Seminar Democracy and Governance outside the OECD

Course Description The 'waves' of democracy since the Second World War, fears of a stabilization of hybrid regimes or an autocratic revival as well as the Color Revolutions in several states of the former USSR and, most recently, the Arab Spring – all these phenomena highlight the practical need for sound analytical concepts and theories in order to study the causes and effects of democratization, democracy and governance. The primary aim of the course is to supply the analytical tools to comprehend and study these past and current issues systematically. The course draws on a rich set of definitions, typologies, theories and empirical indicators from classical and recent contributions in comparative politics, democratization studies and development studies. It thus provides insights into the various definitions of democratization, democracy and governance, discusses the issue of applying concepts to different contexts and introduces micro-, meso- and macro-level theories in studying the causes and effects of democratization, democracy and governance. In line with these objectives, the course is divided into three sections. Part I serves to introduce the analytical concepts as well as the empirical measures available to study the causes and effects of democratization, democracy and good governance and addresses the issue of conceptual stretching. Part II covers the causes of democratization, democracy and governance both theoretically as well as empirically with reference to Asian, Latin American and African countries. Part III addresses the effects of democracy and governance on social and economic development and regime persistence, again by referring to case and comparative studies. Course Readings • Acemoglu, Daron/Robinson, James A., 2006: Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Cambridge. • Collier, David/Mahon, James E., 1993: Conceptual 'Stretching' Revisited. Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis, in: The American Political Science Review 87(4), pp. 845-855. • Collier, David/Adcock, Robert, 1999: Democracy and Dichotomies. A Pragmatic Approach, in: Annual Review of Political Science 2, pp. 537-565. • Diamond, Larry, 2010: Why are there no Arab Democracies?, in: Journal of Democracy 21(1), pp. 93-104. • Hoffmann, Katharina, 2010: The EU in Central Asia. Successful good governance promotion?, in: Third World Quarterly 31(1), pp. 87-103. • Holmberg, Sören et al., 2009: Quality of Government. What you get, in: Annual Review of Political Science 12, pp. 135-161. • Haerpfer, Christian W. et al., 2009: Democratization, Oxford. • Kaufman, Daniel/Kraay, Aart, 2008: Governance Indicators. Where are we, where should we be going?, in: The World Bank Research Observer 23(1), pp. 1-30. • Linz, Juan J./Stepan, Alfred, 1996: Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, London. • Olson, Mancur, 1993: Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development, in: The American Political Science Review 87(3), pp. 567-576. A detailed schedule of the required and supplementary readings for each session will be provided at the beginning of the winter term. Sozialwissenschaften Universität Duisburg-Essen WS 2011/12 IBEP M.A., Internationale Beziehungen und Entwicklungspolitik (Master of Arts) M.A. Breustedt Wiebke M.A