The hypocrisy of democracy is to help autocratic rulers to stay in power because it benefits their own country. This thesis examines how the United States of America justified their cooperation with the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the period of 1953-1979, until he was overthrown by his own people. This case-study doesn´t make general conclusions about the US foreign policy towards other countries except Iran.The theoretical starting point for the empirical analysis is the political dilemma of dirty hands. With the analytical instrument, constructed with a normative analysis about the concept of dirty hands, it´s possible to discover which ethical discipline the American presidents had to uphold to justify their actions.There are three different aspects of their cooperation which are lifted in this thesis. The first one is about the circumstances that made them begin their cooperation, the second regards the features of the cooperation.

It is said that libraries are the cornerstones of democracy.What is then the democratic mandate, and how is itperceived by the library staff? That's what I examine in thismaster's thesis. I?ve made 14 phone interviews with librarystaff, from assistants to managers, and examined what theirdaily work routine looks like and what they think belongs tothe democratic mandate. I found that all agree that there is ademocratic mandate, but it is not clearly stated in anydocument.I found seven areas that my respondents saw as part of themandate; availability, diversity, children and young people,equality, public education, free of law and cultural history.These are not sharply defined, but can often move into oneanother.

A trend since the early 90?s has been that some public libraries offer a special shelf containing environmental information to the community, but it seems as though the subject has been overlooked by the literature and the science community. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to study how three independent public libraries work with environmental information that is made available to the community. The following questions were addressed: 1) Which arguments can be found as to why the libraries offer this activity? 2) How does the environmental work at the public libraries look and what does it contain of? 3) Are there any similarities or differences in this work between the three libraries?To answer these questions interviews with librarians were carried out; observations were made to complement the interviews.

The aim of this master thesis was to examine the European Commission's information resources from a user perspective in order to clarify the needs and circumstances of the search of EU-information among students at Örebro University. 41 students participated in a survey, and four of them was interviewed. On the basis of Pendelton- and Chatmans theories of information behaviour in small worlds, it were assumed that the students' education and citizenship in the European Union affected their needs and the search of EU information.The study showed that the students needs for EU-related information has increased, with the current education, but also been linked to earlier educations. The students Citizens need were mainly associated with elections such as the EMU-election, but also in some cases to a need of the general knowledge.A review of the European Commission's information resources were made with an emphasis on European Documentation Centre, EDC. The survey showed that most students used the EDC and the EU-databases that was made available by the European Commission through the EDC and the university library but were not aware that they used EDC.The survey also showed that students made use of familiar sources and resources when they searched the EU-information, such as the library's regular database list, the library catalogue and search engine on the internet are not requested of other resources.

This thesis has the purpose of developing a normative theoretical framework based on different political philosophers and scientists view on deliberative democratic theory, discourse ethics and a modified norm of citizenship. This framework is supposed to contain the ideal communicative situation for people seeking asylum. Hence, the thesis argues that political influence is best practised through communicative rights, and that people seeking asylum are in title to such rights. We conclude that the standards needed to be met in order to reach the ideal are: translators, translated information, arenas for- or channels of communication, language education, and deliberative education. Once the framework is established we focus our interest on the Swedish state.

From a historical perspective, Sweden is a classic example of a social democratic state in view ofits early development of labor movements, democracy and focus on the welfare state. Today, as amember state of the EU, Sweden has however come to be influenced by America?s neoliberalpolities, where companies need to deliver more and better products/services while the consumerawareness and sensitivity has increased about company?s way to invest. Research shows thatScandinavian companies, primarily in Denmark and Sweden, has a leading position when it comesto responsible corporate behavior which has been the reason to our choice of studying howSwedish companies do to achieve success in CSR. To carry out this study, we have usedqualitative analysis, using semi-structures to interview companies in different industry sectors.

Since the end of the Cold War, foreign aid donors have been using political conditionality to promote human rights, democracy and good governance in recipient countries. This phenomenon has been analyzed and criticized, but mainly from a strictly empirical point of view. In this paper, the legitimacy of political conditionality is analyzed through a normative perspective based on the extrinsic value of efficiency. If the political conditions don?t result in a democratic development, including respect of human rights and good governance, they can not be justified.With at theoretical focus on the donors, based on the unequal relationship between donor and recipient, I am examining the donors? possibility and supposed will to use political conditions in development cooperation.

