This course focuses on the emergence of democratic politics and institutions in Western Europe. What explains the emergence of the modern state in Western Europe? What explains the uneven spread of liberalism across
European nations? How did European political structures respond to the structural transformations associated with the process of industrialization?
Why do some countries manage to create and consolidate democracy earlier than others? Why did democracy collapse in many European nations in the interwar period? In addressing these questions, the course reviews modern European history from an analytical perspective, but places it in a global perspective by contrasting West European developments with those of agrarian empires beyond that region (Russia, China, Japan).
After a conceptual and methodological introduction, the first part of the course is devoted to analyzing the formation of European nation-states from the 17th to the 19th century and the struggles about democratization in the 19th and 20th centuries. The analysis will primarily focus on England, France, and Germany, with excursions on Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. The next part of the course will contrast European developments with Russia, China and Japan. The final part examines changing conditions and dynamics of political regime transformations in the industrial age and particularly since the beginning of the "Third Wave" of democratization in the mid-1970s. This part of the course will place the European experience in an even broader comaparative and theoretical context: How distinctive is the European experience of democratization? How does the European experience fit with general theories of regime choice and democratization?
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