Democracy in Hard TImes, MA 2013-2015 Sciences Po Paris

Lecture alone Democracy in Hard Times (Semester : Autumn 2013-2014) Number of hours : 24 Language of tuition : English

Course Description This cours aims at realizing a stocktaking exercise concerning the state of contemporary representative democracy. It will draw on perspective from various disciplines, ranging from political philosophy and sociology to political science, economics and demographics. In particular, we will focus on the contemporary challenges that democracy is facing, such as economic and political globalization, ageing, increasing budget constraints, mediatisation, populism and others. At the same time we will try to understand what determines democracies' reaction to those challenges. Moreover, we will look for successful strategies for renewal. The idea is to provide students with a complete toolkit to realize their own analysis of the state of contemporary democracies.

Teachers GROSSMAN, Emiliano (Chargé de recherche à Sciences Po, CEE) FROIO, CATERINA (European University Institute, EUI Florence) HABERSTROH Charlotte (European University Institute, EUI Florence)

Pedagogical format This is a lencture-only subject. The Instructor will organize occasional working sessions to help students with their assignment and the preparation of the final exam.

Course validation There will be two types of assignments: - A small research project. The idea is to develop a personal research question and to assemble a number of documents, data and other sources on this subject, as well as a detailed outline explaining how the project is to be carried out. This should not be longer than 3000 words. It will represent 50% of the final grade. - A short written exam (2 hours) based on the course and the reader. It will contain 3 course-related questions, to be chose out of a list of 5 questions. The exam will represent 50% of the final grade.

Workload In addition to assignments, students are expected to do weekly readings.

Required reading  Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the limits of Self-government, New York, Cambridge, 2012  Kriesi, Hanspeter; Daniel Bochsler; Jörg Matthes; Sandra Lavenex  Marc Bühlmann and Frank Esser: Democracy in the age of globalization and mediatization. Basingstoke: Palgrave  

Macmillan Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2011). Winner-Take-All Politics: how Washington made the rich richer--and turned its back on the middle class. Simon & Schuster Dryzek, J. S. (2011). Democracy in capitalist times: Ideals, limits, and struggles. Oxford: OUP

See Syllabus on sciencespo.fr