| Inhalt |
Unfortunately, there is only a single word to qualify a variety of political systems based on the sovereign power of the people: democracy. This explains for a part the intellectual confusion about the concept and the patterns of democracy, to such a point that Giovanni Sartori has been able to write in a rather provocative manner that “Democracy is the pompous name of something which does not exist”. By this he meant that a “realistic” approach should prevail in attempting to better understand and explain the meaning of a concept which has been over-stretched by politicians, medias and even by “intellectuals” confusing personal political leanings and analytical understanding and critique.
The diversity of interpretations of a system of government permeated with normative considerations has been reinforced by its variations over time and space. In addition, the tensions within a system which claims to be the best of all possible modes of government and is often deceptive for the citizens is source of disenchantment, permanent discussions, political fights and institutional changes in order to identify a better fit between aspirations and reality. This on-going process of adjustment is a permanent feature of democratic systems but there are times when the crisis is more acute and requires changes of paradigms, objectives, institutions and policies. As a result the very same word “Democracy” evokes extremely diverse realities across time and space. Over the past 30 years or so, democracies (which were born and have developed within the shell of the Nation-State) have been confronted by the challenge of globalization and more specifically of “Europeanization” on our continent. Robert Dahl speaks of an “unhappy couple” when evoking the closed but stormy relationship with the market. The seminar will be organised i around specific topics in each session. However the common thread will be around the disputed concept of democracy across time and space. The present crisis of democratic systems stem from a number of converging factors which will be examined in depth. Not a single one can fully explain the difficulties that democracies are facing across the world.
A syllabus and a reading list related to each session will be provided in due time.
The main issues will include the study of key concepts such as people, representation/direct democracy, technocracy/elite, populism, national identity/ globalisation, political party/movements.
The students will be expected to analyse and discuss key concepts which have been and are at the center of political debates over time: democracy and its “crises”; the alternatives to representative democracies and the populist challenge etc.. These concepts have been discussed at least for 2000 years but no fully satisfactory answers have been found. The issue is further accentuated by the disconnect between concepts and reality which were very closely associated: state, nation, people, democracy. The aim of the seminar will be to re-read and analyze these key concepts in the light of present developments.
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| Literatur |
- Canovan, Margaret, Populism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, New-York, 1981 - Canovan, Margaret, The People, Polity, Cambridge, 2005 - Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations and States, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass - Mastropaolo, Alfio, Is Democracy a Lost Cause, Paradoxes of an Imperfect Invention, ECPR Press, 2012 - Mény Y. and Surel Y., Democracy and the Populist Challenge, London, Palgrave, MacMillan, 2008 - Mény Yves, Imparfaites démocraties, Presses de SciencesPo, Paris 2019 and Popolo ma non troppo, Il malinteso democratico, Il Mulino 2019 ( fortcoming English edition, spring/summer 2020) - Ory Pascal, Peuple souverain, De la révolution populaire à la radicalité populiste, Paris, Gallimard, 2017 - Scharpf, Fritz, Governing in Europe. Effective and Democratic, Oxford University Press, Oxford - Ziblatt, Daniel, How Democracies Die, New-York, Crown, 2018
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