In a global context the traditional democratic process is facing new challenges. Scholars are talking about a transition from government to governance, where local and regional networks as well as international collaboration are an important part in how regional policy is produced and implemented. In this paper the processes in regional projects funded by the European Union are considered, and related to the traditional democratic process. The study has been fulfilled through informant interviews with representatives from four EU-projects. The interviews are supplemented by a qualitative text analysis of current statutes.

Discussions about the democratic deficit of the European Union have gotten more intense and the criticism usually points towards a great gap between the citizens and the EU politics. In this study the political communication policy is being put under the scope to investigate to what extent the policy is designed to counter the democratic deficit, supported by the theory of deliberative democracy. The analysis examines three aspects of the deficit ? decentralization, participation and the distribution of information ? and makes research into the communicative measures that have been implemented. The importance for EU to make deliberation possible is stressed throughout the essay and in the conclusion I argue that improvements still need to be made.  .

The number of public schools in Sweden has increased strongly over the past twenty years. This essay gives a possible explanation to how the Social Democratic Party in Sweden took part in this evaluation from 1987 to 1997. I've analysed how the party's ideology in this issue was shaped and adapted to the opposite politics, when the Liberals and Conservatives Parties were in government.The empirical analyse is primarily based on official documents from the Parlament such as debates, government bills and motions. I have also studied the Social Democratic Party's congresses which took place during this period of time. I have practised two different theories in analysing the motives behind the acting.

This study is about organizing major sporting events. Sporting events? numerous positive outcomes for the hosting region has resulted in a growing number and size of sporting events globally. The aim of this study was therefore to provide further knowledge about how organizations in major sport events practically and strategically operate and how processes related to organization and leadership can contribute to the success of the event. The study focuses the context of a Swedish national multi-sport event hosted and held by three different cities, three different years.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the discourse on political exclusion in the official report Demokratiutredningen. It has been my ambition to relate the analysis of the report to a critical academic discourse on political exclusion and thereby make visible hidden norms and structures which functions to exclude certain individuals and groups from political participation.My paper point out that the report establishes a strong link between democracy and participation and that it, therefore, makes a strong case for a process of democratic inclusion. Though, in my study I suggest that that there is an unawareness of the importance of norms, hegemonic conceptions and structures and that inclusion, therefore, is unlikely to take place. Furthermore, I criticize the focus on deliberative democracy in the report. With insights offered by Mouffe in her argumentation on the necessity to acknowledge the dimension of antagonism present in all societies I underline that the focus on this democratic model is problematic.My conclusion is that the analysis presented in the report is insufficient if we want to create a democratic system characterized by equality..

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 today?s individualistic society, I experience a need to bring forward the importance of collaboration. From a sociocultural perspective, I have chosen to highlight the positive and negative aspects of collaborative learning, with the intention of illustrating the effects for the individual learning and development. I have therefore made an interview with an educationalist, who?s been a teacher all her grown up life, with the intent of illustrating her thoughts on collaborative learning.

Nethouse Sverige AB is an IT consultancy in need of a mobile solution to inform participants of in-house events and distribute news to their consultants working in the field. This report  describes the planning and development of such a solution. The result of this thesis is a three system-solution. A mobile application where it is possible to view news and information about in-house events, and also receive suitable notifications, a web service which assists the mobile application by providing the corresponding information and finally a website to manage the information and notify mobile clients..

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 is it that makes some events so successful, while others do not achieve the same results? According to most researchers and writers there are several factors that must be achieved in order for events to distinguish themselves from the crowd and be successful, but what are those factors then? The study was aimed to investigating the factors that create a successful sporting event. One person from each of the six largest children's and youth football tournaments, participated in this qualitative interview study. The results showed that factors such as; possessing a good knowledge of the organization, its external market environment and its stakeholders, proved significant. Similarly, to use the correct custom marketing methods, maintain and attract new stakeholders, and to have nice and caring work staff, were factors contributing to the success of wealth..

The aim of this two years master´s thesis is to examine discourses about electronic books in relation to libraries that occur in the Swedish library journal Biblioteksbladet by using critical discourse analysis (CDA). The thesis also aims to discuss changes in the discourse practice, and discuss the relationship between discourse practice and social practice in the field of library and information science (LIS). A main point of CDA is that language is a form of social practice that helps shape social reality. Furthermore the concept of ideology, as understood with-in CDA, brings understanding to the way discursive events help reproduce and transform social relations of pow-er. The text samples span from 2005 up to and including 2011 and were examined by using Norman Fairclough´s three-dimensional conception of discourse, which allows for interpretation of text on a linguistic, discursive and social level.The result of the analysis showed that there are several different discourses about electronic books and li-braries, none of which can be said to be particularly representative.

In this study we have investigated how local journalists in Kalmar think when they choose their sources to interview. We have also studied several factors that can affect their choices of sources.We have interviewed eight news journalists from the two largest local news papers Barometern and Östran in Kalmar.The journalists were asked about the sources they often use as interview objects. They were supposed to tell about how they think when choosing sources and define which sources they commonly use. There are different factors that can affect the choices and we have narrowed them down to ethics, source critics, credibility, stress, hard production conditions, public and their own interest and if they consider themselves to be individualistic or controlled by the news desks. Furthermore the journalists were asked to characterize what changes they would make when choosing sources in a perfect world.All of the journalists had not reflected prominently on the subject of sources before our research.

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.

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

During the 90?s, several reforms took place in order to change the educational system. The reforms intended to increase the freedom of choice and to facilitate the start-up process for driving independent schools. A broad alliance of political parties from left to right supported these reforms. Twenty years later, the independent schools constitute a substantial part of schools in Sweden.