The activity of interest groups in the political process of the European Union has given rise to a broad debate concerning the effect on European democracy these groups have. As relatively powerful political actors, the question of these groups? views on the EU and how the union should be is an important one. The status of these groups owns democratic representation also affects the democratic status of the EU. Being based on a number of theories, this study adopts an ideology analysis for the purpose of testing these theories on two cases ? the Swedish environmental organizations World Wide Fund for Nature and The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

Media affects our views of the world and plays a large part in creation and dissemination of social representations. Through media?s increasing importance, people and organizations need to work harder to stand out among the large amounts of brands that exists today.In 2013, Umea? Energi launched a commercial concept about Dolf and Ja?rven, two characters living in Lill-Grobban, a fictional village outside of Umea?. The aim of this qualitative study is to examine how Umea? Energi uses stereotypes in the commercial concept Dolf and Ja?rven and how this affects the respondents, and in the long run the stereotypification of norrlandians.

The purpose of this essay is on the one hand to study Sub-Saharan Africa from a comparative perspective to analyze different explanations to democratization and on the other hand to compare the democratization of the most interesting cases found. To fulfil the purpose, the essay is divided into a quantitative and a qualitative part. The quantitative part starts from four different theories of democratization and thus has a deductive theory testing approach. We intend to use four theories: the modernization theory, the theory of stable institutions as a prerequisite for democratization, political culture and ethnic diversity as an obstacle for democratization, to test how they correspond with the democratic situation in Africa, and at the same time find deviant cases. The second part of the study takes its start from an inductive perspective and examines institutions and citizens of the deviant cases.

The terror attack in New York year 2001 was a turning point in international politics. New policies were reformed in both USA and EU to secure their citizens from terrorism. The power of the institutions has developed and the question is; how does the new security policy affect people?s freedom? Is it the agencies new policies that are restricting the freedom or the actions of a terrorist? The purpose of this study is to examine if the security policies in USA and EU are protecting their citizen?s freedom. Many individuals are not aware of how much the security policies are affecting their lives.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect the Nazi threat had on the swedish labour movement between 1932 and 1939 and to enrich what kind of pre-understanding they had about the fall of the Weimar Republic and the upcoming and effects of the Third Reich.Brought by the development in Germany, a debate and struggle took place in the Social Democratic journal Tiden over the meaning of concepts and there ability, in the hands of demagogs, to overthrow democratic structures. The concept of socialism and its concepts attribute play a major part in this investigation. By establishing fields of tension such as - nation vs internationalism, socialism in theory and in practice, political democracy vs evolved democracy and the diverse principles of neutrality, the first principle meaning the defending of national boarders, the other meaning not only defending your own country but taking an active part in defending democracy in the world - I was able to observe the movement and change of concepts within this fields. The result showing that the concept of socialism and near related attributes, in the hands of national socialists had undertaken a wast change of meaning, which applied in the Swedish debate threatened to undermine the power and force of the Social Democrats applied in the political discourse in Sweden. To defend itself and strengthening the Social Democratic hegemony as well as maintaining the goal of evolved democratic expansion, they were forced to win the confidence and votes of the middle class.

The purpose with this examine was to study the teachers perception of leadership in the classroom and also how they experience the conditions of this. The method used was qualitative, and builds on a total of six interviews. Stensmos five leadership tasks in the classroom that constitute leadership context have provided the theoretical basis of this study. The leadership tasks have therefore been used as theoretical tools in this study to analyze the teachers? reasoning about their own leadership style.

ABSTRACTEssay in Political Science, Advanced Continuation Course, 61-80 credits, by Jonas Nilsson?The democratic islamist? - a study of three islamist movements and their potential role in ademocratization process?Supervisor: Jonas LindeThe purpose of this work has been to explain to what extent islamist movements can be said to bebearers of democratic values and if they have a role to play in future democratization processes. Thepurpose of this work is also to examine the democratic views of the different islamist movements andto compare them with each other in an effort to find a specific islamist definition of democracy.The essay is a qualitative analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Front Islamique du Salut inAlgeria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The analytical framework is based on the political institutionsincluded in Robert A. Dahl polyarchial democracy.

In 2005 the Swedish social democratic government settled a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia. Ten years later, a new Social democratic government ends the treaty. This thesis will study the Social democratic party?s motives behind their actions regarding the treaty. Kjell Goldmanns theory regarding the three fields of interest concerning state?s foreign policy, security policy, economy and international values, will serve as the theory and operationalization of this thesis.

This essay is about how basic democratic values are formed in preschool. I have focused on children´s abilities to take on responsibility and also, on the importance of relationships in the development of democratic values in preschool.This essay starts in self-perceived dilemmas, based on my own feeling that the children should have more rights and that the preschool often has too many unreflected rules and routines. The dilemma has been reflected on and has been discussed in relation to other theories. I have also reflected on my own behavior as a teacher and to what extent this behavior has influence on the outcome.The relationship between the governing documents and the work in preschool has been reviewed with the conclusion that they are not synchronized with each other.The investigation shows several examples of the meaning of a good working relationship between teacher and child and that children´s own sense of responsibility should be taken seriously and be recognized as a resource.In the discussion with the theories a connection between democracy, relationships and children´s responsibility was detected. The meaning of a good working communication and the teacher?s significance for the development is central and is made visible and problematized.The concluding words show how the approach to democratic and fundamental values must come to a change in preschools, a change that the teacher partly is responsible for.

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.

The concept of the dynamic region has become a more prospering thought in the era of globalisation. This concerns in particular, cross border regions ? well-integrated territorial regions crossing more than one nation. In this paper I examine the development from a critical perspective and I map the democratic pitfalls of new territorial political constructions across national borders. The empirical analysis is a case report taken from the Öresund region, a cross border region between Sweden and Denmark.

Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1995 and the power of the organisation to make decisions has increased over the years in a rate which hasn?t been followed by an equally increase in democratization. This is partly due to the lack of participation in the decision making process and at the national level the citizens don?t possess enough channels to compensate the loss of influence. To solve this democratic dilemma, more and more countries are turning to the referendum.

The state of Israel is known as the only democracy in the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to examine if there is aspects in the Israelis society that can be questioned in terms of liberal democracy.Areas of concerns in the study are the Israeli official policy's concerning inclusion and exclusion of their citizens in areas of property owning, personal status and the duty of military service.The results show that the Israeli society distinguishes their citizens in these areas by their ethnic origin, in favour for the Jewish population. The law prohibits changes in the states Jewish character. One clear example how this is presented is that a Jew is prohibited to marry a non-Jew. The results show also that this official policy by the Israeli state violates important principles of liberal democracy.

The purpose of this essay is to study causes for the lack of political trust in Europe and especially in Sweden. The essay starts with a presentation of two theories about the reasons for low political trust. Robert D. Putnam among others presents a theory that gives social capital an important role when viewing the low political trust. As Putnam sees it a person that participates in any kind of organization, political or not, develop trust for other human beings that in the long run affects political trust.

Local cultural environment planning in Sweden often comes to rely on municipal heritage plans. These plans are meant to facilitate management of local cultural values, work as a tool for local planning and increase awareness of cultural environments for the public. In the last decades public participation in planning has become more and more of the ideal strategy, challenging the idea of cultural environment planning as an expert-led field. The idea of the field as one that implicates public participation as a strategy has been fortified in Sweden through national goals, government bills and conventions. Nevertheless the implementation of public participation in municipal heritage plans remains quite uncharted. The aim of this study is to explore public participation in regards to how municipal heritage plans are developed and the perception of public participation in cultural environment planning amongst professionals, comparing bigger and smaller municipalities.