Essay in political science, D-level by Lisa Kringsberg, spring semester 2008.Tutor: Michele Micheletti.?Civil Society in Singapore? can it make democratization possible?The third wave of democratization and the end of the cold war has together increased the interest of the civil society as an impact on democratization. Singapore is a country which is higly-developt in both the socie-economic and economic field. Dispate this Singapore has not yet achieved to become a democratic state. The purpose of this essay is to study how the civil society can affect democracy in a country.

This study contents a research of the Swedish temperance movements IOGT, NTO and TO:s adult education in Dalarna between 1921 and 1939. A theory that is used in this essay is the publicity theory of Jürgen Habermas. A theory in this essay is that the adult educational work of the temperance movements could bee seen as an alternative publicity because the courses that the temperance movement held in general contents a great part of the movements own literature, the participants in the courses held their own lectures to each other and it was mostly only members of the temperance movements who could join the courses. The main subject of the courses was history in literature, English, Esperanto, and knowledge about local democracy. Not many courses content the drinking issue in Sweden at this time, even thought a national referendum was held in the issue during the research period of this essay.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how the position of power / exercise of power are perceived in today's schools from the teacher's perspective. I have examined how students' freedom and democracy education interpreted in real life, and how this affects both teacher and student learning approaches. I would also highlight the need to set standards for children's psychological development related to the consequences will be. I have chosen to perform a qualitative research through individual interviews with five participating teachers from different experiences in different type of school. I have used the hermeneutic method of analysis to analyze the material.

The so called democratic deficit and the lack of legitimacy have been at the core of the EU-debate in the last decades. Low turnouts in the elections for the European parliament and disapproval in the ratification processes of the latest changes of the treaties are examples of the citizens lack of confidence for the EU and continuous integration. In Nice 2000 the heads of the member states governments agreed to try to improve the democratic legitimacy in the EU and initiated a public debate aiming at proposals for changes in the decision making processes in the EU. In July 2001 the commission published a white paper with their view. A fundamental presumption in discourse theory is that language and language usage not just is a way to deliver information about ideas and behaviours.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how the position of power / exercise of power are perceived in today's schools from the teacher's perspective. I have examined how students' freedom and democracy education interpreted in real life, and how this affects both teacher and student learning approaches. I would also highlight the need to set standards for children's psychological development related to the consequences will be. I have chosen to perform a qualitative research through individual interviews with five participating teachers from different experiences in different type of school. I have used the hermeneutic method of analysis to analyze the material.

After the orange revolution in Ukraine, hope was given to achieve fullydemocracy in the whole society. However, this has not been the outcome; theUkrainian public administration still has problems to deliver what the societydemands. By answering the question: ?Which problems have the publicadministration to become democratic and how can we explain them??, we analyzethe failures within the public administration to accomplish democratic procedures.The empirical material in this thesis is mainly obtained from interviews andresearch during a field study in Ukraine. The problems for the civil servants inUkraine to act as guardians of the society are strongly connected to an inadequateprofessional knowledge.

Studies have shown that politicians are significantly more likely to become victims of violent crime than other citizens in Sweden. In fact increasing political rank and engagement are directly proportionate to increased risk for violence. Threat towards politicians is not only dangerous to the individuals involved but also to the democratic system as a whole.Political scientists the world over have done a lot of research on democracy, but I have been unable to find a single method or theory that examines how violence, threat and harassment affect political leaders and democratic systems.The aim of this study is to expand the existing model made by Tommy Möller, professor in political science. In his model he presents 11 factors that affect political leaders ability to act. My aim is to develop his model by adding a 12 th factor ?violence, threat and harassment?.

C-essay in political science by Anna Höjenberg and Maria Stenberg, spring of 2006?The Grey Zone ? An essay on the characteristics of a hybrid regime and a case study of Russia?. Supervisors: Joakim Ekman and Jonas LindeThis essay deals with the concept of hybrid regimes. The purpose is to describe the structure and the content of such a regime-type and try to create a model which can help us to analyse different countries. The essay is divided into two sections.

