The workshop was given by Dr. Erling Sogge, from the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo in Norway and Dr. Amjad Abu Al-Ezz, Lecturer at the Political Science Department of An-Najah National University and international relations specialist.

Dr. Sogge presented his research paper, which is being conducted in Palestine, on the relationship between political parties and clans in the camps; Balata camp as a model. He generally talked about democracy as a global concept, an idea and an instrument to practice politics.

Dr. Sogge said that practicing democracy creates the political system of any legal country and democracy in the Middle East takes the shape of patrimonialism, a form of governance in which all power flows directly from the leader.

He mentioned that tribal law has been employed since Ottoman times. Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism were important foundations of Ottoman rule, in Palestine as elsewhere. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Ottoman tax-farming rights represented a discretionary state reinforcement of the existing patrimonial powers of rural "shaykhs". However after 1967, the Palestinian Authority called off this system.  

In turn, Dr. Abu El-Ezz discussed democracy from a Western perspective, focusing on European countries. He shed light on the contradictions between the adopted thoughts of democracy and its practices in these countries. He also viewed Israeli abuses and how Western countries deal with them.