PUAF 698Q: Selected Topics in Public Affairs

Democracy and Democratization: Theory and Practice

Fall 2014

Thursdays, 1:30-4:00

Van Munching Hall 1107

David A. Crocker

Senior Research Scholar

Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy

School of Public Policy

University of Maryland

3111G Van Munching Hall

Phone: 301-405-4763

Cell: 240-678-6267

Office hours VMH 3111G: W: 2:00-4:00; Th: 4:15-6:00; and other times by appointment

The course, offered on the 600 level, will be open to undergraduate seniors (with permission from the instructor) and both Mastersand Ph.D. students throughout the university.

I. Aims of the Course:

This course will consider critically various theories that seek to understand and defend democratic governance. In Part I -- and by way of introduction -- we will examine Amy Gutmann’s typology for sorts of democracy and consider what can be learned from Athenian democracy. Confronting the debates for and against democracy in Athens in 403 BC, we will engage in a role play exercise.

In Part II, we will examine the nature of democracy in contrast to other forms of government--such as bureaucratic elitism, theocracy, and competitive (and non-competitive) authoritarianism--and inquire whether democracy can be defended against these other governmental arrangements.What are the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of democratic theory and practice? To answer this question, we will examine Madisonian republicanism (a dimension of the U.S. Constitution), liberal democracy (Dahl), participatory democracy, and deliberative democracy (e.g. participatory budgeting).These approaches to democracy will be applied to assess the democratic quality of the U.S.(its Constitution and institutions) as well as other countries.

Finally, in Part III, we will examine the theories and strategies of democratization and their relation to development. Do democracies or autocracies do a better job in promoting and protecting economic and human development and in combatting corruption? Should democracy promotion be a part of development assistance and if so, how? How should we assess the democratic potential of “the Arab Spring”, and how might democracy in the Middle East, North Africa, and other areas best be promoted? To what extent is Islam, and its many interpretations, compatible with the even more numerous variations of democracy?

II. Recommended Books (University Book Store, Internet):

  • GianpaoloBaiocchi, Patrick Heller, and Marcelo K. Silva, Bootstrapping Democracy: Transforming Local Governance and Civil Society in Brazil (Stanford University Press, 2011)
  • Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (Yale University Press, 1998)
  • Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) (Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • Stephanie L. McNulty, Voice and Vote: Decentralization and Participation in Post-Fujimori Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press)
  • Marwan Muasher, The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014)
  • Josiah Ober and Mark C. Carnes, The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005)
  • Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton University Press, 2010): ix-xxiv, 259-92, 332-37. (E-mail and canvas)
  • Other materials online or distributed by email

III. Class Canvas (Formerly “Blackboard”):

Amanda McCullough, a student in the class, has helpfully agreed to serve as class “secretary” and administrator of the class Canvas. She will be available to help with any problems related to class materials. Amanda’s email is <

IV. Requirements (All papers should be sent electronically in a Word attachment by midnight on the due date):

1. Consistent Attendance and Participation(10%)

Students will come to class having read carefully the assigned reading. Everyone should be prepared to summarize the reading's main arguments, raise at least one question of interpretation, identify at least one positive feature, and make at least one criticism of the reading. Participation in class discussion will be evaluated in relation to both quality and quantity (neither too much nor too little).

2. Theoretical Paper(s) (45%)

All papers should be submitted electronically no later than midnight on the due date. Papers should be double-spaced in 12 Times Roman point font with consistent foot- or end-noting.

  • Option I: Long (2025 page) Final Term Paper(with option to revise) (45 % of final grade).
  • Topic Proposal: One or two paragraph sketch of proposed topic (10/6).
  • Three-page outline of paper plus bibliography (10/27).
  • Initial Paper due (12/1), if you have chosenthe option to revise.(If you chose to revise graded by the instructor, the grade on the revision will replace the initial paper’s grade.)
  • Paper Due (12/15), if you have not chosen the option to revise.
  • (Optional) Revision Paper due (12/15), if you have chosen to revise.
  • Option II: Three Short (7-8 page) Papers(15% each of final grade).Each short paper should interpret and assess some narrow topic, position, problem, or argument in the reading assigned for the appropriate twoweek or three-week period. Each paper may be revised on the basis of instructor's comments and criticisms. (If you choose to revise after grading by the instructor, the grade on the revision will replace the grade on the original paper).

