 Welcome to the third and final unit of Western political thought. At this point we've done a tour of political philosophy from its origins back in ancient Greece, up to the major political thinkers of the 17th century. More recently, the discussions around political thought have shifted away from the idea of the centralized sovereign government, you remember the sort of system that Hobbes and Locke proposed, and more toward democracy, a form of government where everyone in the state holds political power. Think about it as a shift from rule of the few to rule by the many. There are lots of different flavors of democracy and plenty of critics of democracy, and we'll examine a bunch of them here. We'll begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's participatory democracy model, and then move to Alexis de Tocqueville, who in his tour of 19th century America, described the desirable features of the civil society. Now we'll see how these philosophies affected later thinkers, most notably Carl Marx, who you've probably heard of already, for his work on class struggle and the aftermath of industrialization. Now the goal in this unit is first to complete your survey of the major thinkers that have influenced Western political thought, bringing you up to the present day, and second to encourage you to participate in the conversations going on now, today, on the news, and to think about various approaches to governance. Many of them trace their origins back to these early political thinkers. This unit should take you about 40 hours to finish. You'll see an end of unit assessment as before, and we'll review the unit, and it's time for the final two hour exam. Thanks for having me as your tour guide here. I've enjoyed it, and good luck.