Annotation
This half-course focuses on three cases of regime change triggered by revolutions, Serbia in 2000, Ukraine in 2004, and Egypt in 2011. Course participants will investigate what made people to criticise the old regime publically and to protest en masse in the streets although such protest against a repressive authoritarian regime might be life-threatening.
Furthermore, it will be explored to which extent the protesters achieved their aims of liberalizing and democratizing the authoritarian regime in the aftermath of the protests. An opening lecture will introduce the participants in the scholarly literature on regime change and democratic transition.
In the subsequent seminar discussions, students will critically assess the explanatory power of transition theory with regard to the Serbian, Ukrainian and Egyptian revolution and thereby systematize the causes and consequences of these particular cases. Course assignments entail the preparation of the compulsory readings, the active engagement in the course debate, the participation in a country working group, and the delivery of a research paper at the end of the semester.
Students are asked to submit an outline of their paper-project at the end of the course. The course will be taught as a block seminar on 28-30 November 2012.
Dr. Sonja Grimm is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Germany.
She specializes in studies of transition to democracy in post-conflict societies and has recently edited (with Dr. Julia Leininger and Dr.
Tina Freyburg) ‘Do All Good Things Go Together? Conflicting Objectives in Democracy Promotion’, a Democratization special issue (2012, Vol. 19, No. 3). She regularly teaches seminars on transition to democracy in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, democracy promotion, development cooperation, international relations, and the case study method.
She obtained her PhD on ‘Imposing Democracy: Political Re-organisation under External Oversight after Military Intervention’ at Humboldt University Berlin.