Category: Mentor

I met with Clement Ho on February 23^rd for 30 minutes to discuss the research aspects of my project. After explaining my topic and research question, he showed me how to access and utilize the different international relations databases the American University Library has access to, something I may or may not have forgotten over winter break. After this, we searched through the databases to find some surveys, speeches, and economic statistics relevant to my research. We then had a discussion on the difficulties of finding certain types of sources on certain countries that were accessible to those who do not speak the language of the countries in question.

I met with Dean Jackson on February 2^nd for about 45 minutes to discuss my research project. After spending 15 minutes discussing our shared admiration for the Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the Clone Wars television series, we got down to the business of talking about my project. We talked about his experience being a guest professor at the Central European University in Hungary and his thoughts on what the situation in Hungary. He pointed me towards cultural rather than institutional elements of democratic decline, explaining that the Hungarian government had recently started stationing heavily armed police on campus without any justifiable security reason as a sort of intimidation measure against the student body. When I mentioned my interest in nationalism’s role in democratic decline, he brought up his visit to the House of Terror museum in Hungary and the nationalist message that it radiates. He mentioned having a number of materials from the museum gathering dust on his desk and asked if I wanted to use them. I arranged to pick them up after he brought them into the office next week.

I met with Professor Levan on Friday the 13^th of April for half an hour to discuss my analysis draft. During our discussion, we focused on my causal model and how it is expressed in my analysis. Professor Levan indicated that within my model as drawn up in my analysis section, it was unclear how the different variables interacted. More specifically, he said that it was unclear why the variable “loss of faith in liberal democracy” was the intermediary step between economic decline and democratic decline while “nationalism” and “appeal of alternative systems of governance” were labeled as antecedent conditions. Additionally, he thought that the variable “appeal of alternative systems of governance” was unhelpful as I was essentially saying that the appeal of alternative systems of governance led to alternative systems of governance, which is not exactly a profound statement.

We also discussed more stylistic elements involved in improving my paper. One top recommendation was moving more of my conclusions and takeaways to the beginning of my paper. The purpose of this change is to get to the point in a more direct fashion. After discussing this specific point, we discussed the revision process more generally and agreed that stylistic concerns are the last thing you address in the process as you have to address content and structural problems first.

This paper focuses on democratic decline in established democracies, particularly those in post-Communist Eastern Europe. While the academic literature on this subject contains a multitude of theories on the reasons for democratic decline including geopolitics, social capital, economic factors, and the role of nationalism, there has been little focus on measuring the relative influence of these theorized causes within specific cases of democratic decline. My research will fill this gap by diving into the case of Hungary to explore the relative influence of the theorized causes as well as the process by which they work in practice in that case. I will utilize a small-n neopositivst approach to achieve this goal and the materials I examine include survey data from Gallup Analytics and the World Value Survey, speeches by Hungarian elites such as Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and newspaper articles, both from within Hungary and without. The exploration of this data indicates that the primary cause of democratic decline in Hungary is the rising nationalism within Hungary. This research is important because it contributes to filling a gap in the literature and has a broad applicability as rising nationalism seems to be a theme of the 21^st century thus far.

I met with Professor Levan on January 30^th from 3:50 to 4:30. During our meeting we discussed my case selection and the relationship of nationalism to the rising illiberalism in Eastern Europe.

Regarding case selection, we started by discussing why I wanted to focus on Hungary as my primary case. We then went on to discuss the value of adding a second case to my research as a comparison to primary case. Professor Levan’s recommendation was to pick another post-Communist Eastern European state that had not experienced democratic decline as a secondary case in order to explore how differences between the independent variables in that state and Hungary led to different outcomes. No firm decision was arrived at as to the identity of this case should be but both Croatia and the Baltic States were mentioned as potential candidates.

Our discussion on the role of nationalism in the rise of illiberalism in Eastern Europe was prompted by me observing that the governments in both Poland and Hungary, two of the most illiberal in the region, are also among the most nationalistic. I brought this up because I was wondering if he knew of any useful sources on nationalism and its relationship with democracy. He recommended the Oxford Reader on Nationalism edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith, which I have since picked up from the library.

Going forward I need to select my second case and read up more on the relationship between nationalism and illiberalism. I also need to read more about Hungary so I can better understand my primary case. Perhaps the collective advising workshop can provide me with some advice on case selection as well as sources I can read to better understand my primary case.

The last time I met with my faculty mentor, Professor Levan, was 1-2  on Wednesday November 29^th. I was planning on meeting with him this coming Wednesday, which is why this post is coming out now, but it turns out he will not be on campus then. During our last face to face meeting we discussed my interpretivist research design sketch, which methodology I was thinking of pursuing, and what, if anything, I should do over the break.

We didn’t spend all that much time discussing my interpretivist research design sketch. While I hold him that I was planning on analyzing the European discourse on democratic decline in Hungary, I also indicated that I was leaning heavily towards doing small-n analysis. He suggested we focus our discussion on that choice and then what next steps I needed to take. The primary motivation for my choice was that, while I believed my proposed interpretivist project to be interesting, I am philosophically just not an interpretivist and a case study approach to democratic decline in Hungary was far more appealing to me. Large-n analysis never came up in this discussion of potential choices for methodologies, which was fine with me.

As I am not proposing to conduct interviews or really do anything with human subjects, I do not need to start the process of seeking approval over Winter Break. Indeed, I really don’t need to do much over the break. Professor Levan recommended that I do not overly stress myself over my project over the break as taking a break can often be important to producing quality work later on. He did point me towards a pair of books, To Begin Where I Am by Czeslaw Milosz and Disturbing the Peace by Vaclav Havel, that might make interesting reads over the break. Milosz is a Polish poet while Havel a Czech writer and dissident who would go on to become the first President of post-Communist Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic. In their works, each captures part of the zeitgeist of their respective countries under Communism and the 1989 revolutions that led to the emergence of contemporary Eastern Europe. As both those legacies are important to my research, each of these books should add to my ability to explain Hungary’s current democratic deficit.

As of right now I have no specific questions or concerns about SIS 306. I plan to go into break, read a few informative and hopefully interesting books on my topic, and then resume research in the Spring. I feel pretty confident about my choice in methodology and am looking forward to making my research design a reality.

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.