4.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The course is meant to prepare the students to deal with the most important theoretical and substantive issues affecting the nature, functioning and transformation of the political systems of the developing world. It will be focused on the analysis of the most important regime-types: authoritarian, military, theocratic, and democratic, and of major political processes such as political development and social modernization, political transitions and democratic consolidations, state-building and state failures. It will draw from a wide range of cross-national and cross-regional cases. Class time will be divided between lectures and discussion. Each topic will be introduced by the instructor. Hopefully, a discussion will follow on the assumption that all students have done their reading. The grade will be based on an approximately 30-page comparative paper to be delivered no later than 10 days after the last class.