Seminar with Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way
Global resilience of democracy
10th of July, 16–19.00
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way present on a new book project on the Resilience of Democracy's Third Wave. The early 21st century saw changes in the international environment that threatened democracy. The rise of increasingly aggressive autocratic powers in China and Russia shifted the global balance of power away from Western hegemony – threatening to reverse substantial democratic gains made in the 1990s. But while democracy has broken down in key cases — most notably Hungary and the United States — the overall level of decline has been surprisingly modest. The vast majority of countries that transitioned to democracy after the end of the Cold War remain democratic today.
They argue that the resilience of democracy's Third Wave is grounded in structural factors. Capitalist development is a major reason why so many Third Wave democracies have survived in the twenty-first century. The world is considerably more developed today than it was when the Third Wave began in the 1970s. Half a century ago, few countries outside Western Europe and North America were characterized by levels of capitalist development that undermined democratic development. By the early twenty-first century, however, domestic conditions had grown more favorable to democracy in many parts of the world, including Southern and East-Central Europe, East Asia, and South America.
Please note there is limited number of participants. Please register by 31th of May by providing a brief description of yourself (name, field of study, intended degree) and 2-3 sentences explaining why you would like to participate in the seminar.
You can send your registration to the following email address:
Noah Otto, notto3@uni-koeln.de
Reading material will be provided.