The aim of this thesis is to explore from a cultural diversity perspective, students 'views on teachers' leadership styles in the classroom and what style of management students prefer. The study uses a qualitative methodology to interviewed focus groups of students consisting of a total of twelve students at a secondary school in Botkyrka municipality. The corpus was divided into three different groups. Overall, results showed that students seem to prefer an intercultural situational leadership style. This is based on the students expressed need of wanting to be understood on the basis of their cultural background.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitude of teachers regarding including democratic behaviour when grading students in social science. The purpose is also to investigate whether the teachers consider there to be a conflict between the right of freedom of speech and the democratic values that the school is supposed to make sure the students have when they graduate. The study also investigates the problems political decisions encounters when going from theory to reality.The theory of Ulf Petäjä on why the freedom of speechs is important, Robert Dahls theory about the democratic process and Anders Sannerstedts theory about converting political decisions to reality is what this study is based on.The study was carried out at three different schools; Teleborg Centrum, Växjö, Dackeskolan, Tingsryd and Centralskolan, Virserum ranging from the spring of 2006 and the spring of 2007. The method used except from litterature studies was interviews with active teachers.This study shows that teachers don?t think it?s acceptable to grade students based on their political ideology.

The aim of this essay is to investigate and evaluate the arguments made by municipal politicians in Ulricehamn, regarding the planned Knowledge and Culture Centre. A part from the search for these arguments, I also investigated the attitudes among politicians regarding municipal culture investments in general. I furthermore investigated whether any national, regional, or local culture-political strategies were important in the local debate. The time frame within which the local political culture debate was investigated was from 1997 until present time 2002. The investigation methods used were partly a study of official documents such as political protocols, two articles from the local newspaper, and a clean copy from a web chat, and partly a qualitative study I sent a question regarding the planned Culture Centre to every political party active in the Ulricehamn municipal assembly.

In 1998 the Swedish Socialist Government initiated a project in order to promote economic growth and to end the discriminating social and ethnic segregation in the greater city regions of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. One of the goals of the project was and still is to promote political participation in 24 of the poorest areas of the three cities. In a quantitative analysis I evaluate whether or not the project so far has been successful in promoting a specific part of political participation, i.e. electoral participation in communal elections. The results of the 24 poor city areas are compared with a group of 14 likewise poor city areas of major swedish cities.According to my hypothesis, general improvements of the socio-economic status of poor city areas ought to generate positive effects on electoral participation in communal elections.

This essay is a qualitative study concerned with questions about disability. I set out from a definition of disability which highlights non-disabled peoples´ participation in making a disabled person ?the Other?. My aim is to contribute to an understanding of the experiences of disabled people as well as problemize the way that normality and disability is socially constructed. The empirical material of the essay consists of qualitative interviews with disabled men and women and the essay is written with a critical perspective.

This Master Thesis aims to study and discuss the occurence of three concepts in some influential cultural policy documents which includes the UNESCO public library manifesto, the Swedish libraries act, the Swedish cultural policy objectives, and a study from the mid nineties which deals with the cultural policy. The questions asked are: -Do the documents mention democracy? In what way? -Do the documents mention the public sphere? In what way? -Do the documents mention information? In what way? -How can we understand the content of the documents through relevant theories about democracy, the public sphere and information? Theories about the information society are used, as well as theories from Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Schiller and Robert Dahl. The way of method is document studies and abduktion, with influences from hermeneutic theory. The analysis deals with the documents through these concepts: democracy, the public sphere and information and puts forward the content, or lack of content, about democracy in the analysed material.

In this essay, the aim is to study the role the politicians play in relation to the people they represent. This is manly a theoretically study, which focus is on the theories behind the way we choose to identify the role of politicians. We ascribe different underlying values to the role of politicians and as a result from these different values a conflict can arise. Two central terms in my discussion are the way the politicians represent people's values and meanings combined to the possibilities for the people to hold the politicians responsible. Depending on which ethic values you put to the role, you have different views about how the politicians should act.

