Democratic Erosion-How and why some democracies erode

Question

Instructions

After carefully reading Moore Jr., Lipset, Acemoglu & Robinson, and Inglehart & Welzel, and develop a 750-word (this is minimum word count; you can write more but not less) response to the following question:

What preconditions favor or impede democracy? That is, "What social and economic forces [push] some societies toward regimes with greater political equality..."? (Acemoglu & Robinson 2006, 17)

In other words, identify, illustrate, and discuss all the conditions and pre-conditions the different authors argue lead toward or away from democracy. The focus of your analysis is on those conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for a country to become a democracy.

I encourage you to develop a concept map like the ones we've developed in class or the ones you find in the readings, particularly for Acemoglu & Robinson's chapter. 

To help you answer this question, keep the writing guidelines in mind:

Summary–of required readings, including key ideas, concepts, and questions to be used as a foundation for the analysis. In your summary, you can demonstrate that you read carefully and thoroughly.A good summary contains Three I’s (Fraser and Davidson 2012): identifyan idea or claim in the reading; illustrate the idea with sufficient evidence from the text; and interpret the idea in light of the evidence. The absence of sufficient textual evidence tends to make summaries too general, vague, or incomplete. So, make sure your summary offers sufficient details from the text to illustrate all the ideas you identify.

Analysis–comparison and contrast of ideas, concepts, and questions within and between the readings. In your analysis, you demonstrate your ability to fully address or answer the questions I posed in the prompt. This is where you can demonstrate your understanding of the material and that you are thinking for yourself. Therefore, no external sources can be accepted for the analysis because it must be based on your close reading of the required texts.

Coherence–this means organized, step-by-step, progression of ideas. In other words, ideas should flow in orderly fashion from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. Coherence is very important because it helps you to demonstrate that you read carefully and fully, and that you can impose order on your thoughts –thus making your claims and arguments easy to follow for the reader. Otherwise, good ideas or claims go to waste because they become disconnected or fragmented and the reader gets lost.

Clarity–this refers to grammar, mechanics, and style. Poorly writtensentences make it difficult for your readers to understand your arguments and thus for you toget your point across.Poorly written sentences can be awkward, cumbersome or difficult to read, incomplete, or contain comma splices, for example. They may also include improper quoting, or poor balance between paraphrasing and quoting, as well as include commonly confused words