For the last decades, Sweden has transformed from a state with strong elements of corporatism, to a governance of pluralistic character. This development has opened up to a new form of participation ? lobbyism ? which since has spread and commercialized. Because of this, a report on the state of Swedish democracy ? Demokratiutredningen ? was issued to examine the phenomenon of lobbyism as it was feared to challenge the functioning of a representative democracy.

Slovenia and Latvia are two examples of countries which have gone through a successful democratic transition. They were both under authoritarian rule and command economy up until their declarations of independence in the early 90s. Today they have a functional market economy and political pluralism. I have examined transition theories highlighted by Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman and from these theories sought the explanations to what lies behind the successful transitions of these two countries. The transition in Slovenia was affected by liberalization from within the ruling communist party which then controlled much of the transition process. A relatively large civil society and the fact that Slovenia was not involved in the Balkan War also contributed to the short process.

Democracy has been a part of the Swedish society for a long period of time and it is also a part of the Swedish elementary school curriculum, in which you can find a number of statements that expresses that the Swedish elementary school should socialize the children into becoming role model citizens. This also conjures with the available research that describes schools in general as socializing. This led me to a question that hasn?t been answered: How much of the curriculums reasons for socialization the pupils are based on democratic values and how much of it can be dated back to events prior to the curriculum?The methodological approach is an analysis of ideologies as described by Sven-Eric Liedman and Ingemar Nilsson in Ideologi och ideologianalys. The text is focusing on the fact that a text has two layers; one is the manifest which is roughly the same as explicit or present in the text.

In an effort to strengthen democracy in the union, the EU in 2005 took a new approach to communications policy to reach out to the citizens. The strategic document "Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate" was accompanied by two other documents, and the three of them were the core of this policy. Both democracy and communications work means at EU level a higher complexity than in the nation-state arena. Objective of this study is to examine how the implementation of Plan D has turned out in a democracy renewal perspective. To achieve that answers are sought to questions concerning the goals of Plan D, how they are still present today, what happened in practice regarding the efforts that are highlighted, and how the substance of the activities can be judged from a democratic theory perspective.

In modern, Swedish political science there are different ways of looking at ?democracy?. A very common distinction is that between three groups of democratic theories: electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberative democracy.The nowadays frequently used concept of electoral democracy is often used as synonymous with the older concept of repre­­­­sen­tative or indirect democracy ? frequently regarded as a contrast to the direct democracy of ancient Athens. However, there are also important differences.

The aim of this study was to compare educational systems in Sweden, Czech Republic, Italy and Scotland. In the light of the Bologna Declaration signed in 1999, I was particularly interested in comparing social work educations in these four countries. Especially to clarify how far they have come to fulfill the goals of the common European educational policy.Central questions asked were: How do the educational systems look like in each of the four countries? How are the social work educations organized in each of them? In what ways do the social work educations differ? How can we explain such differences?Each country in this study represents a different welfare regime, and therefore I was challenged to find out if this has an impact on the implementation of the incentives of the Bologna Declaration. By studying various documents from the European Union, documents from each country and presentations of various social work programmes, I have come to the conclusion that the differences found mainly depends on the historical and socioeconomic traditions in the countries.

The discussion regarding international aid tends to be highly debated for long periods of time. Some individuals are very positive towards aid and some individuals are less positive towards aid. This study aims to broaden the understanding of the aspects behind that. The previous research tends to focus on aid allocation within the EU, or which macro factors could influence which donor countries give to which recipient countries. This study aims to add to the research with which aspects at the individual level can influence the individual's attitude towards international aid from the EU.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the views of five teachers on their own leadership, and on the way they make it work in the classroom. The method was a qualitative investigation consisting of separate interviews with five elementary school teachers from three different schools in the southern part of Stockholm. The results showed that a good pedagogic leadership, successful with the pupils, can be characterised as at the same time democratic and "situation adjustable". This includes the ability to formulate the rules of conduct clearly, to take decisions and to create a good working atmosphere in the classroom, so that the pupils can feel secure, and be able to learn and develop. That however, cannot be accomplished if the teacher only maintains a negative communication, reminding the pupils of what is forbidden.

