We propose a NSF Graduate Research Traineeship program on Democratization and Democratic Politics at the University of California, Irvine. The recent democratic transitions in the world and the continuing process of democratization in established democracies are creating fundamental new challenges for the social sciences. These experiences are prompting a reconsideration of past models of political development and the lessons of earlier academic debates on the social, cultural and institutional foundations of democracy. In addition, these changes are "natural experiments: that provide new data and new research questions that should result in new theoretical insights. Past waves of democratization have stimulated some of the most creative advances in the social sciences -- we expect the same of the present democratization wave. Thus we propose an innovative, interdisciplinary curriculum to train doctoral students in the principles of democratic politics, the conditions fostering the development and maintenance of democracies, and the expansion of the democratic process. We expect that the scholars produced by this program will contribute to our understanding of the present democratization wave, and the more fundamental theoretical questions involved in research on the political choices and institutional arrangements made to sustain and nurture democratic politics.
