Wittenberg University Professor: Dr. Jody LaPorte Fall 2012 Office: Hollenbeck 211 Phone: 937-327-6108 Email: laportej@wittenberg.edu Political Science 309: The Politics of Non-Democratic Regimes This course is designed to introduce students to the politics of non-democratic regimes. Over recent decades, many political science theories focused on the construction and consolidation of democracy. At the same time, however, in many parts of the world authoritarianism is proving remarkably resilient. This course addresses the gap between political science theory and empirical realities by focusing on the factors that facilitate non-democratic rule. The first section of the course addresses the question: What is authoritarianism? Here, we will discuss how non-democracies differ from democracy, as well as the many forms that authoritarianism takes in the world today. The second section of the course examines the mechanisms of authoritarian rule. How do rulers stay in power? We will look at the role of legitimacy, repression, elections, civil society, and passive resistance. How effective are these mechanisms? Additionally, we will spend one week discussing the relationship between economic performance and regime development. We conclude by examining the factors that undermine authoritarian rule, and the lingering issues of truth and reconciliation after dictatorship. Class Meetings and Office Hours Class Meetings: MWF 11:30-12:30pm, Hollenbeck 215 Professor s Office Hours: Monday: 2-3pm, 4-5pm Tuesday: 3-5pm Wednesday: 2-3pm, 4-5pm Friday: 2-3pm, 4-5pm Course Requirements (% of final grade) Final grades for the course will be calculated as follows: Map quiz: 10% 4 Reading responses: 10% each (40% total) Class participation: 20% Final paper: 30% Course Materials The following books will be used in their entirety in this course and are recommended for purchase: 1
Hyok Kang, This is Paradise! My North Korean Childhood. (Little, Brown Book Group, 2007) Zarah Ghahramani, My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008). All additional articles assigned for this course will be posted online. Course Policies Office Hours and Accessibility: My office hours are in Hollenbeck 211. I encourage you to attend office hours if you have questions on the course material, or would like to discuss these topics in further depth. You may also reach me by email or phone. I try to respond to all email and phone messages within 24 hours during the week, but do not check and respond to messages regularly on weekends. Class Meetings: Our class meetings will include time for lecture, but will rely heavily on discussion from students. To get the most out of class meeting, you should complete all assigned readings before each class, take notes on the main ideas, and write down the questions that occur to you. Technology Policy: Unless otherwise specified, use of laptop computers, cell phones, ipads, or any other communication devices in class is prohibited. All cell phones must be turned off (not to silent or vibrate ) at the beginning of class! Students in violation of this policy will be asked to leave the class. Absences: This course covers a good deal of material; you cannot do well if you don t come to class. In addition, we have a responsibility to each other to be on time. I will begin class promptly at 10:20am, and I expect all students to be punctual as well. If you must miss a lecture during the semester, get the notes from a classmate and read them through before the next class, and then come to office hours to clear up any questions about the material you missed. Your attendance record will be considered as part of the participation portion of your final grade. More than 4 absences over the course of the semester will negatively impact your participation grade. On-Time Work Policy: Setting and meeting deadlines is an important professional skill. Students are expected to complete assignments by the deadlines laid out in the syllabus. All assignments are due at the beginning of class on the assigned day. No exceptions will be granted. Late paper assignments will be graded down a half-letter grade for each 24 hours they are late (for example, B+ becomes B). Grade Disputes: If you want to discuss strategies for improving on future assignments, this can be done at any time during my office hours or over email. However, grades are not negotiable. If you believe a mistake has been made in the evaluation of your work, you must submit an appeal in writing. You must first wait for 24 hours after receiving the grade and the accompanying comments, and then write a one-page explanation of why you dispute your grade.
