This essay examines a presupposed correlation between the way one look upon values and the way one look upon the will of the people in a theoretical democratic context. The more specific purpose is to test the following hypothesis: There is a reversed connection between the way one look upon values and the way one look upon the will of the people in a theoretical democratic context, that is; a strong claim of values give reason to a limited conception of the will of the people and a weak claim of values gives reason for a more unlimited conception of the will of the people.In order to test the hypothesis I examine three different conceptions of democracy, these are: pluralist democracy, deliberative democracy and constitutional democracy. I analyze the way they look upon values, there view of the will of the people and finally if there is a connection between the way they look upon values and the will of the people. Values should be understood in a metaethical context. In other words it is not values in the ?common? meaning, instead its how val-ues in them selves should be understood, and even more relevant, what we mean when we ex-press values.My conclusions are, first and foremost, that there is a correlation between the will of the people and values, according to the formulation of the hypothesis.

AbstractIn the beginning of 2007 the Swedish municipality Örebro decided to have a democraticexperiment, which ought to go under the name, ?Dialouge for the citizens?. Therepresentative elected politicians in Örebro tried to find ways to involve the people in theprocess of ruling. Why they choose to try this experiment on this very delicate matter, theclosure of several schools in the municipal, is one of the questions this essay is trying toanswer.The purpose of this essay is to find out whether the process was an attempt for the politiciansof the representative democracy to implement deliberative democracy in the structure of thelocal governance.The result of this study is that the politicians didn?t manage to reach to the citizens the waythey formerly had planned..

The purpose of this paper is to study the subject Islam and Democracy and see whatcommonalities exist between the two ideas and traditions of thoughts. The subject is topicaland often highlighted by the media in the West. The Islamic voices that we hear today iscertainly not democratic, given the violence and hatred carried out by Islamic extremistsagainst the West. The investigation of this paper have shown a different direction when thereare other voices such as those investigated reformist thinkers who argue that Islam has manydemocratic elements, and even that Islam is more suitable than democracy. According to thereformists ismodel of an Islamic state is democratic and legitimate.

The purpose of this essay was to analyze the collapse of democracy in the Weimar Republic. This was done by analyzing some of the most turbulent crises in its history like the communists attempt to take power in 1919, the kapp-putsch of 1920, hyperinflation 1923 and the economic depression 1929-1933. The method that I used in this essay is called methodological individualism. It was an analytical framework which helped to understand the citizens view on democracy and legitimacy. The theoretical framework was based on Juan J.Linz and Seymour Martin Lipsets ideas on legitimacy and efficacy.

The present state of politics in contemporary Venezuela portrays a country of polarization, a chase for power and accusations of authoritarian and even undemocratic rule. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the democracy in Venezuela, in order to clarify the sometimes vauge perception of the political situation. By applying the theories of polyarchical democracy put forth by Robert Dahl, one of the most highly regarded theorists on the subject, accordingly the discussion will therefore follow a theoretical framework. Dahl requires seven nstitutions to be guaranteed in a democracy, amongst them the possibility to vote, run for public office and the practise of freedom of speech. Measuring Dahl's levels of institutions in Venezuela, it is made clear that the level of democracy vary in different areas.

This Master Thesis aims to study and discuss the occurence of three concepts in some influential cultural policy documents which includes the UNESCO public library manifesto, the Swedish libraries act, the Swedish cultural policy objectives, and a study from the mid nineties which deals with the cultural policy. The questions asked are: -Do the documents mention democracy? In what way? -Do the documents mention the public sphere? In what way? -Do the documents mention information? In what way? -How can we understand the content of the documents through relevant theories about democracy, the public sphere and information? Theories about the information society are used, as well as theories from Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Schiller and Robert Dahl. The way of method is document studies and abduktion, with influences from hermeneutic theory. The analysis deals with the documents through these concepts: democracy, the public sphere and information and puts forward the content, or lack of content, about democracy in the analysed material.

