I met with my mentor, Professor Carl Levan, on September 12th for around a half hour. We discussed my research interests and the state of democracy worldwide more broadly. We came to an agreement that the principle question which I am interested in regarding the retreat of democracy is “why do voters in liberal democracies use democratic processes to elevate leaders with illiberal tendencies?” However, there were ancillary questions regarding youth opinions of democracy and growing impatience with democratic processes whose relation to my broader question I have yet to define. As part of the process of defining that relationship and further refining the focus of my principal research question he recommended I utilize such academic resources as The Journal of Democracy and Democratization, another academic journal, as well as looking at the work of organizations such a Freedom House, Polity, and especially the Varieties of Democracy project. At the end of our meeting, we set a deadline of the end of the month to really focus in on what my research question will be.
Beyond that, we also discussed the potential importance of polling and survey data to measuring the attitudes of people in the countries I would be focusing my research on. Additionally, we briefly discussed the two books he’d recommended for my to read over the summer, The Confidence Trap by David Runnicman and What is Populism? by Jan-Werner Muller. Finally, he shared with me some other potential case studies in Uganda and Zimbabwe that I had not previously considered looking at.
Moving forward in my research project I plan to read more articles from both The Journal of Democracy and Democratization and check out the Varieties of Democracy website in an effort to help focus my topic and learn more about potential case studies.
It sounds like you had a good initial meeting, Noah, and that you’re on the right track in identifying a puzzle and in following up with some targeted reading in your interest area (the Journal of Democracy is a good source for you, as is Democratization). Keep reading and researching as you seek to further refine your puzzle and think about the different ways that you could research that puzzle.
Writing/posting note: make sure to include correct footnote citations and bibliographic information for the sources that you reference in your posts!