Class Political Theory and Democracy

This curricular unit aims to train students in the knowledge of current political systems and all the strengths and weaknesses surrounding them. Namely, how the media field and the political field mutually influence and interrelate.

1. The classics of political theory: From Thucydides and Plato to freedom as a democratic ideal.
2. The moderns of political theory: Systems of government and parties.
3. JOHN STUART MILL AND CIVIL LIBERTIES.
4. The contemporaries of political theory.
5. Economic and social inequality
6. The quality of democracy and political and media interaction.
7. Deliberative democracy and the public sphere.
9. Public opinion, democracy and the internet.

Interactivity and cooperation between all participants in the discussion of the matters under analysis. Students proactively bring cases and their conceptualizations to classes.

Blumler J. G. e Gurevitch, M. 1995. The Crisis of Public Communication. NYC: Routledge

Correia, J. C. e Maia, R. C. (orgs). «Public Sphere Reconsidered Theories and Practices». In Labcom, Livros LabCom, 2011, 255-273. Covilhã: UBI.

Cobb, R. W. e Elder, C. D..1971. «The politics of agenda-building: an alternative perspective for modern democratic theory». In The Journal of Politics, vol. 33, nº 4. Nov. Statesboro: Southern Political Science Association/Blackwell Publishing, pp. 892-915.

Habermas, J. 1991[1962]. The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Dahl, Robert, 1989,Democracy and its Critics, New Haven/London, Yale University Press.

Hansen, Mogens Herman (1996) «The Ancient Athenian and the Modern Liberal View of Liberty as a Democratic Ideal», emJosiah Hober, Charles Hendrik, eds., Demokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, Princeton:Princeton University Press.

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