A Note on Readings

There are five “required” books for this course:

• Chinua Achebe (1966), A Man of the People (Anchor Books)
• Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter (1986), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (The Johns Hopkins University Press)
• Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith (2011), The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics (PublicAffairs)
• Nancy Bermeo (2003), Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy (Princeton University Press)
• Bruce J. Dickson (2016), The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival (Oxford University Press)

Please note that when I say that there are “required” texts, I mean only that I have assigned you to read them (most in their entirety, a few will have a chapter or two skipped), not that you must purchase them. You are encouraged to share copies, form anarcho-syndicalist book-trading collectives, make gratuitous use of our inter-library loan services, or generally do whatever necessary to make sure you have the texts to read and study from.

Prologue

January 9 (M): Introductions and Syllabus (No Reading)

Case Study #1: Nigeria – Understanding Why Democracy is Hard

January 11 (W): Why Does Democracy Sometimes Fail? (I): Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Past

• Chinua Achebe (1966), A Man of the People, complete

January 16 (M):  Martin Luther King, jr. Holiday, No Class

January 18 (W):  Why Does Democracy Sometimes Fail? (II): The Collapse of Democracy in Post-Independence Africa

• Larry Diamond (1983), “Class, Ethnicity, and the Democratic State: Nigeria, 1950-1966,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 25:3, pp. 457-83
• Michael Crowder (1987), “Whose Dream Was it Anyway? Twenty-Five Years of African Independence,” African Affairs, 86, pp. 7-24

Concept #1: Defining Democracy (in Theory and Practice)

January 23 (M): How Do We Know Democracy When We See It?

• Robert Dahl (2000), On Democracy, pp. 1-61
• Phillipe Schmitter and Terry Karl (1991) “What Democracy is…and is Not,” Journal of Democracy, 2:3, pp. 75-88

January 25 (W): Is There Only One Kind of Democracy?

• Frederic Schaffer (1998), Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture, pp. 54-85
• Josiah Ober (2008), “The Original Meaning of “Democracy”: Capacity to Do Things, not Majority Rule,” Constellations, 15:1, pp. 3-9
• Kwasi Wierdu (1995), “Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics: A Plea for a Non-party Polity,” The Centennial Review, 39:1, pp. 53-64
• Isaac Asimov (1955), “Franchise“

January 30 (M): What’s a Democracy That’s Not a Democracy?

• Fareed Zakaria (1997), “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs, 76:6, pp. 22-43
• Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way (2002), “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, 13:2, pp. 51-65
• Levitsky and Way (2010), “Why Democracy Needs a Level Playing Field,” Journal of Democracy, 21:2, pp. 57-68
• Larry Diamond, “Russia and the Threat to Liberal Democracy,” The Atlantic, December 9, 2016

February 1 (W): Measuring Democracy

• Gerardo Munck and Jay Verkuilen (2002), “Conceptualizing and Evaluating Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices,” Comparative Political Studies, 35:1, pp. 5-34
• Staffan Lindberg et al (2014), “V-Dem: a New Way to Measure Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, 25:3, pp. 159-69
• Freedom House (2012), Freedom in the World, “Measurement.”

You may also wish to consult (either now or as you begin your project) the “Polity” Dataset User’s Manual, particularly pp. 13-16

Concept #2: Where Does Democracy Come From?

February 6 (M):Are there Democratic “Preconditions?”: Modernization and Economic Arguments

• Seymour Martin Lipset (1959), “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53, pp. 69–105
• Samuel Huntington (1968), Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale University Press), pp. 1-92

February 8 (W): Is There Such a Thing as a “Democratic Culture?” 

• Christian Welzel and Ronald Inglehart (2008), “Political Culture, Mass Beliefs, and Value Change” in Christian Haepfner et al (eds), Democratization (Oxford University Press), pp. 126-44
• Robert Putnam (1993) “What Makes Democracy Work?” National Civic Review, pp. 101-107
• Young African Leaders Initiative, “Focus On: Understanding Elections and Civic Responsibility” (Watch each of the three videos in the lesson)

February 13 (M): Islam and Democracy, Theory and Practice

• Amir Taheri, “Islam and Democracy: The Impossible Union,” Sunday Times, May 23, 2004
• Brandon Kendhammer, Muslims Talking Politics (University of Chicago Press), pp. 24-39 and 180-212

February 15 (W): Structure and Agency on the Road to Democracy

• Barrington Moore, jr. (1966), Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, pp. 3-39, 413-32
• Charles Tilly (1995), “Democracy Is a Lake,” in The Social Construction of Democracy: 1870 – 1990, ed. George Reid Andrews and Herrick Chapman (New York University Press), pp. 365-87

