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.

This study shows how city planners and politicians in Karlstad plans different parts of the city, what type of model/ city ideals they use when planning, and how it is expressed. The study was made using a qualitative method, were a discourse analysis was vital for the elected planning document and blog posts. Qualitative interviews were also made with five people with significant meaning, who hold different positions in the city planning of Karlstad. In the produced material, it appears that the city planners and politicians in Karlstad are planning for traditional city ideals as a foundation in the planning, with influence from new ideas as for example sustainable planning and economic growth. In some parts of the city a modern and rational planning remains.

In this essay we have examined how social workers experience their positions as a public authority person in a society of democracy. As a public officer you have to follow rules and obey the law, which can be difficult if they don't agree with your personal opinion and values. In social work you work with people in a vulnerable situation and it may become extremely demanding to stand between the directions of established public administration and your own opinions. We have interviewed ten social workers working in social childcare division and analysed how they experience their situation at work. Our starting point is the critical theory of professor Lennart Lundquist about how democracy works in Swedish administrations.

Undersökningens syfte är att studera läraridealgenom dödsrunor för att se vilka ideal som den avlidne framställdes i samt sehur dessa skiljer sig åt i ett genusperspektiv. Minnesrunorna finns publiceradei Sveriges allmänna folkskollärarföreningstidningsorgan Svensk läraretidningoch undersökningsperioden är åren 1928- 1930. Undersökningen visade på att bådeden manlige och den kvinnliga läraren framställdes i stort sett lika även omdet skiljer sig åt procentuellt sett. Läraridealet för denna tid var enpliktrogen och nitiskt lärare/lärarinna som på ett dugligt, intresserat ochsjälvuppoffrande sätt utförde sitt kall. Därtill tillkom ideal såsom glad,avhållen och godhjärtad.

Studien grundar sig på kvalitativa intervjuer med åtta kvinnliga informanter. Syfte med studien är att undersöka hur en grupp nyblivna mödrar eller gravida, själva beskriver egna och andras krav på att återgå till den ursprungliga kroppsformen eller det "ideal" som basuneras ut genom olika budskap via media, efter sina graviditeter.diskursen om kvinnokroppens ideal ... .

Essay in political science, D-level by Lisa Kringsberg, spring semester 2008.Tutor: Michele Micheletti.?Civil Society in Singapore? can it make democratization possible?The third wave of democratization and the end of the cold war has together increased the interest of the civil society as an impact on democratization. Singapore is a country which is higly-developt in both the socie-economic and economic field. Dispate this Singapore has not yet achieved to become a democratic state. The purpose of this essay is to study how the civil society can affect democracy in a country.

The aim of the study has been to examine how young men from Stockholm construct "Masculinity". This has been done by examining what men think is an ?ideal man?, what "makes a man a man", which expectations they meet as men and how the life of a man differs from the life of a woman. This has been examined through three semi-structured group interviews with the total of ten men. The results have been analysed with Raewyn Connells Theory of Masculinities, the idea of ?Doing Gender? by Candace West and Don.

The aim of this thesis is to see if adult education have changed in educational association of the Swedish Labour Movement ABF, and the temperance movement IOGT/NBV. We have chosen to study five periods and analyse these after four ideal of education. These are the ideals of self-education, polytechnic education, neo-classic character-moulding education, and citizenship education. We have studied the reports of the activities of the organisations during the years and the writings of anniversary. The analysis shows that the two popular movements have gone from an adult education where the ideal of citizenship education to an ideal of neo-classic character-moulding education was dominating.

In the late 20th century there has been some changes in the public sector. These changes are described as New Public Management. When ideas from the private market is transferred to the public sector, for example to regard citizens as cus-tomer. Central in this paper is the use of term customer in the Swedish public sec-tor. There are two questions in the paper; which possibilities has a disappointed customer to effect the public sector, and what may happen with democracy, the common good, when the citizen becomes a customer?To answer the questions I study two different cases, Svedala kommun and the tax department, Skatteverket.

This study was a qualitative analysis of the covers of six lifestyle magazines, three addressed to women and three addressed to men. We have studied the cover photographs, the teasers and their relations. The purpose of this study was to answer the questions: According to the magazines, what are male interests and what are typical female interests? Who is the ideal man and who is the ideal woman? Is there a certain way you need to look to be able to be on a magazine cover? And how often do the magazines encourage you to consume? The study was based on thirty covers, five from each magazine. The Swedish magazines are VeckoRevyn, Amelia, Damernas Värld, King of Sweden, Café and the American version of GQ. We?ve used semiotics and rhetorical methods to analyze the material.

This essay is about the Swedish working woman in the early 1930s. The empirical data consists mainly of Arbetarkvinnornas Tidning (AKT), a Swedish Communist magazine which was launched in December 1929. A qualitative discourse method has been used. Texts, articles, letters to the editor and reports about social conditions in Sweden and Soviet during the years 1929-1932 has been examined. Soviet women models and ideal types are compared with the image of the Swedish working woman.

This paper is a critique of the hegemonic democracy ideal in France today, the myth of the Republic. Based on critical theory, the paper also contains a normative attempt giving the chance to subaltern groups to tell their, less often heard, version of the "truth".The theoretical foundation is the ontological narrative perspective, where identities and actions are understood as being constructed by the telling of stories. The interdependent relations of different narrative dimensions are analyzed. The power over who gets to tell the story of the "truth" is understood as decided in the interaction by dimensions of metanarrativity, public narratives, ontological narratives and conceptual narrativity. The author argues, inspired by Chantal Mouffe, that consensus is an illusion based on exclusion of those that differ.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not there has been a change in the use of democratic values in textbooks in social science for classes 4-6. The focus lies on democratic values from two different theoretical perspectives, Dahl?s theory of democracy and Habermas deliberative democracy. The method used is a text analysis based on a model made by Lennart Hellspong. The material we?ve analysed consists of four textbooks in social science from different decades, with a range from 1981 until today.

Ever since its conceptual birth, the questioning of consequences due to the implementation of ideas from the reformation doctrine, called New Public Management, has been a common occurance among those who have dedicated themselves to research in superior methods of Public Administration. What this thesis aims to do is shed light upon what value-conflicts may occur within public administration organisations when they begin to idealize the rationalization of economic issues. The goal of this thesis will be fulfilled through the creation of two ideal types of public administration that exist in opposition to each other. These two ideal types will show two different views on how decision-making and organisation will be managed in their respective sectors. By doing this, there will be clarification as to what conflicting values arise with the implementation of ideas taken from New Public Management, as well as defining the fundamental difference between which ethical decision model is used..

This study attempts to answer the question of whether the propaganda of the Swedish political parties ?Socialdemokraterna?, and/or ?Sverigedemokraterna?, used for the election to the European parliament 2009, are to be viewed as populistic. Furthermore, is the propaganda to viewed as included in the ?Classical populism?, the ?New populism?, both, or none of the above genres? With a theoretical approach deriving from earlier works on the subject Classical/New populism from a number of writers, the study uses empirical and qualitative text analysis to study the parties propaganda. For each of the two genres of populism an ideal type is set up, which is used to define their core elements.