We started the tutorial by discussing how we felt about the first TMA. We noted that in this course you are given a lot of information and a big challenge is to decide how to use that information to support your own answer to the TMA question, without getting caught in the trap of simply summarizing and repeating all that you have read in the essay - as this will leave very little space for your own thoughts and ideas. The course resources that you do use must be linked back to the TMA question.
After discussing the first TMA we moved on to talk about the first two weeks of Room 1 by discussing a series of questions and bringing up authors introduced in the Room as appropriate to answer these questions.
Here is a brief overview of the questions we discussed during our tutorial (in parenthesis, some of the authors brought up by students).
1. What is democracy? (Pericles, Burke, Dahl)
a. Does it exist? (Mosca, Michels, Pareto)
b. Do we want it to exist? (Madison)
2. What are the main dangers of democracy as discussed in the readings? (Madison, Burke)
3. What is the role of leaders in a democracy?
a. Should representatives be representative of the people or stand above the people?
b. How should leaders rise to power (Mosca, Pareto, Michels)
4. What is a Machiavellian leader?
5. Do we agree with the statement: 'people receive the leaders they deserve'?
Hope everyone is enjoying working through Room 1,
karem
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