210109 SE M6 a: SE Österreichische Politik (2015W)

Protests against the state, distrust of state institutions, erosion of solidarity, increasing inequality, populism: democracies are under pressure. A group of issues over which in the last years fights have been becoming fierce are national and international infrastructure projects, such as power plants, power lines, highways, railways stations and airports.
One claim of politics is that it solves problems rationally. Another claim, at least of democratic politics, is that it creates policies on the basis of citizen demands. These claims sometimes are hard to reconcile and with the calls for citizen participation getting louder, democratic policy-making becomes ever more complicated and indeed is changing in a number of respects. But is it changing quickly enough to sustain democracy as such?
In this course we are going to revisit the claims of democratic political systems regarding their ability to solve problems and their capacity to include citizens in decision-making. We will discuss recents developments in modern democratic systems and ways how to analyse empirical problems in order to better understand democracies. Practical examples of concepts and research designs for the analysis of democratic politics will be debated. In the second half of the course students will analyse problems of democratic policy-making in small groups.