POLS 5640 - Erosion of Democracy

Since the 2000s, countries across the world, have seen the rise of potential autocrats. Executives with hegemonic aspirations like Hugo Ch´avez in Venezuela, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey or Viktor Orb´an in Hungary, have used their popularity to hinder free and fair elections, political rights, and civil liberties effectively eroding democracy. What circum-stances bring these politicians to power? What factors allow them to undermine democratic regimes? What, if anything, can be done to stop them? In this course we will answer these questions. We will some of the causes of democratic backsliding, covering topics like weak institutions, polarization, populism, corruption, false or fake news, and opposition strategies using examples of different countries like Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Bolivia, Brazil, and the United States.