We’ve looked at democracies and democratization, so naturally it’s time to look at non-democracies and democratic backsliding. As we discussed in class last week, sometimes it can be hard to tell which is which at any given time- is a semi-democratic regime on its way to transitioning to fully democratic, or is it actually backsliding into fully authoritarian governments? Freedom House’s “Nations in Transit” report analyzes democratization for 29 countries, and if you look at the trend view of the map, the trend is generally pretty negative.

This week, make sure you:

• Read Before our class: Bonzelos et al, Chapter 5
• Actively participate in our Tuesday class 1:15-2:45pm
• Check out this week’s slides.
• Write your Week 7 blog post. This week, your blog post will be a midterm self-assessment. You should analyze the work you have done so far, and counting up any points you have earned already. Make sure to grade your first half of blogging out of 15 points. Also include in your midterm self-assessment a plan for how you will complete the second half of the course successfully. If what you’ve been doing so far has been working, celebrate yourself! If you need to make some changes (allotting more time to classwork, improving (or starting!) your blogging and reading, or anything else), write down what you’re going to do, so you have a plan to follow.
• Take the Midterm Exam while it is open in Brightspace- October 25-28. The midterm is online, open-book, untimed, and you may take it as many times as you like during the testing period. Please look up answers to the questions in your course materials (instead of just googling or asking AI)- this way, you’ll learn through the process of taking the exam!). The test will include the class case studies we worked on last week in class (the students who were in class and did the work generously decided to share their work with students who were unable to attend, so please thank them when you see them! Even better, you can edit and revise the work, to make sure it’s as useful as possible for all of you to learn and study from.).