In the 10th of April 2010 the Polish Presidential plane crashed outside of Smolensk in today?s Russia. 88 passengers and 6 crewmen died a tragic death, among them the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczy?ski. A national week of sorrow was proclaimed and citizens all over Poland went out on streets and markets to honor the newly deceased President.

The aim of this two years master´s thesis is to examine discourses about electronic books in relation to libraries that occur in the Swedish library journal Biblioteksbladet by using critical discourse analysis (CDA). The thesis also aims to discuss changes in the discourse practice, and discuss the relationship between discourse practice and social practice in the field of library and information science (LIS). A main point of CDA is that language is a form of social practice that helps shape social reality. Furthermore the concept of ideology, as understood with-in CDA, brings understanding to the way discursive events help reproduce and transform social relations of pow-er. The text samples span from 2005 up to and including 2011 and were examined by using Norman Fairclough´s three-dimensional conception of discourse, which allows for interpretation of text on a linguistic, discursive and social level.The result of the analysis showed that there are several different discourses about electronic books and li-braries, none of which can be said to be particularly representative.

This essay examines a presupposed correlation between the way one look upon values and the way one look upon the will of the people in a theoretical democratic context. The more specific purpose is to test the following hypothesis: There is a reversed connection between the way one look upon values and the way one look upon the will of the people in a theoretical democratic context, that is; a strong claim of values give reason to a limited conception of the will of the people and a weak claim of values gives reason for a more unlimited conception of the will of the people.In order to test the hypothesis I examine three different conceptions of democracy, these are: pluralist democracy, deliberative democracy and constitutional democracy. I analyze the way they look upon values, there view of the will of the people and finally if there is a connection between the way they look upon values and the will of the people. Values should be understood in a metaethical context. In other words it is not values in the ?common? meaning, instead its how val-ues in them selves should be understood, and even more relevant, what we mean when we ex-press values.My conclusions are, first and foremost, that there is a correlation between the will of the people and values, according to the formulation of the hypothesis.

The Veiled Party: A Discourse Analysis of Sweden Democratic Texts aims to further the understanding of the underlying ideology of the Sweden Democratic party, by revealing whether or not there is any ideological content that include race, racialization, and racism in the party?s political texts. The study offers a background description of the discursive change in the social and political climate of debate in Sweden, which opened a policy window for xenophobic agenda setting. In addition, the study delivers a presentation of the public debate regarding the Sweden Democrats, as well as statements by party representatives.Through a social constructionist and discourse analytic framework, the study aims at understanding how the application of racial ideas are done and mapped. The core of the theoretical framework is a critical race and whiteness theoretical approach.

There is no further training in management in teacher education programs, which can create uncertainty among teachers in terms of management. According to the curriculum, the teacher should base it on a democratic approach, but how does it look in real life? The purpose has been to investigate how practicing teachers perceived management and their own leadership style, whether they made conscious choices and if so, whether they then had any purpose in their leadership style. Teachers' views of a good leader and how much influence students have on the teaching, enter into these issues.The survey is based on a qualitative research approach, based on interviews with four active teachers. Although observations were made they did not play any major role in this investigation.

The purpose of this study is to map out and to analyze the spatial variation of female representation at the national level in established democracies. The aim is also to explain the variation in the female representation. The main questions that the paper tries to answer are:1.How does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary?2.Why does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary?This study is a comparative and statistic study, i.e. a study that includes a bigger number of countries and where quantitative analysis methods are used in order to achieve comparative analyses.

This study deals with the new curriculum GY11 in Swedish and Swedish as a second language, the first course at ?Swedish Gymnasium?. The subject is the status and aims of teaching literature and its contents. Eva Hultin?s thesis (2006) Samtalsgenrer i gymnasieskolans litteraturundervisning.