The main purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the democratic situation and developement in Malung and Nyköping, through a perspective of participatory and deliberative democratic theories. The questions I?ve examined are On what priorities the actions of developing democracy are built? Which positive effects have been reached and what problems have arisen? What are the solutions they have found to the problems? How does one experience the results of the experiments and actions taken? What are the similarities and differences between the two cases? and What is their relationship to the theories mentioned above?The questions are answered through interviews with four central actors in each case and examined in relation to participatory and deliberative democratic theories and in comparison of the two cases.The results have been that even if none of the cases respond to one theoretical ideal, they have touches of both theories as well as representative theory. It shows, however, that in Malung the representative democracy theory is the strongest represented in actions and politics, while in Nyköping the participatory democratic theory is stronger. In short, the most positive and negative effects respond well to the theories..

Genom våra två fallstudier har vi undersökt formuleringsarenans intentioner vad gäller elevinflytande i förhållande till hur dessa tar sig uttryck i praktiken. För att finna formuleringsarenans intentioner har vi använt oss av Skolkommitténs tre utgångspunkter om varför elever skall ges inflytande i skolan. Skolkommittén har på ett konkret och förståeligt sätt redogjort för tre motiveringar till elevinflytande vilka benämns som: ?Mänsklig rättighet?, ?Demokratifostran? och ?Elevers inflytande över sitt lärande?.  I vår text har vi eftersträvat att ringa in ämnesområdet och ge läsaren en tillräcklig bakgrund för vidare läsning. För att vidga vår förståelse för elevdemokrati idag ser vi det med andra ord som angeläget att mer översiktligt och kort redogöra för en historisk tillbakablick.

In 2002 the local council of Lund, Sweden, decides to implement the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. A number of actors, such as the state, the civil society, the political society and the bureaucracy, participate in the political process with different authority and points of departure. This thesis studies the actors´ interactions from an inside perspective by applying concepts such as political power, democracy and implementation. The methodological departure is action research from within, a local NGO, the local board of Save the Children Sweden. The results of the study indicate that governance and steering of the implementation process at the communal level is weak.

Bolivia is a multiethnic country where the indigenous people constitute the majority of the population. Despite two decades of attempts to take the democracy further is its foundation more volatile than ever. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine if exclusion is taken place in Bolivia from year 1982 until today and if so in which way political exclusion constitute problems of democracy in Bolivia. The answer depends on the understanding of democracy used in the analysis. In this thesis I use theories of process-, participation- and deliberative democracy.

The essential thing about breaks has been in relation to time, body, movement, force and room during my examination. Through conversations high-school students from two schools have taken part in this study. The examination is based on conversations with the students and has focused on students? experiences of breaks, and is also carried through by the method of phenomenology. The results of my studie show that students - during their breaks - experience a feeling of allways heading for something and also that time seem to exist in three levels: filled time, non-filled time and flow regarding of time.

Engelsk titel: Greater opportunities than interests : Civic culture and deliberative discourse on Swedish NGO websitesThis is a critical and normative study, which examines a selection of Swedish NGO websites as potential forums for civic culture and deliberative discourse in the public sphere. Sociocultural, political and sociological and media and communication theories are combined.The work is made within a Habermasian tradition, but the importance of a hermeneutic methodology is stressed, along with the sociocultural perspective to reach an understanding of why citizens engage in politics. In contrast to much of the earlier research concerning deliberative discourses on the Internet, a more informal understanding of how people discuss politics is stressed.The questions are: What kind of civic role do the websites discursive dimensions address? What kind of civic identity do the users address in the websites resource dimensions?The empirical results are both discouraging and encouraging for advocates who put their trust in the Internet as a potential civic tool, in these times when neoliberal models of citiziens are prioritizing citizens as consumers, thus neglecting citizens as political actors. The study reveals that the websites show good results in general, regarding the civic roles and identities of the websites as both discourse and resource for the users.

This study compares different articles on aftonbladet.se and the availability of comment fields on the articles. It is not possible to comment all of them and we examined which you could and which you could not comment on. The study?s purpose is to examine how well the comment fields on aftonbladet.se take advantage of the opportunity to create a deliberative discussion that the public may take part of. This study looks at what subject matters it is possible to comment on and if there are any statistical correlations between those subjects that you can?t. This study analyses 250 articles on the news site aftonbladet.se with a total of eleven variables between the 26 of November and the 7 of December.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some pre-school teacher's and parent's perceptions about communication within the pre-school context and how this can be described in terms of conceptual dichotomy.The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative study, where data have been collected by interviewing two focus groups and one single parent.The main theoretical tools which the study uses as its premiss is Derridas' theory of hospitality and Habermas' theory of deliberative dialogues. The study also considers the conception of the intermediate domain as an arena for communication between parents and pre-school teachers, and further more the conception of stereotyping in social and cultural contexts.In order to explore these processes I have used the qualitative method of interpretation; Hermeneutic, also with a narrative approach to the analysis.The results and the analysis of the data show that the interviewed parent and pre-school teachers have a poor sense of knowing how much influence to give to each other. The parents were not satisfied with the level of open communication and how the pre-school teachers share information of the activities..

