POLSCI 151: Dictators and Democrats in Modern Latin America
(Duke University Undergraduate)
This course has two principal goals. The first and foremost goal of the course is to introduce you to study in political science of dictatorships and democracies. While some of the readings will draw from textbooks, many will be drawn from academic journals and books. By the end of the course, you should be able to answer the following questions in thoughtful and informed ways:
- What are the important differences between dictatorships and democracies?
- How do political scientists think of causality, and what do they mean by a “theory”?
- What causes democracies or dictatorships to come into existence?
- What effects do democracies and dictatorships cause with regard to outcomes we may care about, such as economic development, poverty, and inequality?
The second goal of the course is to introduce you to the political history of Latin America. Please note that this is not, however, a history course. Our study of the history of Latin America will be instrumental, in the sense that it will be used to analyze the theories of dictatorships and democracies we study. Despite this instrumentality, you will hopefully exit the course knowing more about Latin America and its history than you do now. In particular, you will investigate one country’s experience in the context of some of the theoretical readings of the class, examining the causes and/or effects of a political regime in that country.