In contemporary Sweden political participation among foreign-born Swedes is viewed as low and it is well known that foreign-born individuals do not use their voting rights to the same extent as the general population. At the same time there are numerous ethnic associations around the country who work with various activities involving political, democratic and integration issues. This study aims to study how four members of a Somali association regard, relate to and work with politics, democracy and integration. The study is based on these four people, but also on their relationship with authorities and other agencies in the community. The conclusion of this study shows in brief that the desire to participate politically is great, but that democracy and politics is accessible to all, depending on the level of language skills and what political knowledge the individual has.

The purpose with this paper is to examine if tertiary education and democracy have an impact on economic growth. In order to decide how democratic the examined countries are the democracy index constructed by The Economist is used. Besides the two central theories the purpose is also to explain why these variables could affect growth and to examine direct and indirect effects. Indirect effects mean that one variable affects another variable which thereafter has an impact on economic growth.34 OECD countries are compared in order to investigate whether education and democracy are strongly correlated with BNP per capita. Therefore a statistical design is used as method.The empirical results suggest that there is significant correlation between democracy and economic growth.

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..

When Sweden acceded to the European Union in 1995 the term social economy was introduced to the Swedish context, gradually replacing the term civil society. This replacement can be seen as an indicator of a changing meaning of what the concept of civil society used to stand for.The aim of this essay is to study if it is possible to identify changing perceptions of the role of civil society for democracy in Sweden in government bills between 2002 and 2008, and, if so, what effect does this have on the delineation between the civil society and the government.An analytical model is proposed consisting of two dimensions which both capture the roles of civil society for democracy and the model examines how those roles relate to the government.The conclusion is that the government still sees the main function of civil society as a democratic school and a change agent for democracy. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the civil society is increasingly regarded as more of a welfare producer than a fosterer of democracy..

Lately information- and communication technology (ICT) has been seen as an important tool to vitalize democracy. What kind of democracy it generates is however debateable. The objective with this thesis is therefore to examine what democratic ideal that dominates the use of ICT in Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen and what kind of citizenship it brings. The two case studies were chosen because the Swedish regional level is facing a reorganization with democratic ambitions which in relation to ICT is fairly unexplored. To fulfil the objective there are two perspectives; e-democracy and e-administration, which are defined and integrated with democratic theory including Premfors´ "Fast, Strong and Thin" democratic ideals and Marshall´s three citizenship rights.

The purpose of this essay was to research the level of condition and requirements of democracy which faces states applying for a membership in the European Union. The focal point was to research the levels of democracy requirements on two set enlargements which are the cases of the 1981 and 1986 enlargements together with the 2004 and 2007. The states that did reach the goal of becoming member states had similar political backgrounds that made them suitable for a most- similar system study. By using my theoretical framework which consists of democracy theories, together with the chosen method was I able to find answers to my research questions when examining the material. The result of the study is that even though the condition might have been quite similar but the reality of them was different.

Abstract?Political participation by the citizen?- Citizen proposals in Karlstad municipalityEssay in Political Science, C-levelAuthor: Tobias GustafssonTutor: Michele MichelettiIn Sweden the political parties are losing more and more of their members. That in combination with a tendency that the participation in the elections is getting lower is a problem for the representative and parliamentary political system in Sweden.In order to strengthen the democracy in Sweden and to make the gap between the citizens and the elected smaller there has been some democracy-projects. The purpose of these democracy-projects is to make the political participation by the citizens, between the elections, higher. One of them is ?citizen proposals to the municipality?.The purpose of this essay is to examine this democracy-project in order to see what influences it might have on the local democracy.

Information technology (IT) with its enormous capacity involves more and more in our daily activities and public sector is using IT to make their activities more efficient. The government goal with electronic government (e-government) among other things is increasing the availability and service to the public as well as improving the democratic process. Democracy can be strengthened by involving citizens in public decision making process but this goal has not been achieved yet and the development of e-government has mostly been focused on improving efficiency within administration and electronic services (e-services). Promoting the democratic process has been postponed in the development of e-government because of the lack of political commitment and decision. Digital divide is also preventing public sector to promote democracy with the support of IT.

