COURSE OUTLINE
This course examines recent and classic literature on the origins and development of modern states and the process of democratization. We will be taking the long historical view, beginning roughly with the collapse of the Roman Empire and coming up to the present, post-Cold War era. Topics to be considered include the emergence of the European state system in the early modern period, the meaning and consequences of the French Revolution, the drift toward social/economic conceptions of democracy during the 19th century, the meaning and spread of the "nation-state," Nazism and Soviet-type communism, and the consequences of the collapse of the bipolar world that shaped the contours of the post-World War II era. In this last part of the course, the issues of ethnic conflict, citizenship, and the rise of "human rights" will especially occupy our attention.
READINGS (available in the UCI Bookstore)
Victor Lee Burke, The Clash of Civilizations: War-Making and State Formation in Europe (Polity/Blackwell, 1997)
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Anchor Doubleday, 1955/1983)
Robert Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (Norton, 1978)
Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (Cambridge UP, 1993)
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New ed. (Harcourt Brace, 1968/1973)
Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Univ. of California Press, 1992)
David Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Johns Hopkins UP, 1997)
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford UP, 1995)
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, 1996)
I have assumed that everyone will already be in possession of a copy of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Should that not be the case, I will make available the selections from that work to be read for April 29.
EXPECTATIONS
This course is designed as a seminar. Class participation is therefore a must. I also expect participants to write one 15-20 pp. paper, to be turned in by the end of finals week, addressing some topic raised in the course that they consider important. In addition to drawing on the relevant readings from the seminar, I expect students to survey (briefly) the literature to determine the controversies relevant to the topic they wish to examine. Papers should thus combine insights gleaned from the seminar and from their own research into the subject at hand. Students must meet with me in my office by the 7th week of class to discuss their plans for the paper.
COURSE PLAN
April 8: Introduction to the course, requirements, expectations, etc.
April 15: Victor Lee Burke, The Clash of Civilizations: War-Making and State Formation in Europe (w/Burke at seminar and NSF dinner that night)
Also recommended: Otto Hintze, "Military Organization and the Organization of the State" and "Economics and Politics in the Age of Modern Capitalism" in Felix Gilbert, ed., The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze (Oxford UP, 1975)
April 22: Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
April 29: Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, Ch. 20, pp. 555-558, "How an Aristocracy may be Created by Industry" and Appendix III, pp. 749-758, "Speech Pronounced in the Chamber of Deputies on January 27, 1848"; Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question," "The Class Struggles in France," "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," "The Civil War in France," and "On Imperialism in India," all in The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 26, 52, 586-664
May 6: Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, chs. 1-3, 7, 11-14, 20
(w/Mann giving a Sociology Colloquium, "The Flipside of Democracy: The Modern Tradition of Ethnic and Political Cleansing" on 5/6 and NSF dinner that evening)
May 13: Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, chs. 1-2, 5-6, 8-9, 12-13 (N.B.: 290 pp. - start early)
May 20: Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction, chs. 4-5, 7-9
Also recommended: Max Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, Ch. XII, "Patriarchalism and Patrimonialism"
May 27: David Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (w/Jacobson doing NSF Dinner on 5/27 and a talk in Sociology on 5/28)
Also recommended: Michael Mann, piece in special issue of Daedalus (1995) on "Reconstructing Nations and States"
June 3: Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship(with a talk by Harold Orbach on "Indigenous Peoples, Sovereignty, and the Right of Self-Determination" on Tuesday, June 2 @ 3:30 pm)
June 10: Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order