Irish polemicist and political activist, George Bernard Shaw, once remarked: "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history". The loud echo of these words permeates through Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die, where they draw lessons from history to shine a light on how regimes break down and how democracies die. Grounding their analysis on the collapse of regimes across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Levitsky and Zib ...

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2021-Jun-28 11:06:21

This article investigates the effects of leadership styles on public responsiveness to crisis communications. A survey research method using quantitative research design was used to test the most appropriate leadership style as perceived by university students in response to the South African energy crisis. If leaders understand and are better able to predict public responsiveness to specific leadership styles adopted in organisational communications during crisis, they can maximise their eff ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:58:24

This article examines the influence of procedural, distributive and interactional justice on job satisfaction among members of the South African Police Academy. In spite of extant literature and the importance of employees' perceptions of organisational justice and job satisfaction in various organisations, literature is scant on the relationship between these two broad constructs within a South African policing setting. Its methodological approach is embedded in a post-positivist paradig ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:54:28

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa instructs the three spheres of government to co-operate in the spirit of mutual trust and in good faith. Not much has been written, to uncover the importance and dynamics of trust in intergovernmental relations in South Africa. The paucity of literature on this important element of intergovernmental relations justifies this study. This article seeks to contribute in this regard. It uses Operation Sukuma Sakhe as a case study. Its findings are t ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:50:41

The practice of strategic operation is key to performance in the public sector because it optimises service delivery. This article focuses on the implementation operation adopted for the National Health Strategy (2009-2013) in Zimbabwe. It analyses the strategy to determine its impact on primary healthcare delivery in Vungu Rural District council clinics. The existing literature is reviewed for theoretical and conceptual insights into the subject of the article. Semi-structured interviews wer ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:46:29

Literature on democratic accountability is surging. In recent times, an uncontrollable urge for public financial accountability has been featuring in high-level policy reform debates within and across countries. The early democratisation of the public administration system signalled a complete transformation across all public institutions and state entities. The view, or rather intention, was to achieve the best practices, norms and standards of modern and contemporary democracies. It has to ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:42:35

The social security system is an anti-poverty intervention for those who are faced with increasing insecurity and daily social pressures (economic shocks/unforeseen circumstances). While its targeting of poor households is widely recognised, serious challenges and problems have been experienced by the recipients of social grants in South Africa. This article explains how the social security system in South Africa operates. Its objective is to determine social grants recipients' views and ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:39:31

The article examines the interface between research and policy, focusing on social policy in South Africa since 1994. As the article demonstrates, social policy is critical for development - and it is argued that inclusive development is more likely to occur when both social and economic policies are pursued jointly. In other words, social policy would be more effective if implemented in tandem with economic policy. The article also analyses the relationship between social policy and developm ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:36:09

This article discusses the use of language in Nigerian politics to understand how political discourse is used to (mis)represent politicians. The world over, politicians are known to be proficient in political oration. The article demonstrates how politicians exploit political messages to achieve their political aims. It verifies the assertion that no communication is value-free, and that all politically motivated discourses are heavily laden with hidden meaning. With the use of critical disco ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:32:40

As the editors of Rethinking Marxism put it: "it is the fate of print academic journals always to be a bit behind in their commentary of the events of the day" (2011: 297). I cannot agree more. Angled from the perspective of the sixth general elections in South Africa, this editorial commentary through the prism of the inauguration of the president is ex post facto. It is now seven months after these important events took place (elections and the inauguration of the president), whic ...

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2021-Jun-28 10:27:36