| Bemerkung |
While we seem to witness the emergence of a Post-Western order, Western liberal democracy, historically based on a special relation between state and society, became a template for the rest of the world, and its main facets have been universally promoted under the label ‘good governance’. Throughout the last decade, this liberal model has come under attack both by populist movements within core Western regimes, and through the emergence of ‘counter-hegemonic’ models of state, regime and governance (such as the Beijing model) in the Global South.
But what are the essentials of this liberal model and why did Europe succeed in establishing it as a standard to the rest of the world? We will thus start with different approaches towards analyzing the evolution and transformation of modern statehood and then deepen our understanding of the specific dimensions of the model (nation-state, accountability, democracy, equality and citizenship, rule of law, secularism) and work to understand what of this model can travel to different non-Western contexts. The class will both study historical circumstances which generated the development of the rule of law, democracy and secular government, and (selected) contemporary challenges to the efforts of emulating these models across the world. Students will have opportunity to relate these debates to empirical (country) case studies. In a final section we will turn to populism and alternative models of governance and also discuss the continued global influence on domestic political processes via democracy assistance, coercion or diffusion. |
| Leistungsnachweis |
Students are required to attend regularly, to read assigned texts, to participate actively and regularly, and to prepare one oral presentation. Each section is based both on group discussions of the compulsory texts and short student presentations.
Form of examination: seminar paper (15 pages)
|
