (c)
prepare a report on their findings, and (d) present it in class. This report may be deposited
on the Sakai website as a power point presentation or a word document.
(4) Individual report. Each student will prepare a report on his/her country. Reports will
be uniformly structured according to an analytical scheme developed in class (due shortly
after May 5, TBA).
REQUIRED TEXTS
Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement. Revised Third Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
2
The remaining readings are available on the course website.
SCHEDULE
WEEK 1
Monday
01.27.
WEEK 2
Monday
02.03.
Introduction: goals of the course.
Organizational matters: formation of research teams and distribution of tasks.
Review of the major concepts and approaches. History of research on contentious
politics and social movements.
Democracy and democratization. Regime types (and different opportunities).
Democracy: definitions and realities.
READING: Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, “Democracy and Its Arenas,”
“’Stateness,’ Nationalism, and Democratization,” and “Modern Nondemocratic
Regimes,” in Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, 1996, pp. 3-54.
Charles Tilly, Democracy, chapter 1, pp. 1-24.
WEEK 3
Monday
02.10.
How to analyze protest (contentious) politics? The Tilly/Tarrow framework.
WEEK 4
Monday
02.17.
Organizations, structures, networks.
WEEK 5
Monday
02.24.
Meaning and frames.
WEEK 6
Monday
03.03.
Threats and opportunities.
WEEK 7
Monday
03.10.
States, nations, and movements.
WEEK 8
Monday
03.17.
READING: Power in Movement, “Introduction” and chapters 1 and 2: “Contentious
Politics and Social Movements” and “Modular Collective Action.”
READING: Power in Movement, chapters 5 and 6: “Acting Contentiously” and
“Networks and Organizations.”
READING: Power in Movement, chapter 7: “Making Meaning.”
READING: Power in Movement, chapter 8: “Threats, Opportunities, and Regimes.”
READING: Power in Movement, chapters 3 and 4: “Print and Association” and
“States, Capitalism, and Contention.”
Spring break
3
WEEK 9
Monday
03.24.
WEEK 10
Monday
03.31.
Transnationalism and globalization of contention.
READING: The New Transnational Activism, chapters 1 and 2: pp. 1-34 AND Power
in Movement, Chapter 12: “Transnational Contention.”
Rooted Cosmopolitans and Transnational Activists. Diffusion and Modularity.
Shifting scale.
READING: The New Transnational Activism, Chapters: 3 (“Rooted Cosmopolitans
and Transnational Activists”), 6 (“Diffusion and Modularity”), and 7 (“Shifting the
Scale of Contention”).
WEEK 11
Monday
04.07.
The Global in the Local. The Local in the global.
WEEK 12
Monday
04.14.
Student projects: team reports and individual presentations.
WEEK 13
Monday
04.21.
Student projects: team reports and individual presentations.
WEEK 14
Monday
04.28.
Student projects: team reports and individual presentations.
WEEK 15
Monday
05.05.
READING: The New Transnational Activism, Chapters: 4 (“Global Framing”), 8
(“Externalizing Contention”), and 9 (“Building Transnational Coalitions”).
Conclusions/Summary
4