The purpose of this study is to determine if and how municipal consultative entities through influence may affect the legitimacy of the Swedish democratic model. The study aims to do this through analysing the opportunities for influence present with the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality, to determine how the councils may affect political participation and the role of elected representatives. To do so, the study asks the following primary research question:"What requisites for influence are present for participants of municipal consultative entities, as found for the representatives of the youth and the retired within the framework of their participation in the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality?"The study answers this research question by dividing it into one question of policy and one question of democratic perspective, and investigating these matters through nine snowballing interviews with the decision makers, organisational actors and participants of the councils. The information from the interviews is then analysed per council through a framework of Democracy theory, policy process theory and organisation theory.

This essay is about publishing on the Internet and aims to understand the differences between publishing information on the webpage Wikipedia (Swedish version) in contrast to other information pages on the Internet, for example blog, discussion pages, homepages etcetera. The study is based upon an article which described that 90% of the information publishers at Wikipedia belongs to a small elite of white, western, well educated men between the age of thirty to thirtythree. This study examines why people who does not belong to this heteronormativity publish information in other Internet places but not at Wikipedia.Wikipedia is an open source site, where anyone can publish and are even encouraged to do so and is often described as an utopian dream of the digital democracy, so why don´t people express themselves on Wikipedia? The method is based on two discussion groups, which are compared and analyzed. The study is based upon theoretical competence within feminist theory and conceptions such as intersectionality, heteronormativity and digital divide as well as theories about digital devices and social order.

AbstractTitle: PR and Politics- the role of the PR consults in Swedish politics (PR och Politik ?PR konsulternas roll i svensk politik)Number of pages: 34Author: Andia GhafouriTutor: Peder Hård af SegerstadCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: HT 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science,Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: To study the PR functions role in Swedish politics and what role it plays for the democracy.Material/Method: Interviews with PR peopleMain results: That the PR people have the right kind of network and the knowledge about how to influence political decisions and the public opinion. Their methods could be criticized from a democratic point of view since they are professionals and their ability to bring up issues in to the public agenda is stronger than ordinary peoples? ability, which could be discussed if it is fair in a democratic society, that people who get paid have more power to change than those who don?t.Keywords: Public Relations, Communication, Politics, Democracy, Information, Networks.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to through a theoretical analyze, investigate the conditions and the challenges for a consolidated democracy in Egypt from 1952 until after the revolution of 2011. The central question in this thesis is what opportunities and challenges are there for the democratic consolidation in Egypt, with respect to civic, political and economic conditions. How have the conditions developed between 1952 and 2011? How has the transition government/military government handled the central problems in the transitions phase after 2011? The theory used in this analysis is Linz and Stepans famous five arenas (the political society, the economic society, the civil society, the bureaucracy and the state of rule, whit focus on the three first). Through a qualitative case study we have analyzed the conditions in Egypt from 1952 to after the revolution 2011.The empirical material shows that the arenas in Egypt are both historically and current very weak, and they are not supporting democratic consolidation as they are challenged by several enormous problems.

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.

Freedom of speech has been a well discussed subject. Great philosophers and theoretics like Plato, Voltaire, Locke and Mill have again and again showed the importance of freedom of speech. Since the world have become bystanders to a series of events that can only classify as crimes aganst freedom of speech, it has become more important to study the phenomenon and analyse it. By finding cases where the freedom of speech has been compromised and analyse them in frames of three different theories, the argument of truth, the argument of democracy and the argument of tolerance, this paper makes the boundaries of freedom of speech a little clearer, and also makes a discussion about how reasonable the boundaries are possible. Everything according to the three theories.

The purpose of this study is to examine to what extent the senior level Swedish school can be viewed as supporting, or counteracting, a colonial discourse that legitimizes global and national injustices. The study is executed through a discourse analysis of five textbooks in social science for senior level Swedish schools.Using elements from Foucault and Edward Said a theoretical framework is constructed, in which a colonial discourse is perceived as structured around four clusters of ideas, namely (i) the use of dichotomies, (ii) the concept of progress and civilization, (iii) the construction of -we- as synonymous with (ii), and (iv) the construction of -the others- as the opposite of (ii) and, therefore, the opposite of -us-.The results show that a colonial discourse is still highly present in the textbooks, in that the texts are structured around dichotomies such as tradition/modernity and democracy/dictatorship. Sweden and the Western world are perceived as closely associated with democracy, freedom, and modernity, whereas -the others- of the world are being associated with e.g. poverty, conflict, tradition, and ignorance. -The others- within Sweden, i.e.