Multilingualism in Botswana: The Case of Muzi Primary School

This paper presents findings on a case study of how the language in education policy was being implemented at Muzi Primary School. To provide the context, a description of the development of the language in education policy from independence to present period is provided. The study aimed to address the following questions: 1. What factors did teachers perceive to contribute to the low performance of the school? 2. What role did language of instruction play in the learning process? 3. What attitudes were portrayed or displayed by teachers and how did these affect learning? 4. What were the implications of findings to nation-building, democracy, and social integration? The paper argues that the language policy, which promoted monolingualism, was a failure to acknowledge reality and an impediment to learning, a negation of democratic principles and a hinderance to social integration. The school context demonstrated how the education policy fostered monolingualism in a multilingual context and this negatively impacted on learning.

The Danger Social Media Poses to National Sovereignty and Global Security

Social media networks have the capability to allow the spread of both factual information and disinformation amongst general populations at a pace unforeseen at any previous time in history. Those who are responsible for continuing to protect democratic principles can benefit from studying, understanding, and adapting to counteract this unheralded spread of data. Developing tactics and strategies to counter the antics of those who propagate disinformation to further their own causes will become necessary to protect the integrity of elections and other national and international interests. This chapter explores and reveals some of the general threats and potential counter measures to keep general populations protected from the negative effects of such campaigns.

Ukrainian Central Council as Revolutionary Parliament of Ukraine

The revolution of 1917-1921 is a bright page in the centuries-old history of the Ukrainian state. The special place in it belongs to Ukrainian Central Council (CCU), under the leadership of which Ukraine went through the difficult path of building its own state from autonomy to the proclamation of Ukrainian National Republic and its full state independence and sovereignty. Therewith, the CCU attempted to introduce democratic institutions and parliamentary forms of government. The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that this experience left a noticeable mark on the legal consciousness of Ukrainians and the attempt to build a parliamentary model has a considerable impact on the solution of modern problems of state creation. The purpose of the study is to analyse the organisation of Ukrainian Central Council as a parliamentary institution in the conditions of the revolution. A retrospective study of the CCU experience reflects the political interests of different groups of society, is useful for understanding modern problems of parliamentarism, the interaction of civil society and the state. The methodological basis for studying the structure, composition of the CCU, its legal forms of activity is based on philosophical, general scientific, and historical-legal methods of scientific knowledge. These methods allowed determining the main task of the CCU – the revival of Ukraine. It is concluded that state revival, as a constituent task which could be carried out only by a representative body that would be established on democratic principles, its composition would express the will of the people, and, if it had sufficient organisational and legal resources to fulfil this task (a stable structure, organisational and legal forms of activity, an effective auxiliary apparatus, the corresponding status of the deputies, the optimal work schedule)

Understandings of Democracy

While democracy is popular and still enjoys supremacy in contemporary political discourse with limited challenges from alternatives, it has also been acknowledged that democracy is in crisis. However, if most people love democracy and politicians have to live with democracy, how can democracy be in trouble? Understandings of Democracy examines this puzzling phenomenon, arguing that (1) people hold distinct understandings of democracy; (2) popular conceptions of democracy are significantly shaped by socioeconomic and political contexts; (3) such varying conceptions generate different baselines for people to assess democratic practices and to establish their views of democracy; and (4) such distinct conceptions also drive political participation in different ways. Overall, popular understandings of democracy have critically shaped how citizens respond to authoritarian or populist practices in contemporary politics. Using new survey instruments embedded in the Global Barometer Surveys (GBS), this book highlights the significance and essentialness of how people assess the tradeoffs between key democratic principles and instrumental gains when they conceptualize democracy for comparative research on popular understandings of democracy. Furthermore, weaving together GBS II survey data from seventy-two societies and survey experiments, this book scrutinizes some key micro-dynamics that drive people’s critical political attitudes and behaviors, which are centered on how people understand democracy in different ways. Overall, this book theorizes and demonstrates that, as a critical but underappreciated component of the demand-side dynamics, varying conceptions of democracy offer significant explanatory power for understanding why democracy is in trouble, even when most people profess to love democracy.

The Revolution is Over, Forget It: To the 30th Anniversary of the Russian Federation

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the power in post-Soviet Russia was seized by the leaders of the democratic movement - first wave democrats, and the more progressive Soviet nomenclature. As a result of the miscalculations made by the leaders of the democratic movement, the representatives of the Soviet nomenclature soon started displacing the first wave democrats and the reformers of the Gaidar call from the Russian governmental bodies in order to gain full control over the governance in the country. This appeared to be a manifestation of the more general and fundamental process, where the Russian nomenclature separated from the democratic movement, emerging as a new ruling stratum - the immediate heir to the Soviet nomenclature. The turning point, which accelerated the separation and the retreat of the Russian nomenclature from liberal and democratic principles of the countrys modernization, was the beginning of the Chechen tragedy in 1994. Not only did the Chechen events separate the Russian nomenclature and the democratic movement but also split the democratic movement itself. The goal of the article is to examine the transformation of the relationship between the democratic movement and the soviet and, later on, Russian nomenclature during the revolutionary changes of the early 1990s.

What is Wrong with Populism?