In recent years the concern about the future of the European Union and itssupposed lack of democracy, efficiency and legitimacy has increased. Thisconcern has resulted in extensive debates and the establishment of a conventionwith the task to create a draft treaty for a European Constitution.The aim of this essay is to study how the three theoretical concepts,democracy, efficiency and legitimacy, have been described and used in the debateabout the future of the European Union. My main interest is to see how theseconcepts are described in a debate regarding a political system that goes beyondthe borders of the nation-state. I have made a comparative textual analysis of thedebates taken place in Sweden and Spain during a period of over two years. Ihave, for instance, found out that openness and clearness have a prominentposition as democratic values together with equality and justice (in Spain) and theinstitution of accountability (in Sweden).

Abstract?Political participation by the citizen?- Citizen proposals in Karlstad municipalityEssay in Political Science, C-levelAuthor: Tobias GustafssonTutor: Michele MichelettiIn Sweden the political parties are losing more and more of their members. That in combination with a tendency that the participation in the elections is getting lower is a problem for the representative and parliamentary political system in Sweden.In order to strengthen the democracy in Sweden and to make the gap between the citizens and the elected smaller there has been some democracy-projects. The purpose of these democracy-projects is to make the political participation by the citizens, between the elections, higher. One of them is ?citizen proposals to the municipality?.The purpose of this essay is to examine this democracy-project in order to see what influences it might have on the local democracy.

After the fall of communism in Yugoslavia the ethnic resentment grew stronger and escalated in to interethnic civil conflict in 1992. After international intervention the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) installed peace in 1995. The treaty's aim was not only to establish peace but also to institute democracy in Bosnia. The OSCE were given the task to implement democracy within political institutions and civil society. This in a country with a lack of democratic experience and where great problems with ethnic antagonism still exists.By using democratization and transition theory this single case-study examines how democracy is implemented in Bosnia by the OSCE and clarifies difficulties that this democratization process is facing.

This thesis is using the theory of participatory democracy to show how one can work to increase the participation in the society, between elections as well as during elections. For a couple of years now many traditional democratic countries have been struggling with low voting rates. Hence this, I find it interesting to study what has been done to cope with this problem. The government in Sweden had a project working on how to make more people involved in the democratic process, especially people that to a lesser extent participate in this process. In this thesis two projects will be studied, Möllevångsgruppen and Unga väljer Miljö i Malmö.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood a political force that can be able to push Egyptian society in to the process of democratization? We think that the answer to that question is yes, even though the movement clearly state that their main aim to create a democratic state, but based upon the Islamic shari?ah-laws. In this paper, we examine if the Brotherhoods? political platforms and ideas are compatible with the classic ideas of how a democratic state should be. We discuss Robert A.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how six students at a Secondary School describes interaction patterns among teachers when students express in a way that the teacher perceives as racist and/or xenophobic, by presenting a qualitative interview study. The interviews were analyzed by two opposing models of value education: the traditional and the constructive model.The results show that students divide teachers in different categories based on five qualities: 1) they listening, 2) they accept students' opinions, 3) they allow discussion, 4) they are knowledgeable and 5) they can express their own opinions.These qualities are included in the value pedagogical model for deliberative conversations, whose strategies for interaction aim to create an understanding of different rules and values, thereby creating skills of rules by using a democratic approach. In contrast to this model, the rule-based moral education, in which the teacher uses his authority and refers to rules without giving an explanation for why they occurred, as strategies. .

The purpose of this paper is to see how politicians use Internet communication in their daily work and how they use it to interact with citizens of Vasteras city. To reach my conclusions I used both theoretical methods such as literature studies and qualitative interviews with the towns 11 trustees. Accoarding to this study the politicians saw not only a lot of potentials and advantages in Internet communication but also many difficulties and obstacles. In this case the cons far exceeded the pros. One of the main reason is the bad experiences which caused by rasist attacks/threats made to politicians and also the difficulties in handling of sensitiv documents which was seen as a stress factor.