Abstract:The purpose of this study is to examine what actually makes Russia an incomplete democracy, despite of all the formal democratic institutions and legal democratic rights.The research method used for this essay has been qualitative case study, which strives to answer two research questions: Which democratic principles are not respected in Russia? How does the executive power control the political arena? The theoretical framework used for this study consists of a model based on Dahls Polyarchy theory and the Rule of Law concept. The conclusions points out that very little have formally changed in Russia regarding democratic rights and the constitution. The democratic decline is due to political manoeuvres and undue political influence. There is no proper division of power and the executive powers are not controlled by a system of checks and balances.

This thesis focuses on how sewdish politicians try to argue to get other EU-countries to accept a larger responsibility for refugees. Since the war in Iraq broke out in 2003 there have been a great increse in the number of refugees arriving to Europe. Sweden have accepted a very large part of these refugees. This have sparked a debate in Sweden aboute how reasonable it is that sweden accepts a proportionaly much larger number of refugees than other countries within the EU. The swedish gouvernment policy is that responisbility for refugees and migration is something that should be shared by all members of the union.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilken innebörd begreppet ?kulturkompetens? ges i litteraturen samt utifrån detta problematisera dess applicering på praktiken. Begreppet ?kulturkompetens? saknar en enhetlig definition, något som initierat skrivandet av denna uppsats. Studien bygger på en litteraturstudie i form av en kvalitativ textanalys.

We started out the study with a preconception of culture as something that creates difference between groups of people, which had been verified by our prior research. We also had a sense of culture as a polysemous term. Our assumption is also that there is an opinion within social work practice that Swedish social workers are faced with a cultural barrier when encountering immigrant clients.In this study our aim is to examine constructions of the terms cultural competence and culture. Constructions of the terms ethnicity and ethnic diversity are also observed, although the main reason for this is to show what relation these terms have to the terms cultural competence and culture, and how they may give each other meaning, according to the theory of social construction. In addition to constructions, we also aim to bring out discourses around the terms, upon which we will create a discussion about power and dominance informed by post-colonial theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA).

Syftet med förevarande uppsats är kort och koncist att pröva huruvida vi kan hitta spår av realistiska teoribildningar i de yttranden och argumentationslinjer som förekom inom lyckta dörrar i Vita huset vid tidpunkten för Kubakrisen 1962. Mer specifikt ämnar vi att försöka hitta spår av de teoribildningar som brukar benämnas defensiv och offensiv realism..

Around the world governments reach out to their emigrant population, embracingthem as part of the nation, expecting their economic contribution. The aim of thisthesis is to examine the political strategy and governmental activities of ElSalvador with the purpose to include emigrants in the nation building project. Themain question is what consequences this has for the significance of citizenship.This case study is based on the theoretical framework of external citizenshipwhich is a new fenomena emanating from states growing interest of theirexpanding diaspora. It divides external citizenship in two parts; a legal dimensionand a practiced identity.I find that as the economic potential of salvadoreans abroad increase, theSalvadorean government makes institutional changes to tie emigrants to thenationstate. This results in the possibility for salvadoreans to remain citizens intheir country of origin, practicing their salvadorean identity at the same time asthey naturalize abroad.

AbstractBachelor thesis in political science by Alexander Hassan, autumn 2008, ?Effects of external factors on a nations democratisation process during the transition from authoritarian to electoral democratic rule ? A categorical analysis?Supervisor: Tomas SedeliusIn recent years globalization has become a hot topic in understanding the world we live in today. Globalization has indeed had a great impact on international relations and with it a great influence on the domestic conditions that determine a nation?s possibilities. It is therefore rational to hold true that this also would apply to a nation?s democratic process.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the content and political message in the election posters of the political parties Sverigedemokraterna and Feministiskt Initiativ. This is achieved through a qualitative content analysis combined with text and rhetorical analysis as well as semiotics. Out of all the election posters from Sverigedemokraterna and Feministiskt Initiativ with national spread, eight were analyzed. The conclusions of this analysis are that both political parties prefer posters with high text content with the main purpose of gathering votes, and that persons were used as motives with the objective to present the party representatives and strengthen their perceived ethos..