Columbia's Summer Program on Democracy in Tunis & Istanbul

June 05, 2015

The substantive focus of the program will be on the concept of democracy, the challenges of democratic transitions and consolidation, and trade-offs associated with different ways of organizing democratic institutions.  Although the program will study general issues associated with democratic politics and will not focus exclusively on Tunisia and Turkey, these locations will provide students with meaningful exposure to the recent histories and challenges that Turkey and Tunisia have faced in their democracies.  Tunisia is the birthplace of the Arab Uprisings, and arguably the only country in the region that has remained on track toward democratic consolidation. Turkey has historically vacillated between democracy and authoritarian government, and its recent democratic history has seen its own challenges related to civil liberties, the role of Islam, constitutional reform and the political incorporation of the Kurds.  Student perspectives on the central issues in the program will be shaped by the incorporation of students from Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon, where recent experiences with democratic governance have been extremely challenging and dramatically different.  To enable students to think systematically about how to formulate and test arguments about democracy, the program will integrate the study of democracy with the study of quantitative research methods, and will culminate in original research projects where students develop arguments about democracy and test them empirically. 
 
The Summer Program on Democracy in Tunis and Istanbul is the result of collaboration with Columbia Global Centers | Middle East in Amman, Columbia Global Centers | Turkey in Istanbul, and the Office of Global Programs.  

The general goal of the program is to have students engage core empirical questions about democracy and democratic institutions. What is a democracy?  What are factors that lead to democratization and to the consolidation of democracies?  What are the trade-offs associated with different institutional forms – such as the electoral law -- that one can adopt when creating or changing a democratic system?  What are the particular challenges associated with democracy in ethnically or religiously divided societies, and are there institutional responses to these challenges that make the most sense?  To address such questions, students will learn central arguments in political science about democratic institutions. 

A second goal is to have students consider these questions about democracy through the lens provided by the cases of Turkey and Tunisia.  To this end, experts from Tunisia and Turkey who have participated in democratic processes in these countries will visit the program and provide students with their views of the particular challenges their countries have faced. Examples of  topics include the role of Islam in Tunisian constitutional debates, the role of women in the electoral politics of both countries, and the Kurdish issue and media freedom in Turkey.   The program will also consider challenges and experiences with democracy in the other countries from which the program participants will be recruited.
 
A third goal is to help students evaluate substantive arguments about democracy using quantitative research methods.  Thus, the program will integrate intellectually a course on democracy with a course on statistical research.  As part of the program, students from Columbia and the region will work together in small teams to make arguments about democratic institutions, and  provide empirical evidence for these arguments using appropriate data.