Admission requirements
Enrollment in this course as an International Relations and Organisations (IRO) student is only allowed upon successful completion of the propaedeutic year (60 EC).
Enrollment as an exchange student is only permitted if you are a third-year BSc student and have passed at least 60 EC in Political Science and/or International Relations courses.
Description
Imagine you had the chance to design a country's political institutions from scratch. Which would you choose, and why? In this seminar course, students debate ten fundamental institutional choices through structured debate. We combine normative theories with empirical evidence from the comparative politics literature to assess the advantages and disadvantages of different institutional designs. Topics include:
Should voting be compulsory?
Should the voting age be lowered to 16?
Should there be an electoral threshold for parliamentary representation?
Should parties be required to apply a quota for female candidates?
Should anti-democratic parties be barred from elections?
Should citizens be able to call binding referendums?
Should a second chamber composed of sortition-selected citizens be established?
Should lobbying activities be regulated?
Should there be a maximum limit on political donations?
Should digital microtargeting in election campaigns be banned?
Course objectives
- After this course, you are able to analyse competing positions in the literature on democratic institutional design and distinguish between normative arguments and empirical evidence.
- After this course, you are able to apply normative arguments and empirical evidence from the comparative politics literature to evaluate concrete institutional alternatives.
- After this course, you are able to defend a reasoned position orally on the basis of academic literature and respond constructively to counterarguments from a scholarly perspective.
- After this course, you are able to evaluate the persuasiveness of arguments in writing, with reference to academic literature.
Teaching method
Debate seminars
Assessment method
Team debates
Written assignments
Reading list
Scholarly book chapters and journal articles available via the Leiden University digital library.
Registration
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer(s) (listed in the right information bar). For questions about enrolment, contact the Student Services Centre: ssc@leiden.edu.
Schedule
The timetables are available through MyTimetable (see the button in the upper right corner).