At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama called for an "End of history". According to Fukuyama, Western liberal democracy has won the competition over the best governing system. Thirty years later, this system has come under increasing pressure.

On the one hand, some citizens feel that existing parties do not adequately represent them. Either they refrain from voting or turn to parties that neglect the basic principles of democracy. On the other hand, external challenges like the climate crisis raise questions about the output legitimacy of democratic regimes. Additionally, state actors are increasingly embedded into international systems, constraining their policy-making capacity.

The seminar is structured along three blocks. In the first block, we will learn about the essential features of a democracy and discover what shapes the quality of democracy. In a second block, we will engage with different empirical analyses of the current state of democratic systems. We will zero in on how actors, such as far-right parties, challenge democracies; and how democracy is challenged by economic, health and climate crises. In the third block, we will look at and develop potential solutions and scenarios of how democracy could cope with the current challenges.

This is a reading-intense seminar which comprises both books and empirical articles. At the end of the seminar, students will have acquired a substantive understanding of the different dimensions on which democracy can be evaluated. As some of the academic articles we will read use methods like survey experiments and causal inference designs, students will also be capable of understanding the logic behind (quasi-) experimental designs.

Kurs im HIS-LSF