Note for Teachers
The following are suggested questions and activities that can be given to your students after they read the materials of each section. The questions are meant to be asked as a review exercise, but also as a critical thinking exercise. The activities, which may require additional research, can be presented as classroom exercises or as individual assignments for essays or class presentations (see also Resources for suggested research materials). Some activities call for students to have debates that would engage the entire class, but all of the questions and activities can be used in this way. These are only suggested questions and activities. Teachers should rewrite or develop their own as they feel necessary.
Essential Principles and History
Study Questions
Question
What does John Lewis advise and why? What is he referring to when he writes, “People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you”? What are the struggles that people have gone through to get the right to vote?
Question
What are the essential conditions for democratic elections according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? How have free, fair and regular elections come to be defined?
Question
What is the difference between the principles of universal suffrage and one person, one vote? When did the US achieve full universal suffrage as understood by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? When did it achieve the principle of one person, one vote? How?
Question
Can citizens freely vote for dictatorship? What are some cases in which citizens freely chose parties or candidates that are violent or authoritarian? Can these choices be justified? Did the countries remain democratic?
Question
What role have young people played in the struggle for free and fair elections? In the United States? Internationally? What role can they play currently in ensuring free and fair elections in the United States?
Question
Most historians consider the US to be the oldest continuous modern democracy due its history of uninterrupted national and state elections. But many political scientists consider that the United States was not a full democracy until the adoption of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965. What made the US not a full or real democracy before 1965 according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Should the US before 1965 nevertheless be considered a democracy? Why? Why not? How would the US prior to the 1965 VRA compare to “not free” countries among the Country Studies? To “partly free” countries? To other “free” countries. How does it compare now?
Question
As with the essential principle of consent of the governed, meeting the conditions of free and fair elections is a constant test. What is the recent trend in the world for holding free and fair elections according to the annual Freedom in the World survey? Where is democracy being tested? What are the different responses to these tests?
Question
Does the United States establish an affirmative right to vote? What is the basis for voting in the United States? What is the trend in the United States in regard to expanding or restricting the right to vote?
Activities and Study Topics
Activity
Aside from Poland, Venezuela, and Azerbaijan (the three countries in this section), identify other examples of Free, Partly Free and Not Free countries (see other Country Studies or Freedom House's list of countries in its Freedom in the World Survey). Choose a Country Study or Freedom House report of a country you have chosen. Would you have a different designation from Freedom House? Justify your assessment with concrete events from news sources.
Activity
Assign Frederick Douglass’s “An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage” (see Resources). Have a class discussion or assign an essay on the topic: On What Grounds Does Frederick Douglass Appeal for Impartial Suffrage (the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution)? How do they relate to the founding documents of the United States? What arguments in addition to natural rights does Douglass make?
Activity
The United States is unusual among democracies in that it does not establish a national right to vote but delegates powers to set the rules and regulations for elections to the 50 individual states. Many of them have established the overseer of elections as an elected position (and so usually a person representing a political party). Research how some states ensure the integrity and fairness of the vote (see, for example, the Brennan Center for Justice in Resources). What controversies exist among states regarding the integrity of the vote? Identify how other democracies organize the electoral process to ensure a fair system of casting and counting ballots.
Activity
Organize a debate on question 3 above: “Was the US a full democracy before 1965 (the passage of the Voting Rights Act)? Yes/No.” Given the Supreme Court’s overturning of sections of the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, is the US no longer a full democracy? Have students explore each side of the question drawing upon the textbook, original texts (such as the Voting Rights Act and Supreme Court decisions), news sources, and the articles by Larry Diamond and Nicole Hannah-Jones (see Resources).
Activity
Assign Richard Hassan’s opinion article in The New York Times (“The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs”) in Resources. Have students research whether other countries establish an affirmative right to vote. On this basis, organize a debate or assign a paper on the Topic, “Should the U.S. Adopt a National Right to Vote?” Have students consider the viability for such adoption and how it might be achieved.)
Poland
Study Questions
Question
Compare pre- and post-1989 Poland as described in the Country Study. What makes its more recent elections free? What made previous, communist-era elections not free? What recent questions of fairness of elections have arisen in Poland? How do Poland’s current elections compare to other countries (e.g., Germany and Hungary)?
Question
In 1989, the Solidarity movement accepted a Roundtable Agreement with the communist government in which Solidarity’s representatives agreed to participate in only partially free elections. Why did Solidarity leaders agree to such elections? What was the expected outcome? What was the final outcome?