Case Study #2: American Democratization in the 18th and 19th Centuries—Democratization as a Slow, Uneven Process

February 20 (M): The Long Path to American Democracy (I)— Defining Democracy in the Post-Revolutionary Era

• Woody Holton (2007), Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution(Hill & Wang ) pp. 21-64
• Terry Bouton (2000), “A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania,” The Journal of American History, 87:3, pp. 855-87
• The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776

February 22 (W): The Long Path to American Democracy (II)—How Compromises that Preserve Democracy Can Also Threaten It

• Alexander Keyssar (2000), The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, pp. 1-93, part one, part two

February 27 (M): American Democracy and the Racial State

• Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy (University of Minnesota Press), pp. 31-63
• Angela Behrens, Christopher Uggen, and Jeff Manza (2003), “Ballot Manipulation and the “Menace of Negro Domination”: Racial Threat and Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850–2002,” American Journal of Sociology 109:3, pp. 559-605

March 1 (W): Democratization Index Presentations, No Readings

March 6 (M): Spring Break (No Class)

March 8 (W): Spring Break (No Class)

Concept #3: How The Other Half Lives: Authoritarian Rule

March 13 (M): Logic of Authoritarian Rule (I) – Bad Policy and Good Politics

• Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2011), The Dictator’s Handbook, entire (skip chapter 7 on foreign aid and chapter 9 on war)

March 15 (W): No Class, Professor in Washington, D.C. with IDS Graduate Students

March 20 (M): The Logic of Authoritarian Rule (II) – Fraud and Electoral Malfeasance, or How To Rig an Election

• Tracy Campbell (2003), “Machine Politics, Police Corruption, and the Persistence of Vote Fraud: The Case of the Louisville, Kentucky, Election of 1905,” Journal of Policy History, 15, pp. 269-300
• Genevieve B. Gist (1961), “Progressive Reform in a Rural Community: The Adams County Vote-Fraud Case,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 48:1, pp. 60-78
• Eliza Shapiro, “From Frat House to Jail: Student Heads to Prison After Election Fraud,” The Daily Beast, July 19, 2013

Concept #4: How Democratization Happens: The Transition Paradigm

March 22 (W): The “Transition” Paradigm

• Guillermo O’Donnell and Phillippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Transitions, entire book

March 27 (M): Peer Review Workshop (No Reading, No Class for Undergrads)

Case Study #3: China’s Democratic Future?

March 29 (W): How Durable is Chinese Authoritatianism?

• Bruce Dickson (2016), The Dictator’s Dilemma (Oxford University Press), pp. 1-95
• Youwei (pseudonym), “The End of Reform in China Authoritarian Adaptation Hits a Wall,” Foreign Affairs, 94:3, pp. 2-7

April 3 (M): What Do the Chinese People Want? Is it Democracy? (I)

• Bruce Dickson (2016), The Dictator’s Dilemma (Oxford University Press), pp. 96-213

April 5 (W): What Do the Chinese People Want? Is it Democracy? (II)

• Bruce Dickson (2016), The Dictator’s Dilemma (Oxford University Press), pp. 215-322
• In-Class: Video, “Please Vote For Me”

Epilogue: Democratic Backsliding and the Problem of Consolidation

April 10 (M): When and Why Do Democracies Fail? Some Theories…

• Nancy Bermeo (2003), Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times (Princeton University Press), pp. 1-63

April 12 (W): Who’s To Blame? Polarization, Elites, and Masses (I)

• Fareed Zakaria (2016), “Populism on the March: Why the West is in Trouble,” Foreign Affairs
• Milton Mayer (1955), “But Then It Was Too Late,” in They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (University of Chicago Press)
• Bermeo (2003), Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times (Princeton University Press), pp. 69-137

April 17 (M):Who’s To Blame? Polarization, Elites, and Masses (II)

• Bermeo (2003), Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times (Princeton University Press), pp. 139-256
• Timothy Snyder, “Him,” Slate.com, November 18, 2016
• Tom Pepinsky, “Ordinary Authoritarianism is Boring and Tolerable,” blog post, January 6, 2017

April 19 (W): What Comes Next?

• Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk (2016), “The Democratic Disconnect,” Journal of Democracy, 27:3, pp. 5-17
• Katherine Cramer (Walsh) (2012), “Putting Inequality in Its Place: Rural Consciousness and the Power of Perspective,” American Political Science Review, 106:3, pp. 517-32
• Henry Farrell, “Post-Democracy: There Is No Alternative,” Aeon Magazine, April 25, 2013