300275 Quantifying Political Transformation (LEH) (WiSe 2013/2014)

The training research project ‚quantifying political transformation‘ is aimed at focussing on the communication on democracy and democratization in a world society. It introduces into key concepts of political transformation, it identifies the explicit and hidden standards of a ‘good democracy’ against the background of current theories of democracy, and it elaborates on the mechanisms to transfer and diffuse these standards in a world society, in particular by comparison through numbers and the communication with standards-based measures. The winter semester is dedicated to both discussing the theoretical framework in which the comparison of democracies could be analyzed and developing a set of own research questions (and a research design) in a small group. The summer semester will give room to work empirically with standards based measures, their theoretical concepts, their methods, their ways of comparing, and their dissemination. It would be possible to deal with the expert’s reports, numbers, tables etc. from one standard based measure in particular. A pool of 4.500 pages of reports can be provided (BTI). However, it is up to the whole training research project and the students to identify the standard based measures and the pool of (other) data in order to work empirically on the communication on democratic standards in a world society. The final report of the training research project will be about 25 pages.

Bibliography

Basic references:
Berg-Schlosser, Dirk 2007: Concepts, Measurements and Sub-Types in Democratization Research, in: Berg-Schlosser, Dirk (ed.): Democratization. The State of the Art, Opladen, 31-43
Bernhagen, Patrick 2009: Measuring Democracy and Democratization, in: Haerpfer, Christian W./Bernhagen, Patrick/Inglehart, Ronald F./Welzel, Christian (Hrsg.): Democratization, Oxford, 24-40
Held, David. 2006, Models of Democracy, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Powell, G. Bingham, Russell J. Dalton, and Kaare Strøm. 2012, Comparative Politics Today: A World View, New York: Pearson.

A brief overview of models of democracies and their standards is provided by:
Sack, Detlef: Dealing with dissatisfaction – Role, Skills and Meta-Competences of Participatory Citizenship Education, in: Hedtke, Reinhold/Zimenkova, Tatjana (ed.): Education for Civic and Political Participation. A Critical Approach. New York, London, 13-35.