My First In-Person Class | Tomoki Kamo, Assistant to the Dean / Professor, Faculty of Policy Management
2021.05.25
"Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak."
After the first class of the semester, a student said this as he walked amicably toward the lectern. During class, when a teacher points the microphone at a student, the student looks down. This is a law of nature, just like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. So, while thinking, "What a strange thing to say" (my apologies), I smiled and replied, "I'm happy to be able to talk with you in person after so long." And I truly meant it.
He continued, "This was my first in-person class. I just became a sophomore this spring." Carelessly, I hadn't anticipated his words. I looked up at the heavens. I will never forget this day.
The act of teaching a class. I thought anew about its significance.
This class was on comparative political systems. For the past two years, I have focused on dictatorships in this class. In fact, humanity has spent a far longer time living under dictatorial rule. And even today, more than half of the world's population lives under dictatorships. When you leave Japan and work globally, you realize that the colleagues you work with have not necessarily lived under the same democratic politics as you have.
This is the reality of the world. Can those who have always lived under democratic politics imagine life under a dictatorship? It is difficult to understand something you have not experienced. That there are political systems in the world completely different from what we know. That the society we live in is an exception. That while it is very important to maintain our current environment, it is also very difficult. It may be a slight exaggeration, but these are the thoughts I've had while offering this course.
Although it's always mentioned in recent comparative politics textbooks, much of political science has historically focused on democratic political systems. Therefore, research on dictatorships is comparatively behind. The reason the study of dictatorships has been such a dynamic field of research over the past decade is partly because researchers around the world are competing to fill this academic void.
Research on the mechanisms of dictatorships leaves vast room for discussion. In particular, durable dictatorships have become a significant research topic. Why do they persist? Where does their resilience come from? These are the important questions. It's obvious when you think about it, but a dictator cannot rule a country alone. They have maintained their regimes by establishing political institutions to coordinate interests with various social groups, sometimes co-opting them as allies, other times excluding them. A dictator cannot dictate everything as they please.
However, 30 years ago, when I was an undergraduate student, the question "Why are dictatorships resilient?" was nowhere to be found in comparative politics. Because democratic systems were seen as the default political system for human society, it was thought that dictatorships would begin to democratize once certain conditions were met. The central question for those studying authoritarianism was, "When and how will they democratize?" I was one of them.
In the 30 years since, the central question in the study of authoritarian regimes has changed significantly. The political changes in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia from the late 1980s to the early 1990s created the expectation that a wave of democratization would engulf the world. However, authoritarian regimes have adapted to change and stubbornly survived. The question shifted from "When and how will they democratize?" to "Why do these regimes persist?" The major transformations in world politics even changed the research questions themselves.
Thinking about the next 30 years. We will undoubtedly face major transformations, just as we have in the past 30 years. It is not easy to determine the direction of this change, but we can anticipate and prepare for it.
From the end of April, we returned to online classes again. It is nothing short of regrettable. But it's not enough to just lament it. We must prepare for the future on the other side of this pandemic. For the students who will be active in the world, I will encourage them to deepen their understanding of dictatorships, which are (unfortunately) a standard in world politics. We will thoroughly read the substantial body of prior research and do the mental exercises to prepare for the fieldwork that will one day be possible again.
I teach my classes while sharing this awareness with my students. I believe this is how I can respond to the student's voice saying, "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak."