12003 Democracy and Democratization 1
Credits: 3 graduate credits in Democracy Studies / Government and Public Policy or Society and Politics or in Business Administration / Administration and Public Policy
Prerequisites for Democracy Studies: Two of the following: Democracy: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Israeli Democracy: Selected Issues, Contemporary Democratic Theories, and exemption from bibliographic assignments on computer searches in the Alef catalog and databases.
Prerequisites for the MBA: Operations Research; Accounting for Managers; Marketing; Management and Organizational Behavior; Financial Management; Corporate Law for Managers.
The course is based on readers in Hebrew and English edited by Benyamin Neuberger and Ilana Kaufman.
The course aims to expose students to the research questions, academic literature and scientific writing on these topics. It surveys the various approaches that developed in order to explain the historical model of liberal democracy. It also presents various explanations for the stability and instability, to the point of the collapse, of democratic regimes, in both highly industrialized and non-industrialized countries. The most recent evolution of processes of democratization and liberalization at the end of the 20th century are examined in light of the conditions proposed to date for the development and strengthening of democratic regimes.
Topics: The conditions for the development of a model of democracy the historical approach, the historical and a-historical socio-economic approach, the political idea approach; Political culture and democracy legitimacy and effectiveness, national consensus, social and political pluralism; the effect of the political party system and elite groups on the stability of democratic regimes; the constitutional model; The collapse of democratic regimes in industrialized states (the Weimar Republic), and the failure of democracy in post-colonial states (Africa and the Middle East); The factors and conditions for democratization and liberalization characteristics of the transition process, the importance of civil society and the impact of the process of globalization.
1Students in the Democracy Studies program may write a seminar paper in this course, although it is not required. Students in the MBA program may not write a seminar paper in this course.