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Course : America’s Democracy and Political System

Course code : DES316

America’s Democracy and Political System

DES316  -  K. Lavdas, M. Simiti, S. Maier

Course Description

Course

The course has two main aims, which it seeks to achieve with the use of lectures and material ranging from introductory to more specialized. First, the course offers an advanced introduction to the formation and current operation of the federal political system of the United States of America. Second, the course also aims to familiarize students with a number of more specialized issues that dominate contemporary American politics and influence – in direct and indirect ways – the quality of democracy and the diverse patterns of societal, group, and individual citizens’ participation in today’s US. In blending fundamental and current issues, institutional aspects and cultural underpinnings, procedural features and normative content, the course invites students to participate in a critical exploration of American democracy without losing sight of the everyday aspects of American politics. The American Republic was born proclaiming that it represented a new and uniquely promising departure in the long journey of human governance. The Founders thought that the new Republic would be prosperous and influential, but they could not foresee that to achieve a viable federal system the Republic would have to go through a tremendously destructive Civil War. Nor could they foresee that the USA would become a world power. Today’s American politics is fascinating both because of the US role in the world and due to the close relationship between American political development and the evolution of modern political science. It was Tocqueville who, studying “Democracy in America” and becoming fascinated with its novel participatory features and enormous promise, suggested that “a new science of politics was necessary for a new world”. Political science – in its various specializations – has indeed followed the new Republic very closely and it has, in turn, been influenced by its features and by its concerns. An auxiliary aim of the course is to encourage each student to relate the broader theoretical and conceptual issues to the experience of particular areas, policy fields and/or current developments. In this spirit, students will be asked to serve as discussants for the material assigned to each session, in addition to writing a paper and participating in the final examination.

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