Instructors:
Dr. Alexander Weiß
Displayed in timetable as:
Ende der Demokratie
Language of instruction:
German
Min. | Max. participants:
10 | 25
Comments/contents:
Democracies may degenerate into post-democracy. They may fall into crises or may even live permanently in a crisis. We know that not only justifications of democracy exist, but there are also specific democratic deficits and even democratic violence. All that has been elaborated by realistic theories of democracy within the last two or three decades. What is new, is a wave of more recent literature warning about the end of democracy. Contemporary theories of democracy are, at time, much more disquieting about the state of democracy than many of their predecessors.
We will get to know this debate in detail within the seminar. Understanding diagnoses, making sense of their theoretical argumentations, perceiving differences among them, and relate them with classical justifications of democracy - these are some of the goals we want to reach in the seminar - with a general evaluation of this new strand of literature by the end of the seminar.
Learning objectives:
Students learn to get insight into a complex and relevant conemporary theoretical discourse. They also learn to take this discourse as opportunitiy to get an elaborated view over the larger field of democratic theory.
Didactic concept:
Depending on the actual situation the seminar will be hold in presence or as online-course.
After a few sessions of collective text work within the large group, smaller groups will work on different sub-issues.
Literature:
Not for preparation, but as a first reference to the literature we will work with:
- John Keane (2009): Life and Death of Democracy. Simon and Schuster
- Buffin de Choral (2017): The End of Democracy. Tumblar House
- David Runciman (2019): How Democracy Ends. Profile Books
- Steven Levitsky und Daniel Ziblatt (2018): How Democracies Die. Crown.