Short Paper #1: Due: 9/29 (optional revision due: 10/13)

Short Paper #2: Due: 11/3(optional revision due: 11/17)

Short Paper #3: Due: 12/1 (optional revision due: 12/15)

3. Practicum Paper (15-20 page) (45 %): Due December 22. See guidelines, options, and deadlines below and in weekly schedule.

V. Course Weekly Schedule:

PART I: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Week 1 (9/4): Introduction (Guest Instructors: Drs. Stacy Kosko and Marie Claire Vasquez Duran)

  • Course Aims, Books, Requirements, Outline
  • Challenges to Democracy and Democratization: Theory and Practice
  • Instructors’ Perspectives
  • Student Response and Interests
  • Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Prefaces, Ch. 13

Week 2 (9/11):Learning from Athens

  • Amy Gutmann, “Democracy.” A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy,eds. Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit and Thomas Pogge (Routledge 2007). (Canvas)
  • Dahl, Chs. 1-3
  • Josiah Ober, “Learning from Athens: Success by Design,” Boston Review of Books (March 10, 2006):
  • Ober and Carnes, The Threshold of Democracy, pp. 1-19, 25-51
  • Game Introduction, Rules of the Democratic Game, and Distribution of Roles

Week 3 (9/18): Learning from Athens II

  • Ober and Carnes, The Threshold of Democracy, pp. 52-72, 103-115 (depending on your role and interests),
  • Playing the Democratic Game

Part II: TYPES OF DEMOCRATIC THEORIES AND PRACTICES

Week 4(9/25)Liberal Democracy: Ideals and Actualities

  • Dahl, Chs. 4-9
  • David A. Crocker, “Democratic Leadership, Citizenship, and Social Justice,” in Thad Williamson and Douglas Hicks, eds. Leadership and Social Justice (2012). (Canvas)

Week 5 (10/2): Interlude: U.S. Government: A Republic or a Democracy?

  • Short Paper #1 Due 9/29
  • Practicum Preferences Due 9/29
  • Practicum Assignments Announced 10/2
  • Dahl, Ch. 10
  • Levinson, ix-122

Week 6 (10/9): Interlude: Democracy and Constitutions

  • Long Paper Topic Proposal Due 10/6
  • Levinson, 123-180, 201-216
  • Christopher F. Zurn, “Judicial Review, Constitutional Juries and Civic Constitutional Fora: Rights, Democracy and Law,”Theoria, 58, 127 (2011): 63-94

Week 7 (10/16): Participatory Democracy v Representative Democracy

  • Short Paper #1 Revision Due 10/13
  • Enrique Peruzzotti and Andrew Selee, “Participatory Innovation and Representative Democracy in Latin America.” (Canvas)
  • McNulty, Chs. 1-3

Week 8 (10/23): Participatory Democracy

  • Practicum Topic Proposal Due 10/20
  • McNulty, Chs. 4-7

Week 9 (10/30): Deliberative Democracy: Introduction

  • Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance Ch. 1 (Canvas)
  • David A. Crocker, “Deliberative Participation in Local Development,” Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy, Ch. 10. (338-74) (Email)
  • Monique Deveaux, “A Deliberative Approach to Conflicts of Culture,” Political Theory, 31, 6 (Dec. 2003): 780-807.

Week 10 (11/6)Deliberative Democracy: Participatory Budgeting I

  • Short Paper # 2 Due 11/3
  • Long Paper: 3-page Outline Due 11/3
  • Baiocchi et al, Introduction, Chs. 1-3

Week 11 (11/13): Deliberative Democracy: Participatory Budgeting II

  • Guest Lecturer: Dr. Marie Claire Vasquez Duran
  • Baiocchi et al, Chs.4-5 and Conclusion
  • Role playing: Students assigned to represent one of the four PB cities

PART III: DEMOCRATIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Week 12 (11/20): Democracy and Development

  • Short Paper #2 Revision Due 11/17
  • Dahl, Chs. 12-15
  • Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm.”
  • Marc F. Plattner, “The End of the Transitions Era?”
  • Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism.” Journal of Democracy, 13, 2 (April 2010): 51-65.
  • Thomas Carothers and Diane de Gramont, Development Aid Confronts Politics: The Almost Revolution, Chap. 1, “The New Politics Agenda.” (Email)
  • Anna Lekvall, “Why Development Aid Needs Democrcy,” 30-37, in AWEPA, Democracy: Cornerstone for Development: The Role of Democracy as a Prerequisite for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

Thanksgiving Break (11/27-11/30) – NO CLASS

Week 13 (12/4): Should Development (Aid) Promote Good Governance or Democracy?

