Magister Artium - MA / South Africa’s National Language Policy Framework was formulated in 2003. The framework was designed to create an enabling environment for the development of instruments and initiatives intended to promote multilingualism in the country. Following the formulation of the National Language Policy Framework, National Parliament, in collaboration with the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape Legislatures, commissioned a project of developing a Terminology List of terminology that is used in these settings. This Terminology List was taken over and expanded in 2005. According to the Terminology List’s preface, “stakeholders embarked on the enlarged terminology project in order to ensure that multilingualism was possible in this field. The Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology List will promote multilingualism in Parliament and elsewhere, and will facilitate effective communication between parliamentarians, politicians, national and provincial language offices, provincial legislatures and Hansard offices” (DAC (2005: iii-iv). With perhaps one exception (Rondganger, 2012) focusing on the English-Afrikaans language pair, there are no known studies evaluating the Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology List. As a result, it is not known to what extent envisaged target users (e.g. language practitioners) in National and Provincial Legislatures are even aware of its existence. It is also not known to what extent the terminology resource is able to support target users in the typical usage situations envisaged in the preface. More generally, there has also been no determination of how the Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology List has contributed to language development, specifically, making possible the use of the nine indigenous African languages for parliamentary-related discourse. As a consequence of the above dearth of knowledge around the Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology List, there also is no empirical database upon which suggestions can be made for improving it; that is, responding to the call in the preface for suggestions: “the compilers acknowledge that it might be useful to expand the collection, and any suggestions in this regard will be welcomed” (DAC (2005: iv). This research draws on the sociology of dictionary use (Kühn 1989, Flinz 2010) and on a knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) approach to terminology evaluation (Antia 2000, Antia & Clas 2003; Rubin 1977, Kummer 1983) to analyse the Multilingual Parliamentary Terminology List.

This thesis deals with the topic of individual parliamentary scrutiny of European affairs in Slovakia. The aim of this thesis is to determine which factors influenced the formally strong system of parliamentary scrutiny in the Slovak National Assembly. 6 factors will be analyzed - Late accession to the EU, parliamentary strength, bargaining strength in the Council of EU, public euroscepticism, euroscepticism of political parties and the frequency of coalition and minority governments. The strength of parliamentary scrutiny can also be influenced by informal aspects. The informal aspects in this thesis will be mainly concerned with the efforts of the members of the European Affairs Committee to acquire additional information about legislative proposals of the EU in an informal way and also their efforts for a better cooperation in parliamentary scrutiny among various political parties. The empirical analysis found, that the factor of late accession to the EU and euroscepticism of political parties had the biggest effect on the formally strong system of parliamentary scrutiny in Slovakia. A partial effect can be also attributed to the factors of public euroscepticism and the frequency of coalition and minority governments. Even though a formally strong system of parliamentary scrutiny does exist in...

The results in previous studies indicate that the electoral system plays an important role in women's political representation. Some researchers believe that the proportional electoral system contributes to more representation of women than the majority electoral system. The proportional electoral system is considered to be the most important factor explaining the cross-border differences in women's political representation.  The aim of my research is to test whether similar results to those shown in previous studies will occur when using another method. To fulfill this purpose, I answer the following questions:Can electoral factors explain the variation in women's political representation in the democratic countries of Africa? Is there any indication that other factors are important, if so, which ones?  In this research, different factors are used as the theoretical framework and starting point. After a theoretical review, the previous studies used to explain the underrepresentation of women in politics are introduced. The results from the previous studies are then compared to the results shown in this research to see if they can explain the variation in women's representation within the democratic countries in Africa.  This study is a comparative and employs most similar system design (MSSD). The table analysis is used as a method to analyse the collected data. Consequently, the results from the previous studies are used to analyse whether the same results on the electoral system also occur in democratic countries in Africa.  The findings show that countries with proportional electoral systems have a higher proportion of women in parliament compared to countries with a majority or mixed electoral system. However, the results also show that when compared with Catholic and Anglican countries, Protestant countries have a higher percentage of women in the national parliament. The explanation for this may be since the Catholic church is more associated with a hierarchical and authoritarian culture. The results in this study also indicate that the use of gender quotas is one of the factors that affect the women's political representation, which is consistent with the results shown in previous studies.