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The value of the liberal arts and humanities has increasingly been called into question on multiple fronts. Attempts to bridge the practical and liberal arts through forms of civic professionalism have been gaining traction in larger spheres of influence. This article outlines the results of a deliberative civic engagement forum (n = 42) that created a space for community members from business, education, and non-profit sectors at the National Conference on Service and Volunteerism, to consider the role civic leadership education and development has in liberal arts and humanities programs. The forum was intentionally designed to have participants consider the role of the liberal arts and humanities in redefining the purposes and process of democratic engagement through a lens of civic leadership education and development. This forum was able to gather a group of people from sectors that do not normally speak to the intersection of leadership education and the liberal arts.

This paper aims to provide an evaluation of the new education system, based on Life Skills and Citizenship Education (LSCE), in Egyptian primary schools. This study analyzes how effective could be the implementation of LSCE in the process of constructing active democratic citizens, in particular, in the case of Egypt, highlighting problems facing the new education approach.

The study methodologies are twofold; the content analysis of the primary one new curriculum “Discover”, to assess the curriculum's strengths and weakness; and the questionnaire to the primary six students, to investigate the relationship among the twelve life skills.

Content analysis of the textbook shows that the learning process based on LSCE is appropriate for the construction of active citizens. The textbook provides Egyptian children with the necessary opportunities to learn and create, through creative participatory methods. The relationship between the social dimension and other dimensions has been proven by means of the chi-square test. The relationship between participation and the two approximately absent skills “resilience and empathy” has been clarified as both are strongly interrelated with participation. The results illuminate a strong relationship between participation and the remaining life skills.

More questionnaires are needed to assess the grade of life skills achievement among students in grade one and two, as it is regarded one of the limitations of the present study, owing to the complicated procedures and the limited time.

The research suggests the formulation of wider project-based activities to be included in the textbooks of all the primary grades. In this regard, real contribution with NGOs and local governments shall be developed to facilitate the involvement of children in actual projects, in accordance with their ages, and to encourage students to participate, as they notice the efficient results of their contribution.

The research stresses on the importance of enhancing participation, as it is proven through the chi-square test that it is strongly related to other skills.

The scarcity of analytical studies to evaluate the effectiveness of citizenship education programs on children, after the application of the new Egyptian education system.

This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system.

The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse.

The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy.

Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.

The CoViD-19 pandemic has brought about a panoply of institutional challenges both domestically and in the international arena. Classical constitutional theory thereby underwent a reinvention by the executive for the sake of speedy policy action and to the detriment of institutional control while favouring authoritarian forms of governance. This paper concerns itself with institutional responses to such developments, placing emphasis on the role of the judiciary and people*s in contesting emergency decrees and other executive orders, especially where fundamental rights are infringed upon. The paper aims to explore the difficulties arising with exerting absolute executive powers during the health crisis, the respective role assumed by constitutional courts and the impact of the new governance paradigm on forms of public contestation, also as a means of quasi institutional control.

Indeed, the right to health may be translated into political discourse and become foundational to security and public interest paradigms. This may result in a shrinking public space given the constraints to the freedom of movement. In the name of public safety, the (collective) right to assembly, expression and protest have been submitted to major limitations in that regard.

Ultimately, this re-opens debates on the meaning of absolute rights and contextualities of derogations, as well as the reconcilability of civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. It also exposes social inequalities, social justice dimensions and vulnerabilities, often exacerbated by the health crisis; migrant rights demonstrably face particularly severe and intersectional forms of violations.

Particular values lie with the interdisciplinary approach embraced in this paper; the authors draw on a variety of social sciences disciplines to shed light on this very current issue. Both theoretical and empirical methods are used and combined here, making sense of the underlying logic of virus governance and its impacts on fundamental rights.

This paper aims to examine the hypotheses of main international theories (realism, liberalism and constructivism) and the development of these theories toward the behavior of foreign policy of small states in the developing world. The theories of international relations, especially the realistic theory, face a theoretical debate and a fundamental criticism. The hypotheses of these theories are not able to explain the external behavior of some small states, especially those in the developing world such as Qatar. In particular, these small states do not have the elements of physical power through which they can play this role. However, they are based on the internal determinants (such as political leadership and the variable of perception) and non-physical dimensions of power to play an effective and influential external role.

This topic sheds light on the hypotheses of theories of main international relations, which explain the behavior of foreign policy of small states. This is due to the increased number of such states after the disintegration of Soviet Union, the practice of some countries an effective foreign role and the transformation of the concept of power from the hard power to soft power, and then to smart power

The theories of international relations, especially the realistic theory, face a theoretical debate and a fundamental criticism. The hypotheses of these theories are not able to explain the external behavior of some small states, especially those in the developing world such as Qatar. In particular, these small states do not have the elements of physical power through which they can play this role. However, they are based on the internal determinants (such as political leadership and the variable of perception) and non-physical dimensions of power to play an effective and influential external role.

