A reading campaign, Läsrörelsen The Reading Movement took place in Sweden 2000 until 2002. It was started by some adult educationists, and was supported by over 120 organizations. The aim of my study was to examine which messages the campaign wanted to mediate. As the campaign meant that reading was important for democracy, I wanted to study if there was any public debate about reading around 1900 when the democracy process had just started in Sweden. I have also studied if reading is regarded in the same way by the rulers of Sweden as it was by the campaign.

Deliberative democracy theory holds that democracy is about active partaking on formal and informal arenas in the public sphere where fairly equal citizens can obtain knowledge, discuss, evaluate and affect the political agenda before decisions are made.In line with the deliberative vision of online deliberation social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Twingly offer such formal and informal arenas where people can obtain knowledge and interact with other people, and politicians.The Swedish EU-Presidency was the first EU-presidency to make use of social media and it was the first time the Swedish Government Offices used other social media than email and chat features.This thesis will examine the Swedish EU-Presidency?s ambitions of using social media as well as the actual use of social media on the Swedish EU-Presidency website in the light of deliberative democracy theory.The aim of this thesis is, through a case study, to analyze the Swedish EU-Presidency?s use of social media in the light of deliberative democracy theory..

The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate if the views of Sayyid Qutb and Tariq Ramadan regarding social structure and religion are possible to unite with western liberal democracy. The basis of the study is the problematizing approaches written by Qutb and Ramadan regarding the possible unity between Islam and democracy. These problematizing approaches are then tested on the political philosophy of liberalism to see if a unity is possible.The result showed that Qutb's view did not meet the criteria of democracy, which wasn't surprising due to his negative views on the system. However, Ramadan's reformist view on Muslim identity did unite with the views of liberal democracy, though questions regarding the possibility of creating and preserving a European Muslim identity in the secular society were immediately brought to attention.The importance in Qutb's view is social equality, unity and submission to God and the importance of Ramadan's view is to create and preserve a European Muslim identity and adapt to the society where you live and participate as a citizen. Qutb's view will not tolerate diversity and one is to keep or convert to the Muslim faith.

AbstractIn 1998 the United Nations held a diplomatic conference on the establishment of an International Criminal Court in Rome. In the end of the conference the negotiating states adopted the Rome Statute by which an international criminal court was established. The court, which entered into force on 1 July 2002, has jurisdiction over the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The court also has jurisdiction over the crimes of aggression but the court will only be able to exercise its jurisdiction of this crime category when the member states of the court have found a definition of the crime.In the draft statute, which was prepared before the conference, acts of terrorism were a proposed crime. With the starting-point in the Rome conference this essay studies how the working-definition of crimes of terrorism was elaborated in the draft statute and how the state delegations viewed the crime.

This study investigates to which degree international developments in cataloguing have influenced Swedish cataloguing rules (KRS). The results show that KRS has been influenced by international developments in cataloguing to varying degrees. The study also shows that KRS has been influenced by Anglo-American cataloguing rules, previous editions of Swedish cataloguing rules and by the work undertaken by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions..

The first of the dual purposes of this work has been to describe the research that has been done regarding the root causes of terrorism and second, using a general causal theory and examining the political dimensions of it, to discuss whether or not general causal theories (grand-theories) are helpful for researchers and policy-makers when reacting to social developments in the form of terrorism. The essay is a qualitative literature analysis and I have based my studies on mostly new books treating root causes of terrorism. I have concentrated on discussing international terrorism and how political dimensions may impact the occurence of this form of political violence. The conclusions I have made is that there is no widespread consensus among researchers and scholars as to what really causes terrorism. Neither can the general model examined in chapter 5 be used to predict when and where terrorism will occur next.

The purpose of this study is to examine how a particular niche in tourism can attract international visitors to a certain destination. To do this, the Swedish food culture was used as a tool to find out how it is marketed to attract international visitors to Sweden. International visitors today wants to find destinations with a rich culture, authentications and traditions to get closer to the destinations identity. The study examines how three of the biggest companies, who works with the promotion of Sweden to an international audience, using the Swedish food culture as a marketing tool. We find that the visitor would like to get closer to the Swedish identity, which the Swedish food culture helps with..

AbstractSince democracy was developed in the ancient Greece it has come to be used within a small city state, within the national state and as today used within a bigger perspective. After the end of the second world war political leaders wanted to make sure that there would never be a war between European countries again. Now, about 60 years later this type of cooperation now involves 27 of the European countries and goes under the name of the Euroapean Union. This means that democracy is no longer used just within the nation state, but within a big organisation that is responsible for almost 500 million Europeans lives. This also means that the European Union need to make some institutional reforms to be able to handle all the future challenges.

Today adjustments on the pricing of internal transactions between multinational enterprises can lead to economic double taxation for the involved companies. This circumstance will result in an obstacle for private enterprising on the international market. Rules regarding corresponding adjustments and the mutual agreement procedure, that is used to eliminate economic double taxation, are today not sufficient tools to achieve this purpose. Consequently, changes regarding these rules should be implemented.The main reason for why economic double taxation is not put right is the competent authorities? inability to reach a suitable solution for the dispute.

The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.

The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate if the views of Sayyid Qutb and Tariq Ramadan regarding social structure and religion are possible to unite with western liberal democracy. The basis of the study is the problematizing approaches written by Qutb and Ramadan regarding the possible unity between Islam and democracy. These problematizing approaches are then tested on the political philosophy of liberalism to see if a unity is possible.The result showed that Qutb's view did not meet the criteria of democracy, which wasn't surprising due to his negative views on the system. However, Ramadan's reformist view on Muslim identity did unite with the views of liberal democracy, though questions regarding the possibility of creating and preserving a European Muslim identity in the secular society were immediately brought to attention.The importance in Qutb's view is social equality, unity and submission to God and the importance of Ramadan's view is to create and preserve a European Muslim identity and adapt to the society where you live and participate as a citizen. Qutb's view will not tolerate diversity and one is to keep or convert to the Muslim faith.

The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

The aim of this Master´s thesis is to examine which type of regime the state Iran is. There has been much research on this issue and the discussion is not over yet. I have departed from three theoretical perspectives in order to understand which type of regime the Middle Eastern nation is: theocracy, democracy and hybrid regime. The theocratic regimetype is composed by David L. Websters archeological theory about governments ruled by God.

This thesis is an attempt to shed light on how the authors of the Swedish Government Official Report, SoU 1999:83, speak about how the globalization affects democracy. The method used is critical discourse analysis and ideological analysis, with the main emphasis on the former. The results of the analysis are then interpreted with central parts of Jürgen Habermas? The theory of communicative action. One of the main conclusions is that an absolute majority of the authors, talk about how the globalization affects democracy in terms of the economic market and the European union.

This essay concerns the issue of democracy and judicial review. The main focus is on the justification of both a positive and a negative attitude towards judicial review, and the values these justifications are based on. The analysis is made by textual analysis of four authors with different opinions of the subject matter: Robert Dahl and Jeremy Waldron who has a negative attitude towards judicial review, and Erwin Chemerinsky and Ronald Dworkin who are positive about it. In the analysis an analytic frame is used which consists of different dimensions and aspects of the problem of democracy and judicial review. The study shows that there are important differences in democratic values between a positive and a negative justification of judicial review.