The aim of this essay is to examine the ambivalence that I consider work of solidarity carried out from majority position to be associated with, and whether it makes sense to understand the relationship between majorities and minorities involved in this work by using the concepts of race and whiteness. Through Ruth Frankenbergs work on white women and race I consider whiteness to be a racialized position, and through Sara Ahmeds phenomenology of whiteness, which describes racialization as made through the orientation of bodies, I investigate how this racialized position is shaped and maintained by the solidarity work. The study is based on qualitative interviews with four White women engaged in two organizations that works on integration of female immigrants through creating jobs in a cooperative and through educating in national and familial democracy. The work of solidarity told of by the interviewees seems to produce racialized notions about immigrated people of color, which acts as a counterpart to the whiteness that the interviewees themselves possess. At the same time, the work also challenge this binary division, especially by incorporating the non-white women in what in this essay is called "the white world"..

The overall purpose with this thesis has been to study the strategic development of the Swedish Green Party, Miljöpartiet de Gröna. From its first appearance in the Swedish parliament 1988 to its decision to cooperate with the Social Democrats and the Left Party in 1998, the Greens has gone from a radical antiparty to a pragmatic support party. The analysis has concentrated towards identifying the causal factors behind this strategic move made by the Greens, and to determine how this party change has affected the party's strategic goals. In order to do so, a qualitative case study has been conducted where an integrated theoretical approach has been used. By studying official statements and internal debates the thesis concludes that the strategic change made by the Greens was due to the evolvement of a new dominant coalition of within the party.

Our purpose with this essay is to find explanations to the genesis of the Swedish law against prostitution now in power, known as Sexköpslagen 1998:408. We enter deeply into the official reports behind the law. This Swedish law implies that in a sex trade a crime is committed only by the consumer, and not by the seller. Our essay will result in an analysis of what sexköpslagen is an expression for. Our assumption is that the so called ideology of (gender) equality in Sweden might be a part of the explanation to the genesis of sexköpslagen.

This thesis is about the bookmobile service in Sweden of today. The purpose is to examine how the staff motivate the existence of the bookmobile. Other purposes are to study the goals of the service, to describe ?daily life? of the bookmobile, examine the changes of the service during the years and discuss possible changes in the future. The study is based on interviews with thirteen staff members from six Swedish communities, of both rural and urban character.

Civil disobedience constitutes an interesting ethical phenomena in the democraticstate since the people performing it consciously brakes laws and norms in societyfor purposes they themselves judge to be morally good and just. This thesisexamines whether the phenomena of civil disobedience is justifiable in ademocratic society.In this study civil disobedience is analyzed on two levels. First the problem isanalyzed on a theoretical level in relative to the three, by us established, values:respect for the law, the will of the majority and equality. Second, civildisobedience is analyzed on a more practical level where we test our theoreticalline of argument with the help of two example groups who engages in civildisobedience. The justification of civil disobedience is also analyzed through twoethical perspectives on acting, deontology and consequentialism.Our conclusion is that civil disobedience is justifiable on a theoretical level inrelative to the values we discuss.

The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

The subject of this master thesis is the school library and how we find its potential unutilized. We look at this problem in connection to the democratic assignment that the Swedish school has. The purpose is to elucidate what the democratic assignment consists of and to establish the role that the school library ought to have in this assignment. To describe the democratic assignment we examine and interpret the documents that regulate school and library activities today, including UNESCO/IFLA School Library Manifesto and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We use critical ideology analysis because we consider democracy to be a sort of ideology and have a critical view of how the school library is used or rather not used in school.

The purpose of this examination was to make a qualitative study focusing on children's influence from a gender perspective. The study is based on interviews. We wanted to investigate teachers' perception of children's influence in the preschool.Earlier research on children´s influence and gender has also helped us in the conclusion of this examination.The survey consists of ten interviews with teachers of varied work experience in the preschool. We also chose to interview teachers in other positions, since this is often the case in preschools today. From the result we can see that there are different levels of skill and awareness regarding the topic of children's influence from a gender perspective.