Democratization
If you're looking for something more specifically addressing democratization in general besides what's in your textbook, check out 2003 article by Chip Hauss of Search for Common Ground and George Mason University quoted below.The essay appears on the Beyond Intractability site. The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project is based at the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado. The project is an extensive collection of essays and interviews about the study of conflict (see some of the topics in the next paragraph). Many of these topics are inherently part of comparative politics.
The democratization article is an interactive essay. There are links within the text to related ideas like colonialism, globalization, tolerance, ethnic division, power, development, and civil society. With access to the other articles, your students should have no trouble reacting to the ideas in this essay and applying them to the countries they are studying.
At the end of the essay is a wonderful collection of online, offline (i.e. in print), and video sources for further pursuit of the concept, and links to a couple teaching sources.
Democratization
by Charles (Chip) Hauss
"Democratization is one of the most important concepts and trends in modern political science, one whose significance is just beginning to be understood by conflict-resolution practitioners. On one level, it is a relatively simple idea, since democratization is simply the establishment of a democratic political regime. However, in practice, democratization has been anything but easy to understand, let alone achieve...
"Democratization is the process whereby a country adopts such a regime. There is less agreement among political scientists about how that process occurs, including the criteria to use in determining if democratization has, in fact, taken place...
"Democratization is important because of one of the most widely (but not universally) accepted trends in international relations, known as the democratic peace. Put simply, democracies do not have wars with other democracies...
"Most average citizens... can... engage in the political process of their home country to promote policies that help democratization...
"As already noted, we do not really know how democratization works...
"There is some agreement about what some of the best practices are likely to be, however. All involve a commitment to an integrated approach to democratization in which it is inextricably intertwined with sustainable economic development, education, and conflict resolution..."
The main sections of the article are:
- What is Democratization?
- Why is Democratization Important?
- What Individuals Can Do
- What States and Third Parties Can Do
Citation: Hauss, Charles (Chip). "Democratization." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: August 2003
See a list of other entries about democratization in The Politics of democratization in Russia.
posted by Ken Wedding @ 3:11 PM
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