Democracy: Breakthroughs and Breakdowns

What gives rise to democracy? What leads it to die? This course has a broad comparative and global sweep, seeking to answer these questions by analyzing the development of democracy in Europe, the United States, and Latin America.

The course introduces students to competing conceptions of democracy, competing theories of when democracy is created and barriers to democratic survival, and analyzes major episodes of democratic breakthrough and breakdown ranging from the fall of the Berlin wall to the rise of Nazism and the collapse of democracy in cold war Latin America.