Rise and Fall of Dictatorships and Democracies

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Winston Churchill famously said in a speech in the House of Commons in 1947, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." For generations, social scientists have studied what makes democracy emerge and then survive or break down. And because some dictatorships have huge consequences for their own populations and the world, social scientists have also devoted considerable attention to analyzing the emergence, survival, and breakdown of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. This course will examine these issues. The first part of the course will examine different theoretical approaches to understanding why democracies and dictatorships emerge and then survive or fall. The second and longer part will focus on the emergence, survival, and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Europe and Latin America, mostly in the 20th century.