Liberal democracy is facing considerable challenges these days. Authoritarian regimes extend their spheres influence, and several democracies experience backsliding. According to some scholars, we are currently witnessing a global wave of autocratisation. This course focuses on the role of international factors that contribute to democracy promotion or upholding dictatorship. We will critically investigate international efforts to promote democracy and ask, among other things, the following questions: How to deal with authoritarian regimes at the international stage? Which policies help spread democratic norms, and what are their (unintended) consequences? The course investigates how democracy can be promoted abroad, taking into account politics at the international level and the inner structures of authoritarian regimes. We will also analyse the recent shift from democracy promotion to democracy protection in the practitioners' community in response to current autocratisation tendencies that have affected established democracies like Poland and Hungary. The course draws on cutting-edge studies from International Relations and Comparative Politics with an emphasis on quantitative methods. During the course, we will explore existing data sets on democracy and international politics using R.
This course is for 2nd year MIA and MPP students only.
