Discussions about the democratic deficit of the European Union have gotten more intense and the criticism usually points towards a great gap between the citizens and the EU politics. In this study the political communication policy is being put under the scope to investigate to what extent the policy is designed to counter the democratic deficit, supported by the theory of Deliberative democracy. The analysis examines three aspects of the deficit ? decentralization, participation and the distribution of information ? and makes research into the communicative measures that have been implemented. The importance for EU to make deliberation possible is stressed throughout the essay and in the conclusion I argue that improvements still need to be made.  .

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.

The purpose of the essay is to analyze the welfare state from a gender perspective. Further, the paper analyzes and critically examines three different normative solutions provided by Irish Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas for the realization of a welfare state that includes women.Habermas argues that the welfare state has created a situation of dependency and state paternalism which reduces both individual and collective self-determination. Young follows Habermas? argument. She argues for a political climate where justice is reduced to the distribution of material goods rather than the elimination of underlying relations of domination and gender specific patterns.

The purpose of the essay is to analyze the welfare state from a gender perspective. Further, the paper analyzes and critically examines three different normative solutions provided by Irish Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas for the realization of a welfare state that includes women.Habermas argues that the welfare state has created a situation of dependency and state paternalism which reduces both individual and collective self-determination. Young follows Habermas? argument. She argues for a political climate where justice is reduced to the distribution of material goods rather than the elimination of underlying relations of domination and gender specific patterns.

The aim was to explore how the first page of a student newspaper has been changed over time since it was founded in the 1960´s.This thesis explores how the front page of the student newspaper Lösnummer has been changed since it was founded in 1966. It concerns the location and frequency of elements and it is based on theories of layout, the first page and visual communicationIn addition, the thesis develops a new kind of method for determining the location of elements on the type area. The method is based on the hexadecimal number system. It is formed as a grid which is placed on the first page to determine the location of the elements.It concludes that the frequency of elements had its peak during the 1970´s and has ever since decreased gradually. Image placement has gone from being scattered all over the front page to be centered and increase in size. .

Our study aimed at gaining insight of co-workers experiences of different factors that affects the verbal communication and leads to dialogue and misunderstanding between co-workers and their managers. The empirical material was gained from semi-structured interviews with co-workers at various departments within the same organization. We used a hermeneutic interpretive approach and our data was analyzed concerning different factors affecting communication. The result has been interpreted using the theories of Deliberative conversations and dialogue competence. We have also used Illeris theory of learning.

This thesis deals with non-wanted political parties e.g. right wing populism. How should a democracy handle these opinions? So far these parties have been neglected and not even considered as real parties. By excluding them from the debate and the political arena, media and more established parties have seen them merely as a threat than as democratic parties.

The main purpose of this study has been to examine and analyze what kind of discussions that takes place in the commentary fields of swedish online newspapers. We started by collecting nearly 2000 commentaries from three newspapers and then used a quantitative content analysis to interpret the material.We divided the comments into different categories like arguing, media criticism and opinion on other comments in order to see which categories were most common. The results of the analysis shows that there is a discussion in the commentary fields where most of the commentaries stick to the subject, where media criticism is unusual and where arguing is quite common. The discussion however is usually negative. The results can be connected to the theories of Deliberative democracy, flaming and earlier research on commentary fields.

Our study aimed at gaining insight of co-workers experiences of different factors that affects the verbal communication and leads to dialogue and misunderstanding between co-workers and their managers. The empirical material was gained from semi-structured interviews with co-workers at various departments within the same organization. We used a hermeneutic interpretive approach and our data was analyzed concerning different factors affecting communication. The result has been interpreted using the theories of Deliberative conversations and dialogue competence. We have also used Illeris theory of learning. The result shows a number of factors that affects communication between co-workers and managers.

Water related problems are highlighted as a challenge to sustainable development and the topic of forests and water is gaining increased attention worldwide. Governing forest and water is a complex issue, as the interactions are affected by policies and actors from multiple levels and sectors. In Sweden, forests cover much of the land and forestry is an important land-use, inevitably impacting the water in the landscape. This study aims to understand and explain the existing governance framework around forestry and water in Sweden. Based on the Policy Arrangement Approach, the study?s research questions focused on the actors involved, the formal and informal rules, the resources and power structures and the discourses related to forestry and water in Sweden.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Martti Ahtisaari?s comprehensive reportfor Kosovo, CPS, based on theories about democracy, democratization andmulticulturalism. The essay is a way to make a contribution to research on howthe international community can contribute to democratization processes ingeneral, as the CPS gives the expression and democratization of contextscharacterized by multicultural problems in particular. In this paper, we implementa qualitative text analysis of our main material CPS. The qualitative text analysiscan be applied in studies as ours when sought contents of the text are hidden underthe surface.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the use of social media by the Swedish Police for democratic purposes. The idea of citizen empowerment is closely related to the development of new communication technologies such as social media. Yet many studies indicate that governmental institutions rarely make use of the assumed potentials of social media.In this study, the democratic potential of social media is derived from Habermas normative concept of Deliberative participation. Operational definitions emphasize discursive equality, interactive reciprocity and external impact. The analytical framework is combined with qualitative text analysis to highlight the conditions of interaction between representatives of the Police and citizens.In conclusion: the democratic potential of social media, from a Habermasian point of view, is to a significant extent neglected at the expense of its strategic advantages.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the use of social media by the Swedish Police for democratic purposes. The idea of citizen empowerment is closely related to the development of new communication technologies such as social media. Yet many studies indicate that governmental institutions rarely make use of the assumed potentials of social media.In this study, the democratic potential of social media is derived from Habermas normative concept of Deliberative participation. Operational definitions emphasize discursive equality, interactive reciprocity and external impact. The analytical framework is combined with qualitative text analysis to highlight the conditions of interaction between representatives of the Police and citizens.In conclusion: the democratic potential of social media, from a Habermasian point of view, is to a significant extent neglected at the expense of its strategic advantages.

The aim of this paper is to examine how teachers experience their possibilities to develop democratic teaching in high school and how they reflect upon their position of power within the teaching situation. Four professional high school teachers have been interviewed for the study. The theoretical perspective of the study is an intersectional view on power and a view on democratic teaching which is partly built on the high school curriculum, but mainly defined by Deliberative conversations, anti-oppressive education and norm-critical education. The result of the study is focused on three themes, which were shown in the analysis of the interviews. These themes are: choices of teaching content,  authority of the teacher and democratic teaching.

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.