What's Democracy Anyways?

Catalog description

This seminar is about what makes a democracy and what defines today’s liberal version of it. The course will tackle the moments of crisis in which liberal democracy finds itself in and, finally, try to craft answers on how to overcome them. What makes a democracy liberal is crucial in understanding why democracy is under fire: from autocratic regimes as much as from forces within democratic societies themselves. In order to understand this fierce confrontation this seminar will use sources from various disciplines such as political science, sociology, philosophy, ethics and journalism. With the help of the authors whose work we will be reading we aim to unlock and understand key components of a liberal democracy, ”public," "secularity," and “citizenship", among others. The course will include works by John Raws, Martha Nussbaum, Sophie Rosenfeld, Francis Fukuyama and Kwame Appiah.