  • Short Paper #3 Due 12/1
  • Long Paper Due 12/1 (with option to revise)
  • Michael Johnston, Corruption, Contention, and Reform: The Power of Deep Democratization, Chap. 2: “’Deep democratization’ and the Control of Corruption.” Ch. 2. (Canvas)
  • “The Political Economy of Development in Africa,: A Joint Statement from Five Research Programmes.
  • Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “Why Democracy Needs a Level Playing Field,” Journal of Democracy, 21, 1 (January 2010): 57-68.

Week 14 (12/11): Arab Spring: Democracy and Pluralism?
  • Muasher, The Second Arab Awakening. And the Battle for Pluralism, TBA
Week 15 (12/15-12/20) Final Exam Week
  • Long Paper revision Due 12/15
  • Long Paper (with no option to revise) Due 12/15
  • Short Paper #3 Revision due 12/15
  • NO FINAL EXAM
  • Practicum Paper Due 12/22

PART IV: PRACTICUM PAPER GUIDELINES

A. Aims:

The practicum paper is an important part of the course’s aim to integrate democratic theory and practice. The paper also expresses and contributes to the University of Maryland and the School of Public Policy’s growing commitment to engage in our surrounding communities – local, county, state, national, and global. Practicum teams will be composed of 2-5 students.

An excellent paper will apply both class readings and critical discussion to a government,nongovernmental, or community agency and test out or evaluate these same concepts in the light of what the group investigated is doing (or failing to do). To what extent, if any, do some key concepts and theories studied in the course illuminate the aims, problems, options, and optimum course of action of the group studied? To what extent, if any, does the experience of the group studied provide a basis for supporting, criticizing, modifying, or rejecting scholarly or theoretical concepts?

Your paper will be handed in to your professor for comments and a grade. But you also may choose to provide your partner (or a representative) with a copy in the hopes that an “outsider” perspective may prove useful to the group itself. (For both opportunities and dangers of “outsider” perspectives, see David A. Crocker, “Cross-cultural Criticism and Development Ethics.” on Canvas)

Consequently, the practicum papers should be closely linked to class readings and critical discussions in order thatthe practicum experience contributes to both critical reflection andthe scholarly part of the course as it is not an independent exercise. The general problem with the university’s involvement in community engagement is that such engagement gets hived off from the reflective and critical components. To see how this danger might be avoided, consider the following example. If a student is doing a practicum in a homeless shelter, he/she may survey clients and get a sense of their attitude towards government: whether it is a venue for democratic protest, an appeaser and a source of support and solace for the client,or part of the problem that made him/her homeless in the first place. Can we discern in these different approaches the difference between a “negative liberty”or a “positive/civic liberty” attitude? What difference, if any, might it make if the homeless person participated in the shelter’s decision-making and links to local government? To further the sort of integration we seek, each team or group of 2-4 students will frame a theoretical question that they hope to (begin to) answer, or even reframe or dissolve, in their engagement and paper.

Hence, there are two opposite pitfalls to avoid: (1) an uncritical and unreflective paper that describes the unit with little reference to – or critical reflection about – the scholarly concepts and classroom approaches to democratic theory and practice; (2) an overly theoretical paper that fails to apply and test out theories and concepts in relation to the unit you are engaging and the context in which it is operating. Take seriously what Dewey means by “critical intelligence” will help you avoid both pitfalls.

B. Steps and Dates:

1.With suggestions from the list of past class practicums (below), each student will identify twooptions and rank these two preferences. You may come up (by yourself or with two or three others in the class) with your own idea for an organization or government entity to study. I will match students with similar interests if you have not organized yourselves. Students will express their practicum preferences by September 29and assignments will be announced in class on October 2.

2.Your team’s task is to analyze and evaluate the groupor country to be studied with respect to (i) the group’sdemocratic or nondemocratic internal decision making and (ii) how the group understands democracy and its importance, and what it is doing to promote democracy or to prevent de-democratization. The focus may be on democratic processes, democratic leadership, or democratic citizenship. Then on the basis of your understanding and assessment of the group’s(democratic) strengths and weaknesses, you should analyze and evaluate its options and recommend the one you argue is best. You may but need not put your paper in the format of a memo.

3.You should convene your group as soon as possible, decide on a coordinator, and find and communicate with a contact person in the unit that you study. Before the initial contact, you should do an initial perusal of the group’s website.

