For 2305 students (and to a lesser extent 2306) the concept of autocracy, oligarchy and democracy are important to internalize. Each is a way of organizing a governing system. They differ by where each places sovereign authority - with the one the few or the many. The slides touch the advantages and disadvantages of each and how each is subtly incorporated into each of the different branches.
One of the advantages of autocracy is its efficiency. One of the disadvantages of democracy is its inefficiency. When people are critical of democratic governments, its often because they reveal internal differences in how to combat a nation's problems, and leads some nations to prefer more autocratic means for organizing their governments.
This has become increasingly true since the 2008 economic crisis, which affected much more then just the United States. After the fall of communism in 1989, democracy flourished as more nations adopted democratic processes for their governments, sine the economic crisis, this has not been the case. Autocratic governments - with a single dominant ruler - have expanded. Some opportunities to expand democracies have stalled, or regressed - such as in Egypt and Thailand for example.
Here are links to recent news items that have documented, studied and commented on that trend
- The Autocracy Challenge.
- New Freedom House Report Shows Autocracies Deeply Entrenched.
- Democracy Can Still Deliver.
- The Democratic Alternative from the South.
- How Militaries Rule.
Robert Kagan, an astute foreign policy commentator, suggests that this trend - accompanied by a rise in isolationism in the United States - does not bode well for a stable world.
- click here for Superpowers Don't Get to Retire.One of the advantages of autocracy is its efficiency. One of the disadvantages of democracy is its inefficiency. When people are critical of democratic governments, its often because they reveal internal differences in how to combat a nation's problems, and leads some nations to prefer more autocratic means for organizing their governments.
This has become increasingly true since the 2008 economic crisis, which affected much more then just the United States. After the fall of communism in 1989, democracy flourished as more nations adopted democratic processes for their governments, sine the economic crisis, this has not been the case. Autocratic governments - with a single dominant ruler - have expanded. Some opportunities to expand democracies have stalled, or regressed - such as in Egypt and Thailand for example.
Here are links to recent news items that have documented, studied and commented on that trend
- The Autocracy Challenge.
- New Freedom House Report Shows Autocracies Deeply Entrenched.
- Democracy Can Still Deliver.
- The Democratic Alternative from the South.
- How Militaries Rule.
Robert Kagan, an astute foreign policy commentator, suggests that this trend - accompanied by a rise in isolationism in the United States - does not bode well for a stable world.
Many Americans and their political leaders in both parties, including President Obama, have either forgotten or rejected the assumptions that undergirded American foreign policy for the past seven decades. In particular, American foreign policy may be moving away from the sense of global responsibility that equated American interests with the interests of many others around the world and back toward the defense of narrower, more parochial national interests. This is sometimes called “isolationism,” but that is not the right word. It may be more correctly described as a search for normalcy. At the core of American unease is a desire to shed the unusual burdens of responsibility that previous generations of Americans took on in World War II and throughout the cold war and to return to being a more normal kind of nation, more attuned to its own needs and less to those of the wider world.
If this is indeed what a majority of Americans seek today, then the current period of retrenchment will not be a temporary pause before an inevitable return to global activism. It will mark a new phase in the evolution of America’s foreign policy. And because America’s role in shaping the world order has been so unusually powerful and pervasive, it will also begin a new phase in the international system, one that promises not to be marginally different but radically different from what we have known these past 70 years. Unless Americans can be led back to an understanding of their enlightened self-interest, to see again how their fate is entangled with that of the world, then the prospects for a peaceful twenty-first century in which Americans and American principles can thrive will be bleak.
In additional to clarifying the material in the section labelled "defining key terms," this material should help you with the section on foreign policy.
