European Forum

First Promising Politicians seminar 2011 in Montenegro

Between 19 and 22 May Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in cooperation with Alfred Mozer Stichting and the European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity organized a seminar for young and promising politicians and members of social democratic parties from the countries of former Yugoslavia and Albania. The seminar, in which 26 participants participated, took place in Bečići in Montenegro.

Since 2003 the seminar has been organized three times annually and the course includes seminars on political ideology, media and communications skills and EU integration. The aim of the course is to introduce young politicians to the various aspects of political leadership, governance and the dynamics and structures of party policies. In addition, the organisers aim to create a network among young and politically active persons and to improve their knowledge on the political developments in the countries in the region.

After the welcome by the organisers, the seminar started with a ‘getting to know each other’ game which required from each of the participant to interview its neighbour and introduce him or her to the group.

Social democracy and its policies
The theme of the first seminar was ‘Social Democracy and its Policies’. Mainstream political theories ― liberalism, conservatism and social democracy ― and their development after the French Revolution were set out. Thereafter Milan Živković, director of Croatian Political Academy Novo Društvo, presented how to go from theory to practice and how policies are developed. This was followed by workshops on social policy, economy and education in which the participants were divided into three groups, a liberal, conservative and a social democratic group. Each group was assigned to develop policies on these topics that would give an insight in the priorities of each political mainstream theory that was appointed to them. The final part of the seminar focused on strategy. Arjen Berkvens, director of the Alfred Mozer Stichting, presented how to develop a strategy and communicate party programs and policies to the voters, which is a key to success. This presentation was followed by a workshop were the imagined country Montaldonia, with its specific characteristics, played an important role. The participants had to make a matrix were the strong and weak points were made clear and the opportunities and threats were defined.

Guest speakers
The last day of the seminar welcomed professor Vladimir Pavićević (Faculty of Political Sciences, Belgrade University) as guest speaker, who discussed representative democracy versus monitory democracy. In a monitory democracy the elected people’s representatives are monitored by the actors of civil society, civilians, media and the society as a network throughout their whole period in office.

Finally, Daliborka Uljarević, director of the Centre for Civic Education, discussed the political situation in Montenegro from the perspective of the civil society sector. She warned that it is dangerous to think that Montenegro is a relative success story in the region. Many important challenges remain, such as the rule of law, administrative capacity and organized crime and corruption.

The second promising politicians seminar on media and communications skills will be held in October in Albania.