Democracy, Civic Engagement, and Leadership

The course will introduce students to the principles and processes of civic engagement and leadership within democratic and democratizing systems of governance, and will help them understand the theoretical and practical issues related to the practice of participatory democracy from a comparative perspective. The discussion of the main features of the democratic system will be complemented with an extensive review of specific cases that are relevant to understand the problems that face civic engagement and leadership in different socio-political and cultural contexts.