400019 SE SE Theory for Doctoral Candidates (2014W)

It is often argued that democracy is the only form of government that can be legitimate in modern liberal societies. Yet there are many ways of applying democracy. To explore those applications it is important to ‘start theoretical’ and ‘go empirical’. The seminar will, therefore, start by asking what democracy is and what are the justifications for it? Is democracy ‘intrinsically’ justified in the sense that its own core values of equality and freedom are valuable in and of themselves? Or is democracy justified by its ‘consequences’ for other things people value: peace, prosperity, stable, predictable and non-arbitrary government.
The seminar will then move on to look at the core practices of modern democracy, first by distinguishing different models or varieties of democracy, and then by looking at representation and accountability,
Once the justifications, practices and models of democracy are clear we will be able to look at some large questions in the contemporary application of democracy. First, we will use the example of the European Union to tackle the large question of whether democracy can really be applied beyond the state? Second, we investigate the argument that democracy requires much more than voting in elections. It is also ‘government by discussion’, a particular way of justifying decisions and of reasoning collectively about them.
We will conclude with session on attempts to assess the democratic quality of political systems. Is it possible to define indicators of democracy that are both normatively justifiable and empirically observable? If so, how should political systems be evaluated against those indicators? To answer these questions we will spend the last day looking at indicators and methods used by different studies of democracy around the world.