4.You should meet with the contact person from the unit as soon as possible, explain the course and practicum paper, and (hopefully) enlist their help in the project with respect to additional websites, publications, group members (leaders and rank-and-file) and “clients” or partners.

5.There is no hard-and-fast recipe for learning about and from your group; being able to understand its history, challenges, problems, options; and being in a position to produce a good analytical and evaluative paper. Among the possible strategies are: (1) read any websites and relevant documents produced by or about your group; (2) interview various leaders, rank and file members, “clients” or beneficiaries, or even rival groups; (3) attend group meetings or work sessions; (4) engage in “participatory action research” (“investigacion-accion”) by becoming part of (if invited) at least one “public action” of your group (e.g., voter registration, public protest, public forum).

6.Paper Topic Proposal: Your team should deliberate together and decide on at least three questions you hope to answer in the practicum inquiry and paper. By October 20provide me by email a brief paragraph (“Topic Proposal”) in which you clarify the questions and why you think they might be important. One outcome is that the practicum experience may be such that the initial questions are not so much answered as reframed or dissolved on the basis of the group’s experience.

7.Good papers from earlier years will be on Canvas

8.Practicum Paper Due: December 22.

C. STRATEGY AND ETHICS:

Some groups may be happy to have an outsider do a practicum paper on them. But providing you this opportunity will cost them time and energy that they could be using on other projects. What’s in it for them? What are your obligations to the group you are studying? They may welcome an outsider analysis, evaluation, and set of recommendations as a means of stimulating internal deliberation. Hence, you may want to write your paper knowing that they will receive a copy. The group might want you to volunteer some time to their activities (and this might be part of your “participatory action research”). A couple of hours a week might be worth considering and not too onerous for you. Anything more than that, and we should consider providing you with an independent reading course (for 1-2 hours) with credit to be received next semester.

D. PAST PRACTICUM GROUPS:

2013

  1. The Military and Democratization Challenges in Burma: Tyler Glaze and Jeremy Hinch
  1. Democracy and a One State Solution for Israel/Palestine: Akwasi Cato and Brandon Juhaish
  1. Refugee Integration and Democracy: Janelle Aseidu, Kaylan Billingsly, Marjorie Rapp
  1. A Democratic Assessment of Nicaraguan Governance 1979-1990, 2006-2013: Michael Aposporos, Meaghan Clark, Jaime Torres
  1. A Democratic Assessment of DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL: Michael Cowan, Kevin Gates, Mark O’Dell
  1. Democracy and Extremist Groups (Ansar Dine, Al-Shabab, Muslim Brother hood): Samantha Durdock, Sally Abd El-Moez, Patricia Mullaney
  1. Peruvian Mining and Peruvian Democracy: Zach Sivo and Nicole Zion

2012: Course not offered; instructor on sabbatical leave.

2011

1. Social Media and Democratization: Chase Ballinger, Scott Ferguson

2. WangariMaathai and the Greenbelt Movement: Leadership and Women’s empowerment: Beth Woffort, Nicole Giffen

3. The World Bank: EyobTolina, Thomas Bonner, Matt Regan

4. The Joint Chiefs of Staff: Amanda Jones, Andrew Price

5.IFES and North Africa or Middle East (MENA): Elections and Democracy Promotion: Rob Coynerand Mike Garber

6. Posada Amazonas (Comunidad Infierno): Kira West, Erica Burdick, Mark

7. The Episcopal Arch Diocese in New Mexico: Nancy Hayden

2010

  1. Democracy in the Palestinian Territories Since the 2006 Elections: OmriArens, Ari Rosner, Ariel Wolsztejn
  1. Democratization of China: Benjamin Otte, Natalie Weiner, Giuliana Kunkel, James Zheng
  1. Development Assistance, Country Ownership and the process of Deliberative Decision Making: NatsumiAjiki, Catherine Assebab, Owen Scott
  1. Democratic Governance in the Greater Washington DC Area: A Case Study of the Transportation Planning Board: Kelly Gough, Samuel Juh, Tim Natriello, Kristin Warn
  1. The Inter-American Charter in Light of Democratic Theory and Practice: Case Study: The Honduran 2009 coup d’état: Andrew Hochhalter, Yong-Woog Choi, Marie Claire Vasquez, Heloisa Vila
  1. The Tea Party Movement and Democratic Engagement: Mike Daley, Licheng Wei, Scott Zuke

2009