The importance of the study comes from its interest in small countries in general and the Qatar situation in particular. The small country emerged as a player independent of the Gulf Cooperation Council, unlike what prevailed before, which led to the discussion of a regional role for Qatar despite its small power compared to the strength and size of other factions in the region such as Turkey, Israel and Iran.

This paper focuses on two examples of constitutional corruption in India where the constitution is used for questionable political reasons by the Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The paper relies on public documents and media reports to analyse Prime Minister Modi's handling of the purchase of Rafale jet fighters from France and the revocation of Articles 370 and 35A which resulted in the division of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Constitutional and democratic norms were violated in both cases, but the Supreme Court did not find any irregularities in the sale of the Rafale jet fighters. The second case is under challenge in the Supreme Court. The analysis reveals how the Modi government has undermined democratic values and used constitutional provisions to pursue its partisan and ideological agenda.

The paper focuses attention on the often neglected topic of constitutional corruption in India.

This study observes the organisational environment of fostering citizen participation in the context of local government. Creating systems of influential citizen participation requires the consideration of organisational prerequisites. This study asks which organisational elements contribute to successful citizen participation in local government.

The data consist of interviews with 14 key actors who work for the city of Helsinki. The interview content was subjected to abductive content analysis and reflected in the analytical framework based on previous literature on citizen participation. The analysis complements and adds insights to the existing literature.

This study illuminates three crucial elements of influential citizen participation: organisational structures, organisational culture and adequate resources. Additionally, the results revealed management to be a crucial enabling element. The findings highlight the importance of seeing citizen participation as an issue of governance and as a systemic part of the administration requiring intentional management efforts.

The study illustrates the key elements (structures, culture and resources) that should be considered when creating an influential citizen participation system. Additionally, the empirical analysis highlights the importance of management, which has been understudied in previous studies concerning citizen participation.

Is the need for stability pre-empting the need for democratic values? How can the EU cope with two contradictory security requirements: the need to promote democratic norms and to secure geostrategic interests? This paper takes on the security-democracy dilemma in a complex way that transcends the realpolitik frame overshadowing the analysis of the EU’s policy orientation in the Southern Mediterranean while considering its normative role as a fig leaf for security interests.

This paper investigates the EU’s foreign policy orientation reflected in the ENP in terms of the two logics of action of consequentialism and appropriateness. Tracing changes at the policy level over time between 2011 and 2015, the paper zooms into the implementation of the “new” ENP in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia to highlight additional variation across countries.

Building on a document analysis of the official declarations for the policy-making level and of ENP action plans for the implementation level, the paper argues that local political dynamics and the level of the EU’s threat perception shape the EU’s response to the partner countries.

In the rational model of the democratic governing chain, intervening spaces at all levels are neglected in relation to the policy process. An intervening space is a group of persons with the power and responsibility to interpret policy at their level in an organization. The research question is as follows: How are democratic policy ideas visible in the intervening spaces of a governing chain in public schools?

The study is based on two municipalities representing the 25 most populated cities in Sweden. The data are based on interviews with 66 informants with leadership roles on the district level and two schools in each municipality.

Leadership is obviously more than making decisions. It is also about facilitating and creating trust, engagement, motivation and willingness to take responsibility. In this process, intervening spaces are central. They exist at all levels from the national ministry to the classroom. The empirical examples show the importance and challenges in how different leadership roles, relationships and interaction transform policy intentions to practice on the local level.

The authors contribute by highlighting the parallel interpretation processes that take place at various leadership levels locally. There are possibilities and challenges in aligning the intervening spaces into a rational governing chain. The findings indicate that intervening spaces and policy drift is vital to support, control and use professional competence in the process to transfer political ideas to classroom practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how public sector accounting has changed and is changing due to public governance development.

This paper conducts a traditional literature review based on selected studies in the fields of accounting, public administration and management. The aim of the review is to explain how diverse forms of public governance influence the fate of public sector accounting, including accountability, performance measurement, budgeting and reporting practices.

Public governance is developing into more inclusive but also complex forms, resulting in network, collaborative and digital governance. Consequently, the focus and practices of public sector accounting have changed, as reflected in new types of accountability, performance measurement, budgeting and reporting practices.

Drawing upon literature from different fields enables a deeper understanding of the changes in public sector accounting. Nevertheless, the intention is not to execute a systematic literature review but to provide an overview and resolve the scattered body of knowledge generated by previous contributions. The areas of risk management and auditing were not included and deserve further attention.

This paper discusses the need to continually redefine and reassess public sector accounting practices, by recognising the interdependencies between different actors, citizens and digital technologies.