POLI 267 - Democracy and Empire

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

What happens when apparently democratic societies - in which citizens author the laws of the land and actively participate in shaping domestic and foreign policy - undertake imperial projects of expansion? Can we still consider a society democratic when its citizens tacitly or explicitly endorse the conquest, coercive expropriation, and exploitation of foreign lands and resources and the sexual and racial subordination of foreign peoples? Beginning with imperial projects of Ancient Athenian democracy, this course will examine historical continuities and transformations that help explain contemporary tensions of imperial expansion and exclusion. We will focus on the historical origins and development of, for example, modern projects liberal-democratic nation-building, national and global divisions of labor, increasingly restrictive domains of citizenship and political participation, and the containment of potentially political transnational communities and movements. Mr. Hoffman.

Two 75-minute periods.