HON351, American Values in Global Perspective
Spring Semester 2008
Study Sheet for October 4 Session
A Global Trend Toward Democracy?
Reading Assignment:
Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2008 (read Overview Essay, and browse Tables and Graphs)
Joseph T. Siegle, et al., "Why Democracies Excel," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 5, Sept./Oct 2004, pp. 57-71
Websites (optional):
Freedom House (Wikipedia entry)
Wikipedia, History of Democracy
Questions to consider while reading the Freedom House Report:
1. What does Freedom House mean when it categorizes a country as "free", "partly free", and "not free." What proportions of the (a) world's countries and (b) the world's population lived in each of the categories in 2007?
2. What are the criteria that Freedom Houses to determine whether a country is an "electoral democracy?"
3. In which regions of the world did Freedom House note progress in 2007? In which regions was there backsliding away from freedom?
4. What concerns does Freedom House raise about developments in the United States and Western Europe?
5. In what ways have some countries been "pushing back" against democracy and freedom?
6. What types of progress in the advance of freedom does Freedom House report occurred between 1981 and 2007?
Questions to consider while reading the Siegle et al article:
1. What is the conventional thinking about whether democracy or development normally comes first in the evolution of nations?
2. How do the authors define democracy?
3 . What research design do the authors use to compare the economic performance of democracies and authoritarian regimes?
4. On what measures of development do democracies appear to perform better than authoritarian regimes?
5. What attributes of democracies contribute to their relative success?
6. What strategies might the United States and international institutions use to encourage democratic practices in developing countries?