This is a case study on the functioning of political parties and the aim was to explain ?how? and ?why? the Swedish social democratic party changed their policies in the Middle East politics. I wanted to explain this process of change by using Angelo Panebianco?s framework for the analysis of political parties. Angelo Panebianco´s hypothesis is that all parties must be viewed as organizations to understand their functions.

Local politicians are key actors in the democratic system and their ideas concerning democracy plays a central role in local democratic politics. The study's point of departure is the notion that local politicians are dependent of coherence between practice and theory concerning democracy and in the study of their ideas we acquire knowledge about the democratic practice.This study examines the local politicians? view of Swedish democracy and explores the logic of the discourse that makes statements concerning democracy possible. Twenty local politicians have been interviewed and from the material a discourse have been established through the use of formulation of problems and cause, nodal points and chains of analogy which is compared with democratic ideals.The study comes to the conclusion that a hegemonic discourse exists, in which central nodal points are representative and listening. The idea of the representative system is hegemonic and is based in the liberal democratic ideal although the view of the citizens rather can be traced to the radical, communitarian and deliberative ideal.

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.

The UN was established after the Second World War. The organization?s primary goal was to maintain peace among all nations. When the UN intervenes in other states affairs, it is violat-ing the principles it is set to defend, principles of non-intervention and respect for sover-eignty. The outcome from such interventions is very important, a result that can legitimize the action.

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 focuses on the implementation of the strategy gender mainstreaming in the European Union and the member states. It starts to identify problems connected to the implementation process and recognizes significant prerequisites for an efficient implementation of the strategy. The main problems and prerequisites are: political will, governance and structure and knowledge about gender equality. The empirical material consists of reports from the EU that touches upon gender mainstreaming and gender equality. The problems and prerequisites will be analysed in relation to the governance perspectives top-down and bottom-up and expert bureaucratic and participative democratic and gender and feminism.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to study how political agents construct and give meaning to the concepts of democracy, representative democracy and referendums. The starting point of the thesis is the pressing issue whether or not Sweden should hold a referendum on the new EU constitution. To analyze this question my choice of method is critical discourse analysis and the topical theories revolve around democracy and responsibility.My study shows that there are three different discourses in this debate: ?the Democratic process?, ?the representative democracy? and ?the concept of democracy?. However, the meaning of the concepts in these discourses varies depending on which side the political agents are on.

This essay is a comparative research between pupils' experience of how the headmaster, teachers and other school staff interpret and apply the democratic education. The results are based on a survey carried out in senior high school, as well as interviews with the school staff. The democratic education charge has a long history of Swedish school system and is the basis for the maintenance of a democratic society. Both policy paper of state investigations and researchers in the field, regard to school as the primary and unique instance in order to promote and develop democratic skills in children and young people. However, it is shown that those who come out from school lack of knowledge and awareness of democracy and the will to speak their mind.

What every theory of democracy has in common is a reference to ?a people? who are, in one way or another, collectively self-governing. Given that, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the so called boundary problem of democratic theory, or, in other words, the question of who should be included in the democratic community. Lately, the historically given boundaries have been questioned in favour of a cosmopolitan democracy. Still, little has been said about the boundary problem in general, especially from a theoretical point of view.

The transition from having been under another country?s control to becoming a democratic country can, many times, pose difficulties, which has proven itself to be quite common. Estonia and Moldova?s processes towards a democratic regime are two examples of countries with varied success in the final transition phase.When the USSR (Soviet union) fell and collapsed in 1991 Estonia was well on their way from having a communistic ruling to a democratic one due to the fact that their democratic work had already begun a few years prior to 1991. After the collapse Estonia continued with their democratic work and in 2004 the country became a EU member state.

Lately information- and communication technology (ICT) has been seen as an important tool to vitalize democracy. What kind of democracy it generates is however debateable. The objective with this thesis is therefore to examine what democratic ideal that dominates the use of ICT in Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen and what kind of citizenship it brings. The two case studies were chosen because the Swedish regional level is facing a reorganization with democratic ambitions which in relation to ICT is fairly unexplored. To fulfil the objective there are two perspectives; e-democracy and e-administration, which are defined and integrated with democratic theory including Premfors´ "Fast, Strong and Thin" democratic ideals and Marshall´s three citizenship rights.

This study examines the possibilities of interpreting the moral values and ethics presented in the current curriculums in a way that makes them inclusive and constructive. The study also reveals how the liberal democratic ideal, presented in the curriculums as a hyper-ideology, is not at all easy to define or live up to in the pluralistic school of today.By close-reading and criticizing the curriculum for the Swedish senior high school (Gy11)and by looking at it from two different points of views, as rules or norms and as a process, Ishow how the curriculum can be interpreted as a basis or starting point for a communicationabout values. I also discuss wether the aim of this communication should be consensus or anongoing process..

This thesis is using the theory of participatory democracy to show how one can work to increase the participation in the society, between elections as well as during elections. For a couple of years now many traditional democratic countries have been struggling with low voting rates. Hence this, I find it interesting to study what has been done to cope with this problem. The government in Sweden had a project working on how to make more people involved in the Democratic process, especially people that to a lesser extent participate in this process. In this thesis two projects will be studied, Möllevångsgruppen and Unga väljer Miljö i Malmö.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood a political force that can be able to push Egyptian society in to the process of democratization? We think that the answer to that question is yes, even though the movement clearly state that their main aim to create a democratic state, but based upon the Islamic shari?ah-laws. In this paper, we examine if the Brotherhoods? political platforms and ideas are compatible with the classic ideas of how a democratic state should be. We discuss Robert A.

This thesis sets out to investigate three questions, first, how the Belarusian democratization process has progressed since the country?s independence in 1991 to the year of 2006. Second, how the relationship between Russia and Belarus has progressed during this time and third, if and how Russia has affected the democratization process. The study has been conducted through qualitative method, mainly using books and articles as sources of information. It has been found that the democratization process in Belarus has evolved in a negative direction ever since the presidential election of 1994.