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 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..

In recent years the liberal representative democracy has been subject of a substantial critique because of its inability to accommodate difference and createa genuinely democratic political process. One such critique comes from the theory of deliberative democracy. Supporters of deliberative democracy try to promote a model of democracy that take its vantage point in free and equal deliberationbetween all relevant actors in a political community. This model has with some success opposed the aggregative model of democracy, and in important ways turned the attention to the potential of deliberative processes.However, the deliberative model is still somewhat underdeveloped when it comes to issues of diversity and difference. This essay deals with such deficiencies by analysing deliberative democracy in the light of the critiquelaunched by difference- and radical democrats.

Bachelor essay in political science by Andreas Byfeldt, autumn 2007?The practice of deliberative democracy- limitations or enhancements of representative democracy??Supervisor: Erik AmnåThe purpose of this study is to find out what impact the practice of deliberative democracy might have on a representative democracy. What effects deliberative democracy could have in this context are scientifically as well as publically relevant seeing that participation in representative democracies as well as the forms of representation is altering.The essay contains both a theoretical segment and a case study. The information regarding the case is based on the results from a questioner, conversations by and observations from the author. In addition an analysis is performed in the case study.The conclusion of the essay is that there is too little empirical research on the subject of deliberative democracy to make a qualified conclusion about what effects the practice of deliberative democracy could have on a representative democracy.

The purpose of this study was to examine in which extent the comments about news inthe comment fields, on Swedish news sites Facebook pages were deliberative.To fulfill this purpose we used a quantitative content analysis as a method to interpretthe data that we collected about 2203 reader comments from three news sites Facebookpages. Ju?rgen Habermas theory about deliberative democracy together with theoriesabout public space and Web 2.0 were the theories we based our study on. To determinethat a comment was deliberative it had to contain an argument and be written withtolerance and respect. Our result showed that most comments lacked either one or bothof these criteria?s and therefore weren?t deliberative.

Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other.

This thesis evaluates the user board of the elememtary school in Veberöd, Sweden. In this process an evaluation model is developed. The model itself gets evaluated in a meta-evaluation to improve the model for future use.The starting point of the evaluation is the deliberative democracy theory. Although Sweden is a representative democracy an official desire exists to have a democracy with deliberative qualities. The evaluation model is constructed to fit this context and is therefore, not only, set out from classical goal-based evaluation but also from deliberative democratic evaluation.

Jane AustenHer dialogues and the time in which she lived This essay is about the dialogues in Jane Austen?s novels and what they say about the time she lived in. The interest for Austen comes from the ?Austen movies? I?ve seen the latest year. AIM AND FRAMING OF QUESTIONS My aim has been to compare the contents in the dialogues with the fact in the biographies. The questions are:What do the dialogues say about the convention, the behaviour, manners and the form of address? What does it say about young men and women and about the marriage? Are the dialogues supported by the content in the biographies? Did Jane Austen really write realistic? METHOD AND MATERIAL The method was to read the novels and then the biographies.

Partly as a reaction to a perceived crisis in contemporary democracy, the nineties witnessed an upsurge in different forms of citizens? fora, dedicated to the promotion of increased participation by the citizen in the political process. Youth councils are a special point in case as they entail the general characteristics of a deliberative forum, with an emphasis on political learning. This study aims to undertake an evaluation of a regional youth council in the region of Skåne in the south of Sweden. Through qualitative analysis, the study aims to portray the origin, purposes and consequences of such a forum.

This study investigates the potential of a rhetorical theory of knowledge to expand beyond its own domain and into political theory, specifically theories of deliberative democracy. Despite the increasing interest in communication in democratic theory in the last decades, the majority of theorists have not turned their interest towards rhetorical science. On the contrary, theorists often regard rhetoric as dangerous and incompatible with the deliberative ideal of reason. The aim of this study is therefore to defend rhetorical science by investigating how the rhetorical theory of knowledge ? as it is presented by Chaïm Perelman and Oldbrecht Tyteca, and further developed by Mats Rosengren and Maria Wolrath Söderberg ? can contribute to the understanding of deliberative democracy.

ABSTRACTSince Robert D. Putnam first wrote about the causes behind the regional differences in economic and political development in Italy, the theory of social capital has truly flourished in the fields of social science. This days you constantly hear politicians and scholars stressing the important role of the quality of the social fabric to a society?s wellbeing. There all looking at ways to construct policies and institutions that help the spread of social capital.

Deliberative democracy theory holds that democracy is about active partaking on formal and informal arenas in the public sphere where fairly equal citizens can obtain knowledge, discuss, evaluate and affect the political agenda before decisions are made.In line with the deliberative vision of online deliberation social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Twingly offer such formal and informal arenas where people can obtain knowledge and interact with other people, and politicians.The Swedish EU-Presidency was the first EU-presidency to make use of social media and it was the first time the Swedish Government Offices used other social media than email and chat features.This thesis will examine the Swedish EU-Presidency?s ambitions of using social media as well as the actual use of social media on the Swedish EU-Presidency website in the light of deliberative democracy theory.The aim of this thesis is, through a case study, to analyze the Swedish EU-Presidency?s use of social media in the light of deliberative democracy theory..

The aim of this paper is to clarify the importance of communication between parents and educators, as well as collaboration. The survey involves cooperation between parents and teachers in preschool and in the survey; it is the educators? role and approach that is made visible. The issues I answer with the help of the interviewed teachers in the paper are: In what ways considers the interviewed teachers that can create dialogues with parents about children's daily life and activities? How do you describe the interviewed teachers that they interact with parents in preschool and the various forms of collaboration describe the interviewed teachers that they use in preschool?What difficulties consider the interviewed teachers may apply when creating dialogues and cooperation with parents in preschool Using a qualitative research method, the questions have been answered in the paper..

After the appointment of a new European Commission in 2004, ?communication? was made a top priority on the agenda. The Commission presented a new communication policy, which would establish a dialogue with the citizens, thereby bringing more democracy to the union and bridging the gap to the citizens. Three documents containing the policy were published, namely an internal action plan for the Commission, Plan D which establishes the framework for national debates and a whitepaper on EU communication policy. These documents were met by mistrust and criticism from many different actors such as journalists and experts.The aim of this master thesis is to examine this new communication policy from a deliberative democratic perspective.

The purpose of the study is to explore how social media can be used as a forum to discuss politics and also how young people use critical reflection to evaluate the information available on social media. To achieve the purpose, a qualitative research is used. The empirical data is collected through semi-structured interviews with six high school students who voted in the Swedish parliamentary elections in/of 2014. The empirical data were then analyzed based on previous research on social media, and the school's mission to foster individuals who think critically. The analysis is also based on the theory of deliberative democracy model.