 Politics is an activity to make general rules as well as decisions on how power and resource should be distributed. Politics are arguments about the ways to reach a better future or dream goal, how quickly we should go there, what route we should take. And then also the question of whether it's worth trying to get to that. Politics is the process of trying to attain democracy for everyone. Politics is more or less a governance related to the governance of a country, a system of governance of a country. This is what I understand. Politics is a process where people cooperate or get into conflict over decisions about how to organise things and allocate resources. Politics is just, you know, it's about relationships between people on how we can make the world a better place for all of us. Democracy is a system in which power is exercised directly by the people or through their representatives to bring equality and equity or to bring a fair play. Democracy as an ideal is a system in which everyone has an equal voice. But in reality democracy is a political system in which some voices are more equal than others. I always think of democracy as freedom and liberty for everyone. Yeah, democracy. The rule of the people actually. But everybody speaks about democracy is like God. Everybody talks about it but nobody really understands it, you know, or so it feels especially in our country. Democracy is a form of politics and decision making where people who are affected by those decisions have influence over the process either directly or by electing representatives. When I think of democracy, I think of freedom. I think of justice. I think of equality. I think of being fair to everybody. I think of being more inclusive, regardless of gender, physical status or whatever, colour, skin colour or whatever. Actually, my job is completely different from what I'm now doing but I've been the president of the European Rhetorical Association and now the president of the European Copyright and Nervaring Rights Management Society. Okay, I'm generally from social science and humanities to mention history, sociology and social work and social anthropology. I am the director of the Forum for Social Studies which is a research, a policy research organisation. I think these disciplines can engage in a very critical and analytical approach to intensely understand and reflect the social process which also includes the political arena. It allows you to look at longer-term trends to understand the forces, whether they're economic or cultural or social, that drive those trends and to look at the differentiated impacts, who wins and who loses as a result of those trends. In many cultures, arts play a really major role in terms of disseminating information about democracy in a way that research and government can sometimes and I think by providing opportunities to artists, we will help to deepen understanding of democracy in areas that is not necessarily accessed usually. In the European literary tradition, it is the man of creative arts and the man of literature who are believing what has been teaching the Ethiopian people about politics and about democracy. So our musicians, our writers, play writers in theatres, in the drama, so more than the politicians and then more than the imperials, it was the creative arts that were teaching our people about their freedom and democracy. I think anthropologists are really good at getting behind the scenes or under the surface of processes and relationships and that's really important in democracy because it's quite hard to know what's going on. And so they can really scrutinize and reveal some of the power hierarchies and interactions to help people so that they can intervene. I'm part of the Global Research Network for Parliaments and People and we provide grants to academics and artists to research in the areas of politics and democracy. In the next two years, we'll do research on parliaments and people and we will encourage particularly young scholars. Young scholars will build their capacity. Young scholars and women and people who will not get opportunities for research, want to bring these guys on board to be involved in this kind of research.