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.  .

?Liberal Democracy? is a common term in political theory, and it is used as if it had a commonly accepted referent, with both normative and descriptive content. This is certainly the case in democratic theory, where it on the one hand seems to refer to a normative democratic model; on the other hand it is used descriptively, to refer to real-life democracies. The deliberative democratic sub-field is not an exception; on the contrary, the term is frequently used albeit rarely defined; yet the concept it refers to is supposedly developed enough to allow detailed propositions about its citizens?s political behaviour.This essay is an attempt to analyze how Liberal Democracy is used by three deliberative democrats (Jürgen Habermas, John Dryzek and Stephen Elstub), in order to understand the democratic model (or models), whether normative or descriptive, they refer to.

This thesis examines the conditions for participation in the decision making process of a possible mine establishment in Storuman municipality in the north of Sweden. This is done through a case study where the main actors are the mining company Nickel Mountain AB, the municipality Storuman and the Sami village Vapsten. As a theoretical framework Cecilia Eriksson?s division of democratic theories is used as a starting point. Methods as described in deliberative democratic theory, such as discussion by effected community members, are seen as a method within the participatory democratic tradition, not a theory of its own.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent municipalities in Sweden use democratic innovations to include citizens in the decision making process. Along there are three research questions:? What different forms of democracy innovations are Swedish municipalities applying in order to increase the civic participation between elections and what forms are dominant?? What potential influence in decision-making are citizens getting through these democratic innovations based on the results?? Based on the results ? in what ways is the democracy innovations used in municipalities challenging representative democracy? The method used to fulfill the purpose and answer the research questions is a web survey including 287 of 290 (in total) municipal websites. The theoretic framework includes a model which is called ?Smith?s ladder of participation? and is influenced by the research of Graham Smith and Sherry Arnstein.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ongoing changes in German family policy. It explores the issue of whether the German welfare state, in this policy field, can still be regarded as a conservative welfare model or rather approaches a more liberal or social democratic model. A qualitative method is used to analyze the material, especially from the German government, including press releases, other public documents and also articles from the political weekly magazines Der Spiegel and Die Zeit. The changes analyzed are the new parental benefit, the expansion of child care, the concept of whole-day schools and the system of joint taxation. The point of departure is Gösta Esping-Andersen?s categorization of three types of welfare states: the social democratic, the conservative and the liberal.

This essay presents an alternative approach to the predominant democratic analysis of the European Monetary Union. As the Treaties stipulate the political conduct within Monetary Union and put certain restrictions on the European politicians they are to some extent constitutional in their character. Essential for constitutional theory is the concept of precommitment; according to which a decision is made in t1 purposing to obstruct certain actions in t2. In light of this the aim of this essay is to investigate whether or not delegating monetary responsibility to the ECB can be seen as an example of constitutional precommitment and if so, if this constitutional perspective can add something to the predominant democratic analysis of the EMU. According to the author the EMU is by and large a form of precommitment as the leading politicians in Europe figuratively have tied their hands from intervening in the common monetary policy.

Uppsatsens syfte var att utforska och definiera belting, den kontroversiella sångtekniken som kommit att bli allt mer vanlig och använd bland sångare, som ett resultat av ett ökat intresse och flöde av populärmusik i vårt samhälle. Syftet var också att studera hur denna teknik används av sångpedagoger i deras arbete. Denna kvalitativa undersökning är baserad på litteraturstudier inom röstfysiologi och röstens funktion, och specifika teorier angående belting. Den grundar sig även på intervjuer av sångpedagoger som använder belting i sitt vardagliga arbete, både som pedagoger och som sångare. Resultaten visar att belting kan ses som en röstfunktion eller som en utvidgning av det låga registret, eller som en blandning av båda.

?Liberal Democracy? is a common term in political theory, and it is used as if it had a commonly accepted referent, with both normative and descriptive content. This is certainly the case in democratic theory, where it on the one hand seems to refer to a normative democratic model; on the other hand it is used descriptively, to refer to real-life democracies. The deliberative democratic sub-field is not an exception; on the contrary, the term is frequently used albeit rarely defined; yet the concept it refers to is supposedly developed enough to allow detailed propositions about its citizens?s political behaviour.This essay is an attempt to analyze how Liberal Democracy is used by three deliberative democrats (Jürgen Habermas, John Dryzek and Stephen Elstub), in order to understand the democratic model (or models), whether normative or descriptive, they refer to.

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.

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.

This essay will try to explain and compare the different development steps which Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have taken after the war. How could countries with such similar backgrounds develop in such different ways? By analyzing and comparing the two countries the purpose was to examine how these countries which had so much in common could develop in so different ways. My two questions are: What similarities and differences are there between the development which Bosnia and Croatia have taken after the war? Why have Croatia succeeded and not Bosnia?My analysis showed that the main reason to the difference between these countries was that Bosnia is divided; all ethnic groups in Bosnia only consider what's best for their own ethnic group and not what's best for the country. Croatia however has expelled the Serbs which made it easier for them to have a succesfull democratic development. .

This study is about youths, democracy and school. It seeks to describe and problemize the school's role in the democratic society. Firstly, using Social Representations Theory, 44 upper secondary shool pupils? representations, or conceptions, of democracy are described and discussed. These representations are then analyzed in relation to the school's role in the democratic society, as it is described by different researchers.The results show that many of the youths have a rather simplistic and abstract view of democracy, describing it only in terms of general principles and the main features of the representative democracy, such as voting in national elections.

The aim of the present study was to compare two differenttypes of assessment of dysarthria to be able to conclude which methodmight be more suitable for use in research and in clinical practice.Five speech pathologists with extensive experience assessed 20different recordings of individuals with dysarthric speech using twodifferent forms, one more detailed and one designed for a more overallassessment. In the detailed form 30 aspects of voice and speech wereanalyzed. In the short form 5 overall aspects of voice and speech wereanalyzed. Six of the recordings were duplicated to serve forassessment intra-judge reliability for each form. The results show thatthere was a high correlation between the two forms and that theymeasures the same types of speech deviations although on differentlevels of details.

The study aims to investigate student participation as a tool for democratic development in secondary school from a student perspective. Furthermore, students' perceptions of the school's work with student participation in formal and informal contexts are also investigated, with basis in the teaching structure. The results are based on interviews conducted with students who all attend the same class in their last year of high school. Subsequently, an analysis is made based mainly on three different theories: democracy, curricula and sociocultural theory. The result shows that students feel that they are able to practice student participation but the amount of influence they get differs between individuals depending on devotion and commitment.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Sweden and how the design may contribute to realize central democratic goods. The study records the different PB experiences in Sweden and focuses on one particular case, which is the only case that successfully qualifies as a genuine PB-process according to international standards and definitions. To examine this, the following questions are asked: which municipalities in Sweden have implemented Participatory Budgeting? How can the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting be described and to what extent does it enable the realization of central democratic goods? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the democratic goods inclusion, popular control, considered judgment and transparency? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the institutional goods of efficiency and transferability?The study is based on an institutional theory of democracy. The method used is a mixed method ideal type analysis that combines document analysis, surveys and interviews.