Democracy, Populism, Autocratisation

The course addresses two themes related to significant changes in contemporary political systems: the rise of populism and the decline of democracy.

The first theme focuses on the growing distrust of political actors and institutions, which has been reflected in populist political mobilisation around the world. Populism has been a contested concept within political science, but is increasingly used to understand and explain current developments. The course analyses the concept of populism, as well as empirical examples of alleged populist actors. The second theme focuses on issues related to democratisation and autocratisation. Here, we discuss and analyse both democratisation and autocratisation from various theoretical perspectives, with an emphasis on the global democratic decline.