Democracy and Governance Studies
Welcome to the Democracy and Governance Studies program at Georgetown University, housing the Master of Arts in Democracy and Governance and the Center for Democracy and Civil Society (CDACS).
Addressing the Democratic Recession
According to Freedom House, the number of electoral democracies has declined for three years in a row. This is the first democratic recession since the end of the Cold War. The decline, in part, stems from the policies of the Bush Administration as well as from incomplete democratic transitions. It is also the result of deliberate reforms to strengthen authoritarian regimes. CDACS Executive Director Barak Hoffman and MA student Jack Santucci argue that unless the Obama administration addresses the causes of the democratic recession by focusing more attention on the difficulties of democratic consolidation, it is likely to deepen.
Event: Charles Kupchan on US Grand Strategy and International Institutions
Charles Kupchan is Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University. On April 20, 2009, from 6:30 to 8:00 PM, he will give a talk on US grand strategy at the Mortara Center for International Studies, 3600 N Street NW, Washington, DC.
In a recent Democracy: A Journal of Ideas article with Georgetown graduate student Adam Mount, Prof. Kupchan argues declining American dominance in the world means the United States should aim to define global norms for the long term. In particular, it should institutionalize an inclusive world order tolerant of political diversity among states who govern to the end of human welfare.
Student Election Observers Return from El Salvador
In March 2009, four M.A. candidates in the Democracy and Governance program traveled to El Salvador with the SHARE Foundation to spend their spring break as impartial election observers.
By more than six points, the opposition Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) wrested the presidency on March 15 from the Republican Nationalist Alliance (ARENA) for the first time in two decades. Throughout the mission, students blogged their activities and observations on The Democratic Piece: from their training process, to El Salvador's street-level polarization, to wandering into party headquarters for ARENA's historic concession.
Under NSF Grant, CDACS Finds Governance and Process Key to Ghana Election Result
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded CDACS Executive Director Barak Hoffman and UC-San Diego Professors Karen Ferree and Clark Gibson $150,000 to conduct election exit polls in sub-Saharan Africa. The purposes of the grant are to examine the accuracy of official election results and study patterns of ethnic voting.
Most recently, researchers examined voting behavior in Ghana's December 2008 presidential elections, finding voters' attitudes toward democratic institutions critical to the result. The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) prevailed over the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) by one-half of one percentage point, after trailing far behind the NPP according to most opinion polls. The key to the NDC’s victory was that in the final days of the race, almost all undecided voters cast their ballots for the NDC over the NPP. Swing voters formed an ethnically diverse group, viewed the NDC as less inferior to the NPP, and were more concerned that the election was free and fair than that a particular candidate win. These findings suggest that the swing voters who were crucial to the NDC victory formed a diverse ethnic coalition, prioritized democratic process over outcome, and cast their ballot without coercion or expectations of patronage for the party they least disliked.
