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.

ABSTRACTBachelor essay in political science by Hanna Richter, spring 2006Supervisor: Mats LindbergTitle: A study of the phenomenon of micronationsThe purpose of this essay is to study the phenomenon of ?micronations?, to describe it to the reader and to discuss why this phenomenon is interesting to study in the field of political science. The questions this essay seeks to answer are:- What are micronations, and which variations are to be found within the phenomenon?- Why are micronations interesting to study in the field of political science?Bary Buzans theory of the nature of the state works as a frame of reference to this investigation of micro ?state-like? units. The phenomenon of micronations has not been investigated by the social sciences in any extent worth mentioning yet.

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.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how public libraries in Norrbotten provide multilingual media and how the commitment is legitimized. In January 2014 there was a change to the guidelines for the International Library?s service for providing multilingual media. The responsibility for the provision of this service was also changed. The result shows there has been different ways of implementing the guidelines in practice; this has led to inequalities in the local library service.We have assembled data through qualitative interviews with five different public libraries in the north of Sweden.

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.

The EU guarantees the free movement of persons. The citizens of the EU Member States have the right to move freely without barriers within the EU borders and this result in an integration of the peoples in Europe. The integration result in several international family relationships. It is not unusual in the present situation that families have international relations. For example, spouses in a married couple may have different nationality.

The purpose of this study was to examine effects of hearing aid use and to do a judgment of the provement. The investigation was a pilot study and may be used in the clinic.The international form ?International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids? (IOI-HA) was used for data collection. Four questions were chosen from the form. These questions were answered by hearing aid users and their significant others.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how academic librarians experience reference work aimed at international students. International students are a growing usergroup in Swedish academic libraries. The study?s main research question is:- How do academic librarians experience reference work aimed at international students?The study was performed with a phenomenographic methodological approach where seven qualitative interviews with academic librarians were conducted.

AbstractTitle: PR and Politics- the role of the PR consults in Swedish politics (PR och Politik ?PR konsulternas roll i svensk politik)Number of pages: 34Author: Andia GhafouriTutor: Peder Hård af SegerstadCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: HT 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science,Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: To study the PR functions role in Swedish politics and what role it plays for the democracy.Material/Method: Interviews with PR peopleMain results: That the PR people have the right kind of network and the knowledge about how to influence political decisions and the public opinion. Their methods could be criticized from a democratic point of view since they are professionals and their ability to bring up issues in to the public agenda is stronger than ordinary peoples? ability, which could be discussed if it is fair in a democratic society, that people who get paid have more power to change than those who don?t.Keywords: Public Relations, Communication, Politics, Democracy, Information, Networks.

During the time of membership in The European Union Swedish domestic policy has gone through many changes. A lot more political areas are being influenced by the EU policy. Today every ministry has got some sort of EU office. Swedish politicians are functioning on two arenas, domestic and European. At the same time Swedish membership has gone from being highly discussed to being a state of normality.

Freedom of speech has been a well discussed subject. Great philosophers and theoretics like Plato, Voltaire, Locke and Mill have again and again showed the importance of freedom of speech. Since the world have become bystanders to a series of events that can only classify as crimes aganst freedom of speech, it has become more important to study the phenomenon and analyse it. By finding cases where the freedom of speech has been compromised and analyse them in frames of three different theories, the argument of truth, the argument of democracy and the argument of tolerance, this paper makes the boundaries of freedom of speech a little clearer, and also makes a discussion about how reasonable the boundaries are possible. Everything according to the three theories.

?Liberal Democracy? is a common term in political theory, and it is used as if it had a commonly accepted referent, with both normative and descriptive content. This is certainly the case in democratic theory, where it on the one hand seems to refer to a normative democratic model; on the other hand it is used descriptively, to refer to real-life democracies. The deliberative democratic sub-field is not an exception; on the contrary, the term is frequently used albeit rarely defined; yet the concept it refers to is supposedly developed enough to allow detailed propositions about its citizens?s political behaviour.This essay is an attempt to analyze how Liberal Democracy is used by three deliberative democrats (Jürgen Habermas, John Dryzek and Stephen Elstub), in order to understand the democratic model (or models), whether normative or descriptive, they refer to.

The potential of information technology as a means to invigorate democratic practise is constantly under discussion. Regardless of the differing opinions as to the most suitable way to utilise IT, there are certain democratic core values that have to be considered. One of these is freedom of information, defined by us as the right of every citizen to seek, obtain and express information. The aim of this study is to explore whether the use of IT as a means to enhance democracy can strengthen the citizens right to freedom of information. As an instrument for analysis we use an article by Jan van Dijk, professor of communication science.

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.

The number of blogs, from weblogs, are increasing every day. Blogs are also becoming more visible in the public debate as well as the awareness of their existance is rising among politicians and citizens. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question what democratic potential blogs can have. This question will be answered by initially studying the research that exists today about weblogs and democracy. The second part of the analysis consists of a selection of texts from weblogs that touches this subject.