Representative Democracy in Political Systems

In this course, students study representative democracies in political systems. Democratic changes of regime at the system level are linked to the actual democratic work within established representative democracies and their ability to implement adopted resolutions. The course content is highly established within the political science research at Linnaeus university. When studying this course, you will look into how the elite acts at a change of system that paves the way for representative democracy. You will also study political behaviour - the differences in political participation, how opinions are formed and why we vote the way we do in established representative democracies. Furthermore, you will also study research into political parties and party systems in representative democracies. Within representative democracies, there may be different problems with implementing democratically adopted resolutions, of which one of the major issues concerns corruption and abuse of power. In this course, you will study research into corruption in established democracies with the emphasis on the Swedish situation. The aim is for students to acquire further knowledge of how research into representative democracy in political systems develops, main theories and concepts of representative democracies, and the current research debate on this field. The course 1SK208 forms together with one of the elective courses 1SK203, 1SK204 or 1SK205 and one of the following courses 1SK207 and 1SK209 the course block Political Science II.