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.

This essay follows a Media Teacher in her work as a coordinator and an artistic leader for a European project called Legalopoli concerning laws and ethics in a senior level school for 13-16 year-olds in Mora, Sweden. The students write film stories about how their characters have to make choices in ethical dilemma situations. Then the learners create interactive computer games together through practical film work. At the same time we can see how the educator also gets into difficult ethical situations, when she is working with the students. This forces her to self-reflection.

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.

People are given better opportunities to participate in polity today. Democratic equality entails that all individuals are equal and therefore they should be included in the process of making the decisions. How can participation be defined and does it mean that having the possibility to participate means that people can influence the process of making the decisions in polity process?This paper focuses on participation and influence in polity and examine the relationship between having the possibility to participate and having the possibility to actually influence polity process on more local level. Therefore I have been examining the citizens? participation and influence in Helsingborg which is my case study.

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.

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 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. .

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.

In May 2007 a committee called ??Ansvarskommittén??, assembled by the Swedish government, came with a proposal of changing the Swedish regional structure. The committee which consisted of representatives from all the sitting parties in the parliament proposed that the present regional structure consisting of 20 county council districts and 21 counties would be reduced to between 6-9  regions called ??regionkommuner??.The purpose of this study is to analyze how the committee?s proposal balances democratic and economic values by using a qualitative method. The committee?s proposal is analyzed by a comparison in five political areas with two differentiated regional theories called old and new regionalism.

The purpose with this essay is to find out ifneo-fascist connection will change the next generationscitizens (in this specific case ninth graders) opinions about a specific political party. In modern day Sweden,only one political party stands for political ideas that can be seen as neo-fascist (Sverigedemokraterna). Whatwould happen if the next generation citizens saw this connection and how would they respond? That?s whatthis essay is all about, are the students ?positive?, ?negative? or ?on changed? to a neo-fascist politicalparty? The studies research type is mainly of a qualitative nature butquantitative elements occur. The data iscoming from two classes of ninth graders that answered eight questions each.

The communication with government and municipality through Internet has in-creased during the last couple of years. Therefore we have chosen to focus our bachelor thesis in this particularly area and the needs for usable web services for the citizens. In this bachelor thesis we are studying a increasing group users, namely elderly citizens. During the study we have analysed E-governments ser-vices usability through usability tests. The combination of conversations and meetings with individuals, observations of interactions and literature studies give us the opportunity to explore the users needs.

The organisation of the municipalities is based on the principle of representation. It has previously been impossible to give the citizens more influence through direct democracy, but the information technology gives new possibilities and the choice of democracy model might no longer be obvious. Representation can be interpreted in many ways and there is a need for a more distinct definition of the rule that the municipalities shall be governed according to the principle of representation. It should also be further investigated how the new technology can be used to increase the use of direct democracy. The municipalities ought to work to supplement the representation with direct democracy in the form of active discourse with the citizens.

In light of the European Union`s 2012 theme year: Active aging and solidarity between generations I wished to gain an understanding of weather elderly immigrant are provided with equal possibilities and access to local community information as the majority population and their participation in activities arranged for senior citizens in the municipality where they live. I have done this by meeting with those who work in this capacity. I also chose to meet with representatives for immigrant organizations in the local community to enquire of their work with senior citizens within their own ethnic group. This is a qualitative study on a phenomenological ground based on nine interviews and four observations. I have had two theories to help me analyze my empirical material.

AbstractC-level in Political Science by Christoffer Odén, vt-08?Traditionalism versus Modernism. The Ideology Debate in Left-Socialist Party Today?Instructor: Mats LindbergThe purpose with this essay is to describe the ideology debate in Left-Socialist Party between traditionalists and modernists. This essay have the following questions: 1 ) What are the differences between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? 2 ) What is similar between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? My method is to analyse the Left-Socialist Party programme from 2004 and analyse a programme from the modernist organisation Vagval Vanster.