At the moment, democracy enhancing projects can be seen everywhere on the municipal level. The purpose of this thesis is to explain how the city of Lund takes on this challenge, why they have chosen to carry out citizen councils and if these are a good way to intensify democracy and open communication channels between citizens, the administration and the elected officials.The theoretical framework consists of seven arguments for gaining citizen influence on policy, and as a counterweight three critical arguments that opponents of participatory democracy often use are added.After a survey over both the Swedish national trends in municipal renewal and the last years work in Lund, the analysis goes on showing that most of the arguments point to the disadvantage of the citizen councils. Even though legitimacy possibly is enhanced by the project, there are probably better ways to open up for more communication and intensify democracy in the local community..

Democracy is a term that has been researched, and still is researched, a lot. In my education to become a teacher it has been the subject that interests me the most and I would like to be able to contribute to this research. The starting point of this essay is that in my experience there is a difference in how the national curriculum describes democracy and how the students I have met describes it. Therefore I wanted to investigate whether this also applies to a wider context than the students that I meet in my everyday life. The purpose of this essay is; to examine whether students in the ninth grade has the same view on democracy as the national means of control. The result I have attained through my work is that they somewhat share the same vision.

This study aims at examine what kind of interest the European Union (EU) have in promoting a democracy process in Eastern Europe. The study is a descriptive case study where the case Ukraine is used to draw general conclusions. The questions asked to pursue the aim are: why does the EU want to promote a democracy process in Ukraine, what kind of methods does the EU use  and why is Russia trying to prevent the EU-Ukraine development and instead supporting a Russia-Ukraine development. In this study an analytical model is created and used to analyze EU:s way in promoting democracy in Ukraine. The analyze model consists of six steps used to describe the general promotion of a democracy process and it?s applied in the empirical analysis.

The intention with the research was to investigate the role of civil society in the Kenyan democratization process. The research intends thus to analyze (1) the role of civil society in Kenya's transition to democracy (1990- 2002), and (2) the role of civil society in the further democratization process (2002- 2013).The results of the research demonstrates that the role of civil society played a crucial role in Kenya?s transition to democracy given that civil society provided with a multiparty- system in 1991. In addition, civil society endowed with education for citizens in order to attain constitutional reforms. As a result, Kenya accomplished a transition to democracy in 2002.

The essay is an evaluative study of student democracy in the Swedish high school, its departure point being the 1994 national curriculum for the voluntary school forms (Lpf 94). We adopted an interview method, the survey units consisting in a number of high school teachers. The analysis has two principal theoretical departure points, involving democracy theory and implementation analysis, respectively. The former is utilized to help identifying what sort of democracy permeates the governing document and high school daily life, the latter to explain actual outcomes.The study concludes that the 94 curriculum is characterized by a strong democracy with emphasis on participatory democratic processes, whereas in practice there is a thin democracy in both classroom and formal student government contexts. Representative processes are given plenty of room although few attempts at participatory democratic components can be identified.A deeper analysis of the result reveals implementation problems traceable to elements of symbolism in the goals.

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.

The consociational democracy model in Macedonia, which came out from a warcrisis and a peace agreement from 2001, in addition, putting an end to the violent conflict, actually admits the division of the society along the ethnic lines. Paradoxically, there is an attempt to bridge the ethnic gap with this model. As a result, the consociational democracy model holds solutions that can be abused if somebody misuses its power and desires to disintegrate the country. The future development depends therefore on the moderate attitude of the citizens, and first and foremost, on the political elites and their commitment to the values of democracy and human rights instead of their nationalistic goals. Furthermore, thepresent democratic consolidation in Macedonia is established on the execution of the peace agreement and the improved effectiveness of the institutions.

