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所在平台: Coursera |
课程主页: https://www.coursera.org/learn/after-the-arab-spring
课程评论：没有评论
课程名称：阿拉伯之春后——民主愿望与国家失败 课程概述：本课程将探讨阿拉伯之春所带来的希望与兴奋为何消失，以及为何众多阿拉伯国家陷入崩溃状态，年轻人为何感到沮丧，难民危机为何如此严重，并讨论应采取何种措施来应对这些问题。 阿拉伯之春原本被视为结束数十年例外主义的契机，并将阿拉伯世界重新带回全球发展的主流。叛乱运动曾承诺恢复政治、重申人民主权，对抗腐败且老朽的领导人。然而，今天的阿拉伯世界正深陷危机。在22个阿拉伯联盟成员国中，至少有五个几乎已崩溃：伊拉克、利比亚、也门、索马里和叙利亚的领土如今俨然落入竞争的武装团体之手。在其余国家，旧有独裁政权重新掌控政权。国内的压迫加上前所未有的区域冲突，使得人们的失望情绪愈发加剧，导致了近年来最大规模的难民潮。究竟出了什么问题？ 本课程将概述阿拉伯国家和社会的结构性缺陷，帮助我们理解为何民主觉醒未能发生，反而演变为内战、种族、宗派和区域分裂，以及复辟绝对主义的现象。这引发了一个显而易见的且重新被提起的问题：阿拉伯地区，或更广泛的穆斯林社会，是否存在某种内在特质，使其对普遍可观察到的向更大问责、更多民众参与政治决策、经济财富的更公平分配等趋势特别“免疫”？加入本课程，寻求答案！ 课程大纲： 1. 不稳定与制度失败：了解在最近阿拉伯叛乱爆发前的数十年中所犯的错误，这些缺陷导致政治系统的孱弱与表现不佳。 2. 治理：探讨阿拉伯世界长期困扰其发展的核心问题，即政府获得的几乎无偿收入，这种“租金”维持了一个压制性的制度，公民几乎不交税且没有发声权。 3. 制度：学习社会行动如何不可避免地产生制度，包括价值观、稳定、重复的行为模式，以及这些制度的有效性、衰退的原因及其重要性。 4. 经济：面包、尊严与自由：探讨民众不满情绪的物质基础，尤其是国家在面对人口增长与收入下降时，其承诺提供福利的不可持续性。 5. 人类发展：增长与挫折：结构性变化引起生活方式和价值观的变化，教育与研究的表现尤其不佳。 6. 展望：难以捉摸的稳定：总结导致阿拉伯叛乱的结构性缺陷，展望这些社会若想解决不满情绪的根源并恢复稳定面临的艰巨任务。
Name:Instability and Institutional Failure
Description:In this section, you will become acquainted with some of the mistakes that were made in the decades prior to the outbreak of the recent Arab rebellions. These shortcomings have led to stunted and underperforming political systems, much at variance with developments elsewhere.
Name:Governance
Description:At the heart of most of the enduring problems plaguing the Arab world is the availability of essentially free income flowing to the governments of the region. These ‘rents’ have sustained a repressive arrangement in which citizens pay little or no taxes and have no voice.
Name:Institutions
Description:Social action inevitably produces institutions, namely values, stable, repeated patterns of behaviour. In this section, you will learn what institutions are, how they come about, how their relative effectiveness is measures, how and why they decline, and why all that matters.
Name:Economics: Bread, Dignity and Freedom
Description:This section deals with the material bases of popular discontent, especially the connection between the states’ explicit promises of delivering welfare that have become increasingly unsustainable in the face of exploding population growth and falling revenues.
Name:Human Development: Growth and Frustration
Description:Structural changes beyond anyone’s control lead to different ways of living and, thus, value changes. With explosive population growth, social institutions have not kept up and norms are contested, often violently. Arab education and research especially have underperformed.
Name:Outlook: Elusive Stability
Description:Tying together some of the structural shortcomings that have produced the dysfunction that drove the Arab rebellions, this section casts a somewhat gloomy picture about the formidable tasks ahead if these societies want to redress the causes of discontent and return to stability.
Learn why the hope and excitement of the Arab Spring is gone, why so many Arab states are falling apart, why the youth are so frustrated, why there are so many refugees, and what can be done about it. The so-called Arab Spring appeared to end decades of exceptionalism and bring the Arab world back into the mainstream of global developments. The rebellions promised the return of politics and the reassertion of popular sovereignty against their corrupt and geriatric leaders. Much hope and flowery language greeted the young men and women who deposed their leaders and tried to build new, better societies. Today, the Arab world is in deep crisis. Of the 22 member states of the Arab League, at least five have essentially collapsed: Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria exist only in name today, as their territories have fallen to competing, murderous armed groups. In the remaining countries, the old autocracies have reasserted themselves. The repression at home is now worsened by regional conflict on an unprecedented scale, and the resulting frustration has led to the biggest refugee flows in recent memory. What went wrong? This course offers an overview of the structural shortcomings of Arab states and societies, which help us understand why the democratic awakening did not happen but instead “has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism.” This raises the obvious and renewed question whether there is something inherent in the Arab, and by analogy Muslim, condition that makes them special. Does this condition make this part of the world impervious to generally observable trends towards greater accountability, popular participation in political decision-making, greater generation and fairer division of economic wealth? Join this course to find out!
