211 Silsby Hall
HB 6108
Hanover, New Hampshire 03755
Tel: (603) 646-2544
Fax: (603) 646-2152
E-mail: Government.Department@Dartmouth.EDU
Is "globalization" good for democracy, as its advocates claim, or bad, as its critics assert? Are the arguments made by the two sides new or old? This seminar will try to gain perspective on these questions by considering the political reception of capitalism over time in Europe and North America. As capitalism has evolved, how has it been defined and described in public discourse? What arguments have been made about the relationship between capitalism and democracy? How has capitalism influenced the development of democracy? How has democracy shaped capitalism? Dist: SOC or INT.
1989 was a year of ferment in all socialist countries. However, some socialist regimes crumbled, while others managed to stay in power. In this course we will analyze the experience of China (where protests were violently suppressed and failed to bring about political change), of the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria (where protests were relatively peaceful yet successful), and of Romania (where a bloody revolution was necessary to topple the regime). At the end of the course students will take part in a simulation where they will give advice to North Korean dissidents on how to topple the Communist regime. Dist: SOC or INT, WCult: EU/W.
The course surveys a range of topics relevant to modern Latin American democracy. The central theme is to examine what factors affect the development of democratic institutions and their effectiveness in providing accountable government. We consider the legacy of authoritarian regimes on contemporary politics, the importance of political culture, the role of elections, and a number of alternative frameworks for organizing representation and bargaining among political actors. Dist: SOC.
This course examines the ways in which issues pertaining to gender-related issues are salient to politics in the United States. We will cover four general themes:
Theme One: Gender, Racism and American Political Development. How are gender and race relevant to the development of political parties, political institutions and public policy in the U.S.? How have people organized politically around gender identity and gender-based issues? How did their actions intersect with race-based concerns? We will examine the ways in which gender and race issues were salient to American politics from the pre-Civil War era through the end of the 20th century.
Theme Two: Theories About How Gender is Relevant to Politics. What is gender? Are gender differences biologically determined or culturally constructed? How are the differences between men and women salient to politics? We will examine competing perspectives on these questions.
Theme Three: Gender and Elective Office. The issue of getting more women elected and appointed to political office has received significant attention during the past several decades. Should gender be a consideration in deciding who should represent us in the political arena? Why have the majority of elected political officials been men? What difference do women make? How do men and women differ as politicians?
Theme Four: Law, Courts and Public Policy. What are some of the important laws affecting the status of gender relations? How were they adopted and how have they been implemented? What role have the courts played in shaping the status of women and relations between men and women?
The most traditional of the middle eastern countries, the Arab Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Oman) have witnessed a series of profound economic and political upheavals since their independence that have kept ruling families in power and local societies largely powerless. In this course we investigate how the influx of oil revenues has shaped the institutions and power of the state in each country, how these state institutions in turn determined the range and shape of political interaction between rulers and local societies, and how Islam became a dividing mechanism to obtain legitimacy, used by local rulers and their opponents alike in pursuing alternative versions of how the state should be constructed.
The rule of law exists when laws are enforced with predictability, transparency, and fairness. We will begin the course by analyzing the conditions under which autocracies can develop a limited form of the rule of law, thus questioning the assumption that the rule of law can only arise in democracies. We will also focus on the special challenges facing federal states that attempt to develop the rule of law. We will then turn our attention to the institutions that ensure the operation of the rule of law –namely courts and bureaucracies –and analyze when and how they can become guarantors of the rule of law. Throughout the course, we will read about the rise of corruption in the absence of the rule of law. This course will be broadly comparative, with historical and contemporary examples drawn from East Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, the United States, and, to a lesser extent, from Latin America and Africa. Dist: SOC
Politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizens all have theories about how the political world works. These theories are rarely articulated. Social scientists, in contrast, articulate their theories—but defend different theories and therefore adopt different approaches and methods as they identify puzzles and elaborate arguments. This seminar will compare different social science paradigms, beginning with their assumptions about (i) the nature of the social world as distinct from the physical world, (ii) the nature and limitations of human action, and (iii) the nature of causality in social phenomena. The goal is to enable students better to assess, use, and critique social science wherever they encounter it.
Post-9/11 common sense conceptions of Islam tend to overemphasize its political role and to underestimate its internal political diversity. The seminar assesses these conceptions through a critical survey of the political role of Islam in the contemporary world both on the local level within states and on the global scale. Its central focus is the phenomenon of Islamist political activism with its distinguishable moderate and radical trends. The course examines the contextual causes and effects of this phenomenon, as well as its various antagonisms or alliances with regimes, secularist activists, and foreign powers in phenomena ranging from regime transitions, civil wars, revolution, and terrorism, to liberal reforms and pro-democracy movements. Cases covered include Muslim-majority countries as well as Muslim minorities in Western and non-Western countries.
This course examines democratic reform movements and their authoritarian challengers in the Middle East. We will consider case studies of different types of authoritarian regimes along with characteristically different experiences with democratization efforts and their outcomes: Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Turkey, and Iran. The course also assesses externally-sponsored democracy promotion in the region and its often-paradoxical effects. The focus is on the relative effects of key factors on democratization: regime type, religion & culture, civil society, socio-economic development, oil wealth, terrorism, and regional & international politics.
This course will address a key unresolved puzzle in post-soviet studies: why have some of the 15 Soviet successor states became democratic, while others remain authoritarian? Several ex-Soviet states have evolved into full-fledged democracies (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), but others are best described as hard-core authoritarian regimes (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Belarus). A third group of countries falls in between –although they have moved closer to democracy, yet it is by no means certain that they will not revert back to some form of authoritarianism in the coming years (Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan). Russia’s example is instructive about the difficulties of casting away the legacies of authoritarianism: while during Yeltsin’s tenure most analysts believed that the country was bound to become a democracy, under Putin Russia reverted to authoritarianism. In this course we will look for explanations why those countries with shared history and institutions have ended up with such different political arrangements.
The discipline of ‘International Relations’ was long dominated by American scholars and debates among them. Over the past decade, however, voices have increased which claim that there is a ‘European’ approach to both the practice and the study of world politics. This course will explore the content and validity of this claim. Going beyond the sterile division of labor between analysing ‘European integration’ and ‘international politics’, the course will engage the question of what it means to take a ‘European’ perspective on the world. We will do so on a variety of levels, including whether European scholars have developed distinct ways of ‘theorizing’ IR, how they think about core concepts such as ‘the state’, ‘sovereignty’, or ‘security’, which issues matter to them and why, that is, how these directions/priorities are influenced by geography, history, or the process of European integration. Hence, we will also look at the practice of politics in and out of ‘Europe’ today. Underlying is also the question to what extent a ‘European’ perspective is (or may be) different from an ‘American’ one. Dist: SOC; WCult: NA/EU/W.
When Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn in 1993, many people hoped a peace agreement would follow. Agreements were reached, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued. In this seminar, we will analyze efforts undertaken since the late 1980s to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. What options are currently open?
For more than two decades, political scientists have been predicting impending regime change and democratization in China. However, so far China has defied these predictions of regime collapse and democratization. What explains the remarkable resilience of the Chinese government? In this course, we will analyze how economic growth, ideology, nationalism, and selective repression have all contributed to regime stability and legitimacy n China. We will conclude by examining various scenarios for democratization in China.
