Newswise — As the United States works to establish new democracies in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, a dozen college seniors from around the country are spending their summer in the nation's heartland researching how governments "of the people, by the people and for the people" take root and function and interact with one another. "Democracy and World Politics," a research program at Indiana State University, focuses on the impact of democracy on international politics and foreign policy. The students " five from Indiana State and seven from other colleges and universities " will work in one of three issue areas: foreign policy in a democracy, democratization and democracy promotion and democracy and conflict. It's no coincidence the first year of the three-year project comes amid the backdrop of American-style democracy taking root, however fragile, in Iraq and Afghanistan, said James Scott, professor and chair of Indiana State's political science department. "There's a fairly robust finding in international relations research that democracies don't seem to fight with one another very much, if at all," said Scott. "Democracy as a form of government has extended itself into every region of the world, which is a far cry from a hundred years ago and a huge expansion from just 30 years ago." Funded by a $285,000 National Science Foundation grant, the program at Indiana State is one of only two of its kind in political science in the country, said Scott. The other is at Duke University in Durham, N.C. For Sam Snideman, a political science major at Indiana State, the timing couldn't be better. "The research question that I'm looking at is democracy development. In light of the Bush administration's policy on spreading democracy, the things that I'm looking at become even more pertinent to world events," said Snideman, of Anderson. Indiana State history major Brandy Jolliff of Terre Haute notes that other countries have struggled with democracy in the past and some continue to struggle."I'm really interested in Russian history and they've had some problems with democracy. I want to look at that and why it's been such a problem there," said Jolliff, of Terre Haute.
Jessica Kramer, who is majoring in international relations at Lehigh University, wants to become a college professor and sees the Democracy and World Politics project as a way to gain valuable research experience. "I've always been interested in world politics and I've been able to study some about democracy and so it just sounded like something I would be interested in learning more about," said Kramer, of Satellite Beach, Fla. Like Kramer, Cristina Narvaez of Northfield, Minn. said the project is a good fit with her career goals. "I've always been interested in different countries and how different countries tackle different problems in different situations," said Narvaez, who is majoring in political science, Spanish and German at St. Olaf College. Six faculty members - four from Indiana State and two from other universities - and a PhD student will serve as mentors for the 12 students involved in the program but the students themselves will drive the process.
Working with their mentors, the students will spend the next 10 weeks gathering and analyzing data and producing a scholarly paper reporting their findings. Supporting activities will include research methods seminars, project development workshops and guest presentations by national and international visiting scholars.
"It's an independent student project. The project will go in the direction the students chose," Scott said. "That gives students the ownership over this that they don't often have in run of the mill course oriented projects. I think that's better learning. It falls squarely in the experiential learning track that ISU has committed itself to." Scott predicts that students will find that democracies behave differently than other forms of government in their foreign policies, especially with each other, but they will also discover that successful democracies are often "home grown, that promoting democracy is a difficult task, and that there are numerous paths and versions of democracy, which itself is a highly contested concept.
"The U.S. tends to approach democracy building with a template, but "trying to design the 'one size fits all' approach and sequence of 'inputs' is difficult," he said.
* * * Indiana State students participating in Democracy and World Politics are Petra Hendrickson of Xenia, Ohio; Brandy Jolliff, Michael King, and Michael Vidrine, all of Terre Haute; and Sam Snideman of Anderson. Other students participating, and their colleges, are Katie Elizabeth Mahuron of Cambridge City (Anderson University); Jessica Kramer of Satellite Beach, Fla. (Lehigh); Sarah Harville of Spring, Texas (Texas Christian); Cristina Narvaez of Northfield, Minn. (St. Olaf College); Ashley Templeton of Woodbury, Minn. (Drake); Thomas Sjoholm of Powers, Mich. (Central Michigan); and Khalil AbuGharbieh of Granger (Indiana University).
The research program runs through Aug. 7.
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