The aim of this essay is to explore the lived citizenship and its ideal. First, the form and expression of citizenship practice and ideal is explored through a qualitative interwiev study of ten citizens in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. The perception and expectations of the nature of citizenship, presented by the informants, is then compared to their citizen ideal, as well as to the ideal presented and promoted by the Swedish government. The point of departure is theory of democracy. The essay calls attention to an observed lack of empirical studies in the field of deliberative theory of democracy as well as studies that more broadly bring the theory down to empirical earth.

According to the Swedish curriculum the education should establish respect for human rights and democratic values (Skolverket, 2011, s.7). The purpose of this study is to investigate how five first grade teachers understand the democracy education and how they practice it in reality. I have, based on the purpose of this study issued following questions:What is the teachers interpretation of the democracy education? How does the teachers work with democracy in practice?What difficulties does the teachers see with the democracy education?This study is made through a qualitative method based on interviews with five teachers. The results show that the teachers at both schools, despite the different definitions of the concept of democracy, yet interprets democracy education relatively equal.

The number of blogs, from weblogs, are increasing every day. Blogs are also becoming more visible in the public debate as well as the awareness of their existance is rising among politicians and citizens. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question what democratic potential blogs can have. This question will be answered by initially studying the research that exists today about weblogs and democracy. The second part of the analysis consists of a selection of texts from weblogs that touches this subject.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka hur kön görs i sex stycken vägledningssamtal på gymnasiet. Med stöd av några utvalda könsteoretikers forskning analyseras samtalen som utförts av tre stycken olika studie- och yrkesvägledare på tre stycken olika gymnasieskolor. Varje studie- och yrkesvägledare samtalade med en tjej och en kille i årskurs tre och deltagarna valde själva ut vilka elever som spelades in på band. Resultatet pekar på att studie- och yrkesvägledarens förhållningssätt delvis skiljer sig åt beroende på elevens kön. Genom att undersöka samtalsinnehållet och jämföra detta med normativa föreställningar om kön så ges olika exempel på hur kön görs i samtalen.

ABSTRACTCitizendialogue in the District of RasboA Case Study in the Municipality of UppsalaAuthor: Camilla ÖstlundSupervisor: Stig MontinThe essay is written inside the scope of Örebro Universitys evaluation of the new organisation in the municipality of Uppsala.The purpose of this essay is to study the citizendialogue in the district of Rasbo. This will be done partly by an examination of how the participants themselvesperceive citizendialogue. Their descriptions are put in relation to deliberative democracy and its critics amongst other. Partly by study how those involved have choosen to put it into practice. The opponents of the reorganization chose to start a non-profit association, Rasbo in co-operation, to carry on local mobilization and it will be compared with other similar groups.

Deliberative politics offers a new and exiting way of overcoming the problems that the western democracy of today is facing. A lot of research in the most recent years have had the goal to replace the representative democracy with a decision-making frame built on decentralization and deliberation. The goal for this essay is to create a framework for local decision-making, based on deliberativ norms, that could work as a complement to the representative democracy instead of replacing it.During the recent years the so-called "brukarråd"; councils for the most common users of one special public service, has been a new way for the local government to get in direct contact with those who are most affected by changes and developments in the specific area of the public administration. In this essay I argue for that these councils should be designed so that they could house deliberative processes.After creating a model for the possible way of designing the "brukarråd" I compare the framework with the system that exists today. In this way there is a possibility to point out if there is a way to deepen the democracy within the already existing system..

The purpose of this study is to analyse the discourse on political exclusion in the official report Demokratiutredningen. It has been my ambition to relate the analysis of the report to a critical academic discourse on political exclusion and thereby make visible hidden norms and structures which functions to exclude certain individuals and groups from political participation.My paper point out that the report establishes a strong link between democracy and participation and that it, therefore, makes a strong case for a process of democratic inclusion. Though, in my study I suggest that that there is an unawareness of the importance of norms, hegemonic conceptions and structures and that inclusion, therefore, is unlikely to take place. Furthermore, I criticize the focus on deliberative democracy in the report. With insights offered by Mouffe in her argumentation on the necessity to acknowledge the dimension of antagonism present in all societies I underline that the focus on this democratic model is problematic.My conclusion is that the analysis presented in the report is insufficient if we want to create a democratic system characterized by equality..