Harvard University Spring Semester 2016 Government 94: Is Democracy History or Destiny? Prof. Sa'adah Seminar Description Democratic theory and practice emerged in specific historical circumstances. Those circumstances no longer exist, even in the countries where democratic government is most securely established. What then is democracy's future? Will democracy soon be history, or will it rebound from its current difficulties, as it has on many past occasions (e.g. in post-­‐1945 Europe)? Will China be democratic in fifty years? Will Egypt? Will the US? How have economic change, new technologies, cultural trends, shifts in the international system affected the putative ideational, social, and institutional foundations on which democratic government rests? How can we think intelligently about democracy's recurrent crises and the enormous challenges of democratization? ("Elections in the USSR: The Communist Party Holds Its Ground;" Paris daily mocks Soviet elections in its March 4, 1984 issue) Goals and Requirements The purpose of this seminar is, obviously, to help participants think about the past, present, and future of democratic politics. Somewhat less obviously, the purpose is to nurture a discussion of how we understand the possibilities and limits of political change. Perhaps most importantly, the goal of the seminar is to help students develop their intellectual skills in general and their research skills in particular. The assignments and class schedule have been designed with these goals in mind. The seminar will meet on Wednesday from 2:00 to 4:00. Absence from class, except in the case of documented illness, will have nasty consequences. Students will be evaluated for class participation (30%), assigned response papers (30%), and a Gov 94—Spring 2016—Prof. Sa'adah 2 research project (40%). Grades will reflect how well a student contributes to an informed, inclusive discussion of each week's readings, plus an oral research presentation during the last two weeks of classes (participation), the student's ability to capture and summarize in writing key arguments or questions in the readings (response papers), and the execution of a research project resulting in a 16-­‐ to 20-­‐
page (double-­‐spaced, 12 point font, exclusive of notes and bibliography) term paper on a topic determined in consultation with the instructor. Students should strive to formulate a research question as early in the term as possible; they must have submitted a one-­‐page (double-­‐spaced) proposal by noon on Friday, February 19, 2016. A full first draft of the research paper will be due by noon on Wednesday, April 13, 2016. Final papers will be due by noon on Sunday, May 1, 2016. There will be no individual extensions on written assignments. All work should be submitted electronically; guidelines will be posted. (Shakespeare & Co. poster, Lenox, MA) Honor Code and Collaboration Policy All students are reminded of their obligations under the Honor Code: Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs. Gov 94—Spring 2016—Prof. Sa'adah 3 Social inquiry is a cross between an individual and a team sport. This can sometimes seem confusing, but figuring out the boundaries of acceptable behavior is part of what you are required to do in college. In class discussions or outside of class, you will be asked to help your classmates clarify their understandings of the issues and readings we will be entertaining. But any misrepresentation of someone else's work or ideas as your own is cheating and in this seminar, it may be considered grounds for failure. We will discuss academic integrity in class, and handouts on sourcing will be posted on the course website. My office is in CGIS Knafel 437 (I am squatting Prof. Rosenblum's office). My regular office hours are Thursdays, 9:30-­‐11:30. I can always be reached by email: anne.saadah@dartmouth.edu. If you have any special circumstances relevant to your academic performance, please come see me during the first week of the term. (mural by José Clemente Orozco, Baker-­‐Berry Library, Dartmouth College) Syllabus Part I Introduction: Democracy in Theory and History Week 1 Introductory Discussion (Jan. 27) David Kirkpatrick, "New Populism Puts Old Guard on Defensive: From the US to Europe, Rallying on Insecurity," The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2015 Week 2 Prognoses (Feb. 3) Readings: Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" in The National Interest, No. 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 3-­‐18 Gov 94—Spring 2016—Prof. Sa'adah 4 Samuel Huntington, "The United States," in Michel Crozier et al., The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (NY: Trilateral Commission, 1975), pp. 59-­‐118 (pdf available online) Week 3 Democracy Defined: Inclusion and Contestation (Feb. 10) Readings: Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale UP, 1971), pp. 1-­‐33 David Collier and Steven Levitsky, "Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research," World Politics, Vol. 49, No. 3 (April 1997), pp. 430-­‐451 Part II Contexts and Conditions Week 4 The Institutional Bases of Democracy: States and Statiness (Feb. 17) Readings: Stephen Krasner, "Sovereignty," Foreign Policy, No. 122 (Jan-­‐Feb 2001), pp. 20-­‐
29 Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale UP, 1968), pp. 1-­‐92 Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual
Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist
Countries,” in World Development, vol. 21, no. 8 (1993), p. 1355-1369
Nazih N. Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), pp. 447-­‐459. Stephen Krasner, "The Day After," Foreign Policy, No. 146 (Jan-­‐Feb 2006), pp. 68-­‐
70 Gov 94—Spring 2016—Prof. Sa'adah 5 ("Pardon the inconvenience, we're building a country," graffiti on a wall in Beirut, Lebanon, 2012) Week 5 The Social Bases of Democracy (Feb. 24) Readings: Seymour Martin Lipset, "Economic Development and Democracy," in Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981 (Doubleday, 1960)], pp. 17-­‐63 Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale UP, 1971), pp. 48-­‐104 Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Oxford UP, 2013), pp. 3-­‐13, 19-­‐44 Recommended: Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2015), first and last chapters, or read around on Putnam's website Gov 94—Spring 2016—Prof. Sa'adah 6 Norman Rockwell, "Four Freedoms," here "Freedom of Speech," 1943 Week 6 The Ideational Bases of Democracy: Truth, Toleration, and Opposition (Mar. 2) Readings: Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale UP, 1971), pp. 105-­‐188 Russell Muirhead, The Promise of Party in a Polarized Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2014), Ch. 2-­‐5, pp. 23-­‐145 Ben Zimmer, "Truthiness," New York Times Magazine, Oct. 13, 2010; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17FOB-­‐onlanguage-­‐
t.html?_r=0 Recommended: John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), entire Recommended: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Ch. 2 ("Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion"), and Representative Government, Ch. 7 ("Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority") Recommended: Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World's Political-­‐
Economic Systems (NY: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 3-­‐89, 119-­‐233 Week 7 Democracy in Action: The Centrality of Opposition (Mar. 9) Readings: Robert A. Dahl, Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven: Yale UP, 1966), Ch. 11-­‐12, pp. 332-­‐386 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, pp. 28-­‐41, on Canvas Recommended: Ellen Lust, "Opposition Cooperation and Uprisings in the Arab World," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Dec. 2011, 38(3), pp. 425-­‐
434, on Canvas Recommended: Hendrik Kraetzschmar, "Mapping Opposition Cooperation in the Arab World: From Single-­‐Issue Coalitions to Transnational Networks," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Dec. 2011, 38(3), pp. 287-­‐302, on Canvas Gov 94—Spring 2016—Prof. Sa'adah 7 ("Uprising of women in the Arab world," graffiti from a wall in Beirut, 2012) Part III: Challenge and Change Week 8 Citizenship in the Age of Globalization (Mar. 23) Readings: New York Times, "The Year in Pictures," http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/27/sunday-­‐review/2015-­‐
year-­‐in-­‐pictures.html Transcript of Republican Party presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas, Dec. 15, 2015; available online (e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/us/politics/transcript-­‐republican-­‐
presidential-­‐debate.html?_r=0) Linda Bosniak, "Citizenship Denationalized," Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring 2000), pp. 447-­‐509; stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20644737 Optional, and for those who read German: Angela Merkel, Speech to the CDU Party Conference, December 15, 2015; German text posted Week 9 Statiness Revisited (Mar. 30) Readings: Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale UP, 1971), pp. 189-­‐201 Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-­‐Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Recommended: Peter Gourevitch, "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics," International Organization, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Autumn 1978), pp. 881-­‐912 Gov 94—Spring 2016—Prof. Sa'adah 8 Week 10 Corruption, Governance, and Democracy (Apr. 6) Readings: Tim Parks, "Holding Italy Hostage" NY Review of Books, blog, Aug. 24, 2013, and "Can Italy Change," NY Review of Books, blog, Jan. 31, 2012 International Crisis Group, "Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency" (Africa Report No. 216, 3 April 2014), available online Recommended: Karl Maier, This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis (Boulder, CO: Westview: 2000), entire Recommended: Bo Rothstein, The Quality of Government: Corruption, Social Trust, and Inequality in International Perspective (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 1-­‐33 Week 11 Never Say Never, Never Give Up (Apr. 13) Readings: Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale UP, 1971), pp. 33-­‐47, 202-­‐227 Malcolm Gladwell, "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted," The New Yorker, Oct. 4, 2010 Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965, 1967, 1969), pp. 3-­‐77, 365-­‐426 Recommended: Bo Rothstein, The Quality of Government: Corruption, Social Trust, and Inequality in International Perspective (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 77-­‐119, 144-­‐163, 207-­‐225 Week 12 Student Presentations (Apr. 20) Week 13 Student Presentations (Apr. 27)