Syllabus
Schedule:
1. Introduction
2. Basics of East Asia; Tradition faces Modernity
3. Political History in the 20th Century East Asia; United vs. Divided Nationhood
4. Contemporary Democratization; Procedural and Substantive; Main Approaches
5. Geopolitical Dimension and Phasing
6. Liberalization, Transition, and Consolidation? Meanings and Measurement
7. Regime Change and Dimension of History
8. ?The Only Game in Town? and Institutional Design
9. Multiple Transformations and New Regime?s Legitimacy
10. Actors and Linkages, Political Parties and Elections
11. Informal Politics and Elections
12. Civil Society and Quality of Democracy?
Annotation
The course, which is composed of lecture and seminar sessions, addresses two areas highly discussed in contemporary social sciences: democratization and East Asia. It is designed to prepare students for comparative analysis of East Asian (especially Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean), and Western political systems and serve as an adequate basis for further study.
Process of regime change has been one of the major topics in comparative politics for last two decades, and has received attention from students of international relations, economics, political culture, globalization, etc. Study of democratization proved to be enriching discourse, providing variety of new, though sometimes fussy concepts and hypothesis.
At the same time, much debate has been dedicated to the development in Asia, namely because of its growing economic potential. East Asia is especially interesting region, combining examples of successful economic modernization and promising path of political democratization with cases of totalitarian or post-totalitarian nature.
Our discussion will be centered on the maritime, democratic part of East Asia: Republic of China on Taiwan, "the first Chinese democracy," Republic of Korea, "the only Korean democracy," and Japan, which is often denoted as the first Asian democracy. This course has two basic goals: it is designed to provide basic understanding of contemporary political systems and analytical frameworks applicable to the political changes in the region.
We will compare the major aspects and functions of political systems to explore general patterns of similarities and differences that exist among these states and the dynamics that are deep-seated in their political changes. We will try to catch differences in the individual national paths of political transformation and conduct a systematic comparison between mentioned nations utilizing a set of common integrated themes.
Last but not least, we will illustrate possibilities of coherent measurement and comparison of the regime change phases (liberalization, transition and consolidation).