Question
Poland has been categorized as a “backsliding democracy” due to the government in power from 2015 to 2023. In 2023, elections brought a change of government with an anti-authoritarian coalition. What actions of the previous government led to criticism of its democratic practices? Why did Freedom House still categorize Poland as Free? How did Poland’s government compare to partly free and not free countries in the region? How has the new coalition government attempted to undo some of the authoritarian practices of the previous government?
Activities and Study Topics
Activity
From 1982 to 1989, the government banned the Solidarity trade union and repressed opposition activity. What was the response of Polish citizens to the imposition of martial law by the communist dictatorship? For an essay project, have students research using The New York Times and Economist web sites and other sources for articles during this period. What strategies were developed to oppose the dictatorship? Were they peaceful or violent?
Activity
June 4, 1989 in history has two main events. One is the transformative election in Poland that led to its first non-communist government since World War II. The other is the Tiananmen Square massacre in China that ended that country’s reform movement. Examine the two events (see China Country Study in Freedom of Expression). Explain what were the consequences of the two events? What impact did they have?
Activity
Assign the article “Don’t Give Poland a Pass.” Have students discuss or write an essay on the aspects of policy pointed to by the author that he says demonstrated Poland’s “backtracking” on democracy prior to the 2023 elections (judicial control, media control, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, et al.). From this description, ask the question, “Should Freedom House have rated Poland as free or partly free?” Why did Freedom House still rank Poland “free”? What is leading Poland towards “partly free” in Freedom House’s decline in rankings. What is leading Poland towards the “free category.”
Venezuela
Study Questions
Question
What factors originally helped Venezuela to become a democracy? How long was Venezuela’s period of democracy? What types of social and political movements supported democracy? Why did Venezuelans turn against the democratic agreement of 1958 (the Punta Fijo Pact) in 1998?
Question
What factors led to the election of and consolidation of power by Hugo Chavez? Was his 14-year rule a dictatorship? If so, why? If not, why not?
Question
What factors contributed to the repudiation of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution in the December 2015 National Assembly elections in 2015? How did Nicolas Maduro act after 2015 to overturn Venezuelan democracy? What makes Venezuela a “not free” country today?
Activities and Study Topics
Activity
Have students examine why Freedom House identified Venezuela as “partly free” up until 2017 and “not free” after 2017 using Freedom House’s Survey of Freedom archives. What are the factors that kept it partly free despite the increasing authoritarian actions under the Chavez and Maduro regimes? How do these factors explain how Venezuelan society and its political parties acted until the 2015 election won by the opposition? How did Maduro’s actions after 2015 make Venezuela a dictatorship?
Activity
Have students compare the Country Studies of Venezuela and Azerbaijan. Have Class discussion or assign an essay to answer the following questions: What examples of democratic governance does each country have in its history? How do they compare or differ? What are their examples of authoritarian governance? How do they compare or differ? How did Heydar and Ilham Aliyev consolidate power? How did Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro? How did the opposition parties react in each case?
Azerbaijan
Study Questions
Question
What was the first period of free elections and democratic government in Azerbaijan? What were the factors giving rise to the first democracy of a Muslim majority country in the region? What were other examples of democracy in countries with predominantly Muslim populations?
Question
What are the methods that Heydar and Ilham Aliyev have used to consolidate dictatorship in Azerbaijan?
Question
Why have European institutions and the US government not been more outspoken in criticizing Azerbaijan’s dictatorship?
Activities and Study Topics
Activity
Compare Country Studies of Azerbaijan and Turkey. What were the similar political influences in the two countries that gave rise to the establishment of democratic republics in the aftermath of World War I?
Activity
See articles on previous elections in the Resource Section on Azerbaijan, for example the IDEE report on 2003 elections and Economist article on the 2013 elections. Describe different methods used by the Azerbaijan government to prevent free and fair elections and to influence international observer missions. Why did the IDEE mission state that the term elections should not be used to describe such processes? What do the ruling government’s methods show are necessary for free and fair elections to be legitimate?
Activity
Since the 2003 presidential elections in Azerbaijan, the regime is increasingly autocratic and repressive. What strategy would you adopt to overcome such a persistent dictatorship? See the Sports for Rights report in Resource Section. Using it as a guide, write a proposal making suggestions to US policymakers about how to support democratic change in Azerbaijan. Choose different external and internal pressures to promote change.
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