Disputes are due no more than one week after the 24 hours have elapsed. I will re-read the assignment together with your explanation, and re-assign the grade I view to be appropriate. Note that grades may be adjusted upward or downward as a result. Academic Honesty: You will have several written assignments in this class. These assignments are designed to further your thinking and understanding of the arguments covered in class and in the readings. The Honor Code is in effect for all assignments in this class. For each of these exercises, you are expected to hand in your own original work. Cases of plagiarism, cheating, or any other violations of the Honor Code will be referred to the appropriate university authorities. Accommodation: If you have any medical conditions, athletic commitments, or other special needs, please tell me in writing by the end of the first week of class. I will do my best to accommodate them in accordance with university policy. RCEP Majors: If you are taking this class for RCEP credit, please come talk to me as soon as possible. To qualify for RCEP credit, a large portion of your writing assignments for the course must focus on cases and topics from Eurasia. We will work together to determine how you can focus your writing assignments to fulfill the RCEP requirements for this class. Course Assessment Map Quiz: At the first class meeting, I will hand out a comprehensive list of countries that you will be responsible for identifying. On the day of the quiz (Wednesday, August 29), I will hand out a map that contains nothing but the outlines of the countries in the world, and then list 15 countries on the board for you to identify. Reading responses: Students are responsible for submitting 4 written reading responses during the semester. Reading responses should be 1 to 2 pages, single-spaced. These responses must be submitted in hardcopy promptly at the beginning of class on the day they are due. You will have several topics and dates to pick from over the course of the semester; please choose to write responses on the weeks and topics that are most interesting and convenient for you. But do plan accordingly! No excuses will be accepted for last-minute or late-semester catastrophes. Class participation: Class participation will be calculated by attendance at class meetings, as well as the quality and frequency of your contributions to discussion. In-class presentations assigned during the semester will also count towards participation credit. Attendance will be taken at each meeting, comprising 50% of your participation grade. The other half of your grade will be based on the comments, questions, and presentations that you contribute to discussion. Final paper: You will be required to write a 10-page (double-spaced) analytical paper assessing the dynamics and dilemmas of authoritarian rule. More specific instructions on the paper topic, grading rubric, and interim deadlines will be distributed during Week 9. Your paper grade will take into account the quality of the final draft, as well as your timely completion of the interim assignments.
Course Schedule Week 1: Introduction August 20: Introduction No assigned reading. August 22: Defining authoritarianism Jennifer Gandhi, What is Dictatorship? excerpt from Political Institutions under Dictatorship. (New York: Cambridge Univ Press, 2008): p. 2-16. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Modern Nondemocratic Regimes, excerpt from Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 1996): p. 38-54. August 24: What do rulers want? Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, excerpt from Walter Kaufmann, ed., Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: The Modern Library, 1992 [originally published 1885]) p. 231-46, 391-405. Michael Shapiro, Kim s Ransom, The New Yorker, January 31, 1994: p. 32-41. Week 2: Confronting Assumptions August 27: What do citizens want? Benjamin Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns, in Benjamin Constant, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, 1988 [originally published 1819]), p. 309-28. Richard Pipes, Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want, Foreign Affairs, vol. 83, no. 3 (May-June 2004): p. 9-15. August 29: Types of authority * Map Quiz 11:30-11:40am Max Weber The Basis of Legitimacy in The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 328-341. August 31: No Class, Conference Travel Week 3: Personalist Rule September 3: No Class, Labor Day Holiday September 5: Monarchies
John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), Chapter 7: The Age of Absolutism. Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 1978), Chapter 7: Kingship and Aristocracy as a Type of Rule (excerpt) p. 218-234 September 7: Sultanism Houchang Chehabi and Juan Linz (eds), Sultanistic Regimes. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 1998): Chapter 1: A Theory of Sultanism (p. 7-23) and Chapter 4: The Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic (p. 85-113) Week 4: One-Party Rule September 10: The advantages of a party Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies. (New Haven: Yale Unive Press, 1968): p. 1-32; 78-92; 397-412. September 12: Leninism and the party-state Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies. (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ Press, 1968): p. 334-343 Vladimir Lenin, What is To Be Done? in Robert Tucker (ed.), The Lenin Anthology (New York: W.W. Norton Press, 1975): p. 12-79. September 14: The PRI in Mexico Joy Langston, Elite Ruptures: When do Ruling Parties Split? in Andreas Schedler (ed.) Electoral Authoritarianism (Boulder: Lynne Rienne Publishers, 2006): p. 57-76. Chappell Lawson, Mexico's Unfinished Transition: Democratization and Authoritarian Enclaves in Mexico, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer, 2000): p. 267-287. Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, The fall and rise of Mexico s PRI, Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2012. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/12/world/la-fg-mexico-pricomeback-20120612 Week 5: Totalitarianism September 17: The rise of totalitarianism: Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism William Henry Chamberlain, Making the Collective Man in Soviet Russia, Foreign Affairs, January 1932. Start reading Kang, This is Paradise! September 19: The rise of totalitarianism, continued. Continue reading Kang, This is Paradise!
September 21: Discussion Life in North Korea Hyok Kang, This is Paradise! My North Korean Childhood. (Little, Brown Book Group, 2007) Week 6: Military Dictatorships in Latin America September 24: The bureaucratic authoritarian project David Collier, The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton Univ Press, 1979): Chapter 1 September 26: Bureaucratic authoritarianism in practice: Brazil Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe, The New Yorker, June 1, 1987: p. 72-93. September 28: Bureaucratic authoritarianism in practice: The dirty war Lawrence Weschler, The Great Exception, Part I: Liberty, The New Yorker, April 3, 1989: p. 43-85. Children of the Disappeared, The New Yorker, Podcast. March 19, 2012 http://www.newyorker.com/online/2012/03/19/120319on_audio_goldman [Listen up to 15:55] Week 7: Iran and Theocratic Rule October 1: Theocracy as a regime type Start reading Gharamani, My Life as a Traitor October 3: The Iranian revolution Continue reading Gharamani, My Life as a Traitor October 5: Discussion Inside Iran Zarah Ghahramani, My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008). Week 8: Competitive Authoritarianism October 8: The end of history Francis Fukuyama, The End of History? National Interest, Summer 1989 Thomas Carothers, The End of the Transition Paradigm, Journal of Democracy Vol 13 No. 1 (2002): p. 5-21. October 10: Competitive authoritarianism in East Europe
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism, Journal of Democracy Vol 13 No. 2 (2002): p. 51-65. Lucan Way, Kuchma s Failed Authoritarianism, Journal of Democracy Vol 16 No. 2 (2005): p. 131-145 October 12: What does it mean to be loyal? Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless, (1978). Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince. Chapters 15-19. Week 9: Creating Legitimacy and Loyalty October 15: No class, Fall Break October 17: Benefits and payoffs Jie Chen, Yang Zhong, Jan William Hillard, The level and sources of popular support for China's current political regime, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol 30, Issue 1 (1997): p. 45-64. October 19: Ideas and events: Ideology, spectacles, and personality cults Laura Adams, The Spectacular State. (Durham: Duke Univ Press, 2010): excerpts Week 10: Coercion and Repression October 22: Film, The Lives of Others John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, Chapter 29: Rebuilding Divided Europe : excerpts Mary Fulbrook, The People s State: East Germany Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 2005). Chapter 11: The honeycomb state: The benign and malign diffusion of power : p. 235-249. October 24: Film, The Lives of Others No assigned reading. October 26: Film, The Lives of Others No assigned reading. Week 11: Elections in Authoritarian Regimes October 29: Discussion of last week s material Lucan Way and Steven Levitsky, The dynamics of autocratic coercion after the Cold War, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 39 Issue 3 (September 2006): p. 387-410.
