Fall/Winter Timetable

SII199Y1Y L0352

First-Year Seminar

Utopias and Dystopias

Themes

This course is open only to newly admitted first year students.
The 199Y seminars do not substitute for POL101Y1. Also, the 199Y seminars do not count toward the requirements of any of the Political Science programs.

THEMES: This course explores the dynamics of regime change from a comparative and historical perspective. In particular, it focuses on the factors that facilitate and inhibit radical political change. Varying modes of change are analyzed including social revolution, radical reform, fundamentalist reactions and restructuring from above. Examples will be drawn largely from the experience of authoritarian and post-authoritarian transitions in the Middle East and the Asia Pacific. The post-1970s global wave of democratizing initiatives will be discussed at length as well as the post-Communist rebuilding of political institutions in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Texts

TBA

Format and Requirements

Essays, seminar presentations, tests.