Syllabus
Please see the document attached.
Annotation
The course is taught by visiting professor Andrija Šoć from the Institute of Philosophy at Belgrade University.
As the ‘Democracy report’ by V-Dem Institute shows, the number of liberal democracies has fallen in the past few decades, and the number of both electoral and closed autocracies is on the rise. As the authors of the report note, ‘the last 30 years of democratic advances are now eradicated’. This democratic backslide correlates to a large increase of people living in autocratizing societies – from 5% in 2011, to 36% in 2021. How did such a backslide happen, and what can be done to reverse this negative trend? This will be the guiding question of the course. We will approach the problem, and explore the possible solutions from several directions. Our interdisciplinary approach will combine philosophical analysis of key political concepts, insights from political science and political theory, analysis of empirical data and exploration of various political experiments, as well as explorations of different historical parallels to the current societal situation in terms of decision theory and some fundamentals of political economy. During the five lectures dedicated to this cluster of issues, we will discuss the topics of deliberation, participation, voting, education, civic trust, and more.