October 31: Authoritarian elections Nathan Brown, Dictatorship and Democracy through the Prism of Arab Elections, Chapter 2 in Nathan Brown (ed.), The Dynamics of Democratization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2011): p. 46-63. November 2: Election fraud and its aftermath M. R. Thompson and P. Kuntz, After Defeat: When Do Rulers Steal Elections? Chapter 7 in Andreas Schedler (ed), Electoral Authoritarianism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2006): p. 113-129. Joshua Tucker, Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action Problems, and Post- Communist Colored Revolutions, Perspectives on Politics, Vol 5, No 3 (2007): p. 535-551. Week 12: Economic Issues: Growth, Performance, and Reform November 5: Political regimes and economic growth Jose Antonio Cheibub and James Raymond Vreeland, Economic Development and Democratization, Chapter 6 in Nathan Brown (ed.) The Dynamics of Democratization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2011): pg. 145-182. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George Downs, Development and Democracy, Foreign Affairs (2005). November 7: Political regimes and economic reform M. Steven Fish and Omar Choudhry, Democratization and Economic Liberalization in the Postcommunist World, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 40 No. 3 (2007): p. 254-282 Yingyi Qian. How Reform Worked in China, in Dani Rodrik, ed., In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth (Princeton: Princeton Univ Press, 2003): p. 297-333. November 9: Corruption and kleptocracy The Secret Life of a Shopaholic, Global Witness (November 2009) http://www.globalwitness.org/library/secret-life-shopaholic-how-african-dictatorsplayboy-son-went-multi-million-dollar-shopping Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses, International Crisis Group, Asia Briefing No. 102 (April 2010). http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/centralasia/kyrgyzstan/b102-kyrgyzstan-a-hollow-regime-collapses.aspx Here s why China needs corrupt officials, Business Insider, July 2, 2012. http://www.businessinsider.com/corrupt-chinese-officials-2012-7 Week 13: Challenges to the Regime: Opposition, Resistance, and Dissent
November 12: Organized oppposition Vicki Langohr, Too much civil society, too little politics? Egypt and other liberalizing Arab regimes, in Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds, Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance (Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2005): p. 193-220 Holger Albrecht, How can opposition support authoritarianism? Lessons from Egypt, Democratization, Vol 12, Issue 3 (2005): p. 378-397 November 14: Protests and popular action Marina Ottoway and Amr Hamzawy, Protest Movements and Political Change in the Arab World, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Outlook Paper (January 2011). Kevin J. O Brien and Lianjiang Li, Popular Contention and its Impact in Rural China, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 38, No. 3 (1995): p. 235-259. Ellen Barry, The Sound of Post-Soviet Protest: Claps and Beeps, New York Times, July 14, 2011 Ilya Mouzykantskii, In Belarus, Just Being Can Prompt An Arrest, New York Times, July 29, 2011 November 16: The role of the media Olena Prytula, The Ukrainian Media Rebellion, in Aslund and McFaul (eds), Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine s Democratic Breakthrough (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006): p. 103-124. Guobin Yang, Contention in Cyberspace, in Kevin O Brien (ed.), Popular Protest in China (Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press, 2008): p. 126-143. Philip N. Howard et al., Opening Closed Regimes: What was the Role of Social Media During the Arab Spring? Working Paper, 2011. www.pitpi.org Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change, The New Yorker, October 4, 2010. November 19-23: No Class, Thanksgiving Holiday Week 14: Authoritarian Collapse November 26: Assessing regime durability First draft of research paper due. No assigned reading. November 28: Whose fault? Elites versus people power Brigid McCarthy, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the Demise of the Soviet Union, PRI s The World, September 26, 2011. http://www.theworld.org/2011/09/gorbachev-yeltsin-andthe-demise-of-the-ussr/ Gail Lapidus, Gorbachev s Nationalities Problem, Foreign Affairs, Fall 1989.
November 30: Writing Workshop Day Week 15: Truth and Reconciliation December 3: Nunca Mas : Confronting Human Rights Abuses in Latin America Amos Elon, Letter from Argentina, The New Yorker, July 21, 1986: p. 74-86. Vladimir Hernandez, Argentine mothers mark 35 years marching for justice, BBC News, April 28, 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17847134 Juan Forero, Orphaned in Argentina s dirty war, man is torn between two families, The Washington Post, February 11, 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/02/10/ar2010021003662.html Harvey Morris, Justice at Last for Argentina s Stolen Children, International Herald Tribune, June 6, 2012. December 5: Truth and reconciliation in East Europe Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe s Ghosts after Communism (New York: Vintage, 1996): Excerpts December 7: Course wrap-up No additional reading Date TBA: Final Paper Due