12015 Social Democracy in Western Europe: 1875-2000 1
Credits: 3 graduate credits in Democracy Studies / History, Education and Citizenship or Society and Politics or Government and Public Policy
Prerequisites: Democracy: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Israeli Democracy: Selected Issues, Contemporary Democratic Theories; one of the following: Democracy and Democratization, Selected Problems in the History of Western Democracies, Education Policy: Education for Democracy in Democratic Societies, Democracy and Mass Communication,2 Selected Topics in Public Administration; and exemption from bibliographic assignments on computer searches in the “Alef” catalog and databases.
Recommended: Liberalism: Texts, Contexts, Critiques
The course is based on a reader edited by Avner Halpern.
Topics: Theories of social-democracy – the development of political parties in general and of social-democratic parties in particular; what is ideology, how is it studied and what is its importance for social-democratic parties; social-democratic politics of the welfare state; the theory of the decline of the working class and its effect on social-democracy at the end of the 20th century. Development of the social-democratic alternative for managing the state’s economy and welfare policy – the development of social-democratic parties in England, France, Germany and Sweden; social-democratic politics, the democratic regime and democratization at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century; social democratic governments between the wars, economic crisis, fascism and war; social democracy and the welfare state during the period of economic prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s; the energy crisis and the socialist government in France; social-democracy and the European Union; The Third Way – social democracy into the 21st century.
1Students may write a seminar paper in this course, although it is not required.
2or Liberalism: Texts, Contexts, Critiques (12005), for students who took it as a required course in the Culture specialization before Spring 2010.