Political Academy – for Progressive Youth in 2012

The Political Academy (PA) is designed as a combination of both political education and practical training. In five modules, which take the form of weekend-seminars in different citites in Kosovo in the period from April to October 2012, the participants are offered the unique opportunity to deepen their knowledge on various issue areas such as Political Culture, Good Governance, Social Democracy and European Integration. The PA's main purpose is to encourage individuals in Kosovo to become active in politics and to shape the country's future along certain values: Freedom, Equality, Solidarity, Social Justice and Anti-discrimination.

First Seminar

“Political Culture and Democracy” was the topic of the first module of this year’s Political Academy - a program designed by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation in Prishtina to provide young progressive professionals with both the theoretical knowledge and the practical skills they need, in order to actively engage in Kosovo politics. For an entire weekend, the selected participants who come from different ethnic backgrounds had the opportunity to not only listen to internationally renowned professors, but also to discuss various issues and exchange their views with both lecturers and the other participants.

On Friday, Valeria Heuberger started the PA with a more general lecture on political culture – a concept she further elaborated on on Saturday, when she talked about concepts and issues related to political culture and the contextualization and instrumentalization of political culture in the Western Balkans. Afterwards, it was on Prof. Dr. Veton Latifi to present his view on political culture, democratic values and electoral processes in the Balkans. At the end, of this very informative day, Prof. Dr. André Gerrits then held his presentation on European Political Culture and offered his views on the future of the European Union, especially with regard to the current state of crisis. For the participants it seemed particularly interesting to learn more on the prospects for Kosovo’s accession to the EU and concrete steps the country had to take, in order to ensure a successful European Integration.

On the final day of the first module, Ulpiana Lama offered a practical workshop on political communication focusing on four main aspects; namely strategic communication, communication in political campaigns, governmental communication and communication in times of crisis. During a role play, the students were asked to act as campaign advisors and as such had to conceptualize the election campaign for politicians such as Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Boris Tadic and Isa Mustafa. In a second task, they were asked to act either as government officials or other public authorities that had to deal with different crises such as the pollution of water in Prishtina for example. At the end of the day, Ulpiana Lama acknowledged the candidates high potential and expressed her hopes that the participants would one day use this potential in order to change realities in Kosovo for the better.

Political Academy 2012 Flyer