Democracy: The Long View and the Bumpy History

Harvard FAS

This course will explore key episodes and turning points in the history of democracy from ancient Athens to the present. It is shaped by two overarching and compelling questions: What circumstances, conditions, and forces are conducive to the development, deepening, and preservation of democratic ideas, values, and institutions? And conversely, what are the conditions or forces that tend to inhibit or threaten the emergence, strengthening, or even survival of democracy? Among the historical…