In modern, Swedish political science there are different ways of looking at ?democracy?. A very common distinction is that between three groups of democratic theories: electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberative democracy.The nowadays frequently used concept of electoral democracy is often used as synonymous with the older concept of repre­­­­sen­tative or indirect democracy ? frequently regarded as a contrast to the direct democracy of ancient Athens. However, there are also important differences.

The aim and research questions of this study are concerned about how, and what kind of, problems and subjects that citizens raise during verbal interaction with politicians and officials in the field of participatory democracy. The theoretical framework of the study dominates by theories with a positive approach towards participatory democracy, but there is also a broader discussion on the phenomenon?s strengths and weaknesses.The case in focus of the study is a specific phenomenon of participatory democracy created by the municipality of Växjö. The empirical material that is analysed is consisted of written text based on the verbal interaction from these meetings between citizens and politicians/officials.The outcome of the study shows that most of the verbal interaction was held between citizens and politicians/officials in a vertical direction and that a major part of the responsibility concerning the raised subjects is estimated to be in the hands of the latter part. In the light of under what circumstances the meetings are practised, the democratic and collective minded performance of the citizens is argued to be in good condition, despite the dominating vertical interaction and estimation of trust..

The purpose of this thesis is to study the level of democracy within the European Union (EU). To do so the following issues were examined: How the EU works and the efforts it has made to improve levels of democracy; and the degree to which the EU fulfils the criteria set by Robert Dahl in his theory of polyarchy.The study is based on a qualitative text analysis. The focus of the analysis is documents released by the EU that can be connected to democracy, and human and fundamental rights. The theory of polyarchy proposed by Robert Dahl and Joseph Schumpeter?s theory of democracy are the principal theories applied.

The aim of this study is to investigate wether the participatory democracy is a threat or a complement to the representative democracy. To achieve my purpose I will focus on two different lokal councils, the civil council in Hovsjö and the youth council in Västra Skogås, which have been objects of the urban policy in 1998. The theoretical framework on which this study is based consists of the participation democratic theory, representative democratic theory and implementation theory. By problemizing these theoretical frameworks in comparison with eachother I will mapp how these two lokal councils were implemented. The research question is: In what way was the civil council and the youth council a complement or threat to the representative democracy? In which way was it difficult to implement them?The method used for this purpose is a qualitative comparative case study.

In this undergraduate thesis you will venture on a journey through the land of democratic values and urban planning. My research question is stated as: whether or not urban planning can show effects on democratic values and whether or not the municipalities in Sweden takes these possible effects into account when planning their city centres. You will in my theory part of this thesis be able to read about different views on urban planning and on democracy. Famous authors like Robert D. Putnam and Richard Florida will be examined as well as other theorists on democracy and urban planning.

The aim of this essay is to explore the lived citizenship and its ideal. First, the form and expression of citizenship practice and ideal is explored through a qualitative interwiev study of ten citizens in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. The perception and expectations of the nature of citizenship, presented by the informants, is then compared to their citizen ideal, as well as to the ideal presented and promoted by the Swedish government. The point of departure is theory of democracy. The essay calls attention to an observed lack of empirical studies in the field of deliberative theory of democracy as well as studies that more broadly bring the theory down to empirical earth.

The purpose with this paper is to examine if tertiary education and democracy have an impact on economic growth. In order to decide how democratic the examined countries are the democracy index constructed by The Economist is used. Besides the two central theories the purpose is also to explain why these variables could affect growth and to examine direct and indirect effects. Indirect effects mean that one variable affects another variable which thereafter has an impact on economic growth.34 OECD countries are compared in order to investigate whether education and democracy are strongly correlated with BNP per capita. Therefore a statistical design is used as method.The empirical results suggest that there is significant correlation between democracy and economic growth.

This thesis deals with non-wanted political parties e.g. right wing populism. How should a democracy handle these opinions? So far these parties have been neglected and not even considered as real parties. By excluding them from the debate and the political arena, media and more established parties have seen them merely as a threat than as democratic parties.

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.