The main goal of this article is to explore the relationship between populism and representative democracy. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, the paper offers a detailed analysis of the three criticisms of populism and the implications these criticisms have on our understanding of representative democracy. First, it addresses the argument that populism inevitably relies on demagogy and it examines the inference this argument has on the concept of political representation in democracy. Second, it discusses the claim that populism relies on the oversimplification of political issues and what this claim reveals about the democratic ideal of the informed and politically responsible voter. The third criticism deals with the anti-pluralist character of populist politics, which, the paper argues, can also be extended to the concept of popular sovereignty itself. In the second part, the article looks more closely at the relationship between populism and representative democracy. Relying on the insights from the first part, it examines different institutional restraints on the will of the majority and how populism redefines these restraints as anti-democratic and elitist barriers to popular will. Finally, the paper questions the prevailing view that sees populism as a phenomenon arising from the tension between liberal and democratic principles within representative democracy and offers an alternative framework for understanding the relationship between populism and democracy.

Enhancing Politicians’ Persuasiveness: Some Remarks on the Importance of Rhetorical Figures of Repetition in Political Discourse

The modern political class, which has been established on democratic principles both in Europe and America, is keen to use rhetoric and tools it provides. Any attempt to define the influence of these tools principally refers to the essence of rhetoric which is persuasion. Persuasion, on the other hand, is core to political discourse which, according to Teun van Dijk (1997, p. 14) is contextual, therefore must be recognized by its functions and/or goals. The functions of the discourse are often expressed in rhetorical devices and therefore play an important role in achieving political goals. The pieces of information presented in this article depict rhetorical devices as useful in increasing persuasiveness. Attention is paid to figures of repetition which constitute a universal category of rhetorical devices and thus need to be examined in a greater detail, especially in a discourse whose users focus their efforts on constructing effective persuasion.

Fidesz, liberal democracy and the fundamental law in Hungary

After its landslide victories of 2010, 2014 and 2018, Fidesz has introduced numerous institutional changes in the Hungarian political system. The academic research has emphasized the illiberal and antidemocratic character of these reforms, and the populist ideology of the party has been widely considered as the underlying force behind them. This study analyzes the most important reform that Fidesz has undertaken: the new Fundamental Law, enacted in 2012. We examine whether this change can be regarded as a violation of liberal democratic principles, and, if that is the case, whether it can be linked to the populist character of Fidesz. We found that some of the most criticized dispositions of the newly enacted constitution cannot be regarded as violations of liberal democratic principles, whereas other changes clearly constitute attacks to the foundations of Hungarian democracy, mainly affecting the separation of powers and the civil rights of minorities, These findings are largely consistent with the effects of populist governments on democracy as documented in the literature.

An Assessment of Transformational Leadership Theory against a University EAP Pre-sessional Course

The evolution of leadership theory since the Industrial Revolution has been characterised by a shifting of focus from leaders’ qualities to the construction of effective leadership systems and methods. Transformational leadership, as one such theory, has gained traction in educational settings thanks both to its democratic principles and the applicability offered by its value profile modelling. A set of capacities are provided by the theory, with the intention of providing a toolkit for effective leadership which can be adopted by a range of leaders, thus avoiding the need for inherent leadership qualities. The theory continues to face charges of promoting despotism, however, and most importantly of lacking relevance to real-world settings. Through the reflective analysis of a university-based English for Academic Purposes pre-sessional course – a fixed-term, high-stress setting – a grounded assessment of the real-world applicability of transformational leadership theory can be conducted. It is proposed that such courses within the higher education sector pose specific challenges to leadership, due to time constraints, staff retention and pressures on student achievement. The scope for meaningfully engaging staff in structural processes is thus restricted and there is a clear need for an accessible theory which supports a democratic, pluralistic approach to leadership, such as transformational leadership. However, reflective analysis of the leadership methods employed on the course, and an assessment of their correlation to the principles of transformational leadership, reveals a deficit in real-world applicability of the theory and a failure to convincingly avoid the pitfalls of the cult of the leader.

Are the Visegrad countries independent players in European politics and economics?

The article examines the degree of independence of the Visegrad Group countries in the European Union in terms of economic prerequisites and actual implementation. It has been suggested that the countries of the Visegrad Group, having reached a certain level of economic prosperity and diversified their foreign economic relations, began to strive to play a more independent role in making integration decisions in the EU, including on issues of basic common European values. This hypothesis is tested on the example of the negotiation process of the EU countries on the adoption of the MultiYear Financial Plan for 2021–2027 and the creation of a Next Generation EU Fund to work together to tackle the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main directions of the negotiations, the positions of the participants and the general results are analyzed. Particular attention is drawn to the fact that Poland and Hungary have succeeded in achieving ambivalent language on the issues of linking the allocation of funds to member countries with their provision of the rule of law and observance of other democratic principles. It is shown that in practice the European Commission still does not abandon this linkage. It is concluded that during the EU membership, the Visegrad Group countries have succeeded in demonstrating their economic capabilities, and their ability to influence the solution of common European issues has increased, but the real degree of autonomy of the Visegrad countries within the EU has not reached a qualitatively new level, including and due to contradictions in the positions of countries within the bloc itself.