AbstractStudent democracy as an objective and as a meansEssay in Political Science, D-levelAuthor: Erik LisshammarTutor: Susan MartonDespite attitudes towards student democracy being generally positive, students have almost no influence over their position. This implementation study looks into whether or not students? weak position of power results from something other than a democratising of schools taking priority when student influence is encouraged.With an aim of explaining what is hoped to be achieved and if these intentions are to be spread, the purpose is to investigate to what extent standards concerning student democracy are transferred between institutions. In order to find out, the question is posed of whether their aims for student democracy conform. This overriding question is coupled together with the following four defining research questions:1.

Croatia became an independent country 1991 and has since then strived to reach a democracy level, which can lead to membership of the European Union. The purpose of this essay is on the basis of consolidate democratic perspective to illustrate Croatia?s democratic development.In order to fulfil the aim, I have applied a qualitative text analysis technique. Through analysis of books and documents, data was collected to accommodate a valid result. I have used consolidated democracy, with its five areas (political, civil, economic, legal and bureaucratic), as my theoretical framework to the data, to provide answers and develop an analysis.The conclusions show that the consolidate democracy in Croatia has developed a lot since the independence, and Croatia is on its good way to turn into a democratic state like other West-European countries.

With a new digital world that runs parallel with our physical one, we are also facing a new type of architecture and new materials that this new architecture is built on. In this thesis I examine pixels and vectors, two of the digital materials used to create pictures. By approaching them as digital materials, I have mapped their different qualities, when and where one or the other is more or less applicable and the reason behind it. My main research question asked was the following: Are the (digital) materials challenged outside their primary fields of application, and in that case, in which way? With this question in mind, I carried out a semiotic picture analysis on four pictures, later on dividing them into four different categories, based on their different qualities and their ability to deliver information.

Many reports in recent years are suggesting that young people should be involved in the development of the digital society. The Swedish government's Digidel campaign launched in 2011 involved adolescents to train elderly people. This thesis builds on the campaign with its major aim being to investigate how young people think about digital society and their own knowledge and skills to promote digital inclusion.The research questions were set to examine how adolescents look upon the competencies needed in today's digital society, what specific skills and capital the adolescents suggest that they have which can promote digital inclusion and how projects in this direction are perceived by the participants. The theoretical framework is based on theories about social capital. It encompasses Bourdieu's theories about symbolic capital and people's habitus, Putnam's theories about social capital and the power of the organization and Gidden's vision about how people are organizing themselves in the modern world.

After the appointment of a new European Commission in 2004, ?communication? was made a top priority on the agenda. The Commission presented a new communication policy, which would establish a dialogue with the citizens, thereby bringing more democracy to the union and bridging the gap to the citizens. Three documents containing the policy were published, namely an internal action plan for the Commission, Plan D which establishes the framework for national debates and a whitepaper on EU communication policy. These documents were met by mistrust and criticism from many different actors such as journalists and experts.The aim of this master thesis is to examine this new communication policy from a deliberative democratic perspective.

AbstractParticiapation from the citizens in a democratic society is one of the ground pilars for the function of the democratic society. The goal for the Swedish contemporary democracy is to complement the representative democracy with different kinds of participatory activities for the citizens. But is it working? The purpose of this essay is to exame the problems that might occur when the citizens participate in a wider extent than just voting. The focus is problems connected to the democratic value political equality.

The purpose of the study is to explore how social media can be used as a forum to discuss politics and also how young people use critical reflection to evaluate the information available on social media. To achieve the purpose, a qualitative research is used. The empirical data is collected through semi-structured interviews with six high school students who voted in the Swedish parliamentary elections in/of 2014. The empirical data were then analyzed based on previous research on social media, and the school's mission to foster individuals who think critically. The analysis is also based on the theory of deliberative democracy model.

The democratic conditions in national states have change radically at the same time as the society has changed. Because of social and economic globalization processes, the states and government has lost power for the benefit of transnational and global institutions. That affects the democracy since the nation state earlier defined the domain of citizenship. At the same time, citizens? confidence towards political parties and politicians has gone down.