GLOB2101 Decolonizing Democracy: Lessons From the Global South
Popular Western discourses and academic political science literature take liberal democracy as the end-goal to which all non-Western countries must aspire. But what, exactly, is democracy? If it means “rule of the people,” then is democracy compatible with inequalities of wealth and power? Can countries claim democracy if their national sovereignty is compromised—or if they compromise the national sovereignty of others? Is democracy a Western concept foreign to the Global South to begin with?
Academic political science literature takes as its default the liberal-democratic model, which originated in Europe and North America to promote capitalist-market society alongside colonial-imperialist expansion. In contrast, working-class and anti-colonial movements have often sought to achieve democracy by transcending the liberal-democratic model’s theoretical and institutional boundaries. What alternative forms of democracy have they conceptualized and practiced?
This course operates at the intersection of political theory, international relations, and comparative politics by bringing the political science literature on democracy into conversation with recent debates about decolonization. The first part of the course draws on political theory, exploring various theoretical models of democracy, to enquire into the sufficiency of minimalistic or “thin” definitions of democracy in most comparative politics literature. The second part turns critical attention towards recent discussions of decolonization and imperialism, particularly debates between epistemological-cultural approaches and material-political approaches, and how they may guide our conceptualization of democracy. The third part of the course examines a range of self-proclaimed democratic projects in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and asks whether we should take their claims to popular legitimacy seriously, and whether they may have lessons to offer to arrive at a “decolonized” understanding of democracy. In exploring alternative claims to, and practices of, democracy in the Global South, therefore, this course aims to nuance, diversify and enrich our understanding of the concept of democracy.
Periodo en el que se ofrece el curso
202310
Idioma en el que se ofrece el curso
Inglés
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