Courses

How do ordinary citizens participate in democratic politics? The course examines main concepts in the comparative study of political participation and social and political movements to address this question. The first part of the course focuses on normative and methodological aspects related to the study of political activism. In this part, we examine the role that citizens’ political activism plays in democratic politics and look at how these normative views are reflected in the methods used to study political activism (individual and organizational surveys, protest event analysis, participant observation). In the second part of the course, we focus on the individual-level political participation. Here we discuss various modes of political action available to citizens of contemporary democracies and examine micro-, meso-, macro-factors that determine people’s willingness to get involved in politics. The third part of the course focuses on the meso-level of political actors that organize and coordinate people’s political activism – social movements, interest groups and civil society organizations. This part of the course discusses the role of organizational resources, strategic action repertoire, political opportunities and framing and campaigning strategies of mobilizing actors.