The overall purpose of this essay is to study in which degree the democratic model that is called participant democracy works in the Swedish municipalities. To achieve what I set out to do I will focus on a central political area in which the Swedish municipalities has sovereignty versus the state, in other words in an area where they rule themselves. That political area will then represent how well the participant democracy works in the Swedish municipalities. The research questions then becomes:Does the participant democracy at Swedish Municipality level work in a satisfying way?Does the participant democracy in a large Swedish Municipality in a central political area work?Does the participant democracy in a small Swedish Municipality in a central political area work?Are there similarities and differences between the municipalities?If so, how can that be explained?To answer these questions I will study documents regarding the planning and building area.

Vi gör en jämförelse av två teorier som båda behandlar hanteringen av etniska konflikter i plurala samhällen. Dessa två teorier - Consociational Democracy och Transversal Politics, är varandras motsatser och har båda implementerats i etniskt splittrade samhällen. Consociational Democracy som förespråkar mellanetnisk interaktion, har tillämpats i bland annat Bosnien- Hercegovina. Transversal Politics, som har tillämpats i Rwanda, förordar istället icke-etniska politiska plattformer. Båda dessa länder upplevde etniska rensningar under 90-talet, och har sedan dess präglats av försonings- och demokratiseringsprocesser med stor internationell närvaro.

The purpose of this essay was to examine the role of the acquisition of the Swedish language for integration of adult immigrants given by the seven parties currently in the parliament and other players on the field. The questions were meant to bring light upon the arguments used by the different players concerning the role of the Swedish language, to enlighten which discourses that are constructed, and the contradictions that exist between these. We parted from a postmodern position and used social constructionism to back up our method and theory of analysis; discourse theory. The results revealed three different discourses concerning the role of the Swedish language in the integration process; the liberal discourse, the discrimination discourse and the social democratic discourse. The liberal discourse claims that immigrants have a responsibility to learn Swedish to be able to achieve employment and to provide for themselves.

The aim of this study is to investigate differences that exist in Estonia and Russia with regard to civil society, democracy and corruption and try to find out what can be possible causes to the vast differences in these two countries. Many political scientists claim that civil society plays a key role in democratic transitions. This paper takes its point of departure in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Estonia and Russia became independent. Since then Estonia has had a flourishing economy which attract many foreign investments, with Sweden as the greatest investor. The country has also managed well to adjust quickly from totalitarianism to democracy.

ABSTRACTEssay in Political Science, Advanced Continuation Course, 61-80 credits, by Jonas Nilsson?The democratic islamist? - a study of three islamist movements and their potential role in ademocratization process?Supervisor: Jonas LindeThe purpose of this work has been to explain to what extent islamist movements can be said to bebearers of democratic values and if they have a role to play in future democratization processes. Thepurpose of this work is also to examine the democratic views of the different islamist movements andto compare them with each other in an effort to find a specific islamist definition of democracy.The essay is a qualitative analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Front Islamique du Salut inAlgeria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The analytical framework is based on the political institutionsincluded in Robert A. Dahl polyarchial democracy.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the satellite states of the former Communist bloc immediately departed on a journey towards democracy and market capitalism. Among the many tasks of the newly elected governments, one was to transform the paternalist Communist welfare state into a social system that would decrease the oversized role of the state, at the same time as protecting the citizens from the hardships ensued from the transition.I have studied the evolution of new welfare systems in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, three countries generally agreed as the most similar and most successfull transition countries of the Eastern bloc. Gøsta Esping-Andersen's prominent typology of welfare regimes, consisting of the liberal, corporatist and social democratic regime-types, has constituted the theoretical basis of the analysis. Simultaneously, applying new cases to the typology implies an element of theory testing.The study shows that 40 years of Communism and partial isolation from the West has not prevented these three countries from developing welfare states fully compatible with those of Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon nations and that all three of them in fact fall within the scope of the corporatist regime-type..

In 2002 the local council of Lund, Sweden, decides to implement the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. A number of actors, such as the state, the civil society, the political society and the bureaucracy, participate in the political process with different authority and points of departure. This thesis studies the actors´ interactions from an inside perspective by applying concepts such as political power, democracy and implementation. The methodological departure is action research from within, a local NGO, the local board of Save the Children Sweden. The results of the study indicate that governance and steering of the implementation process at the communal level is weak.

The main purpose of the examination research project is to analyze and describe how democracy and globalization is understood when they are integrated in the developing country of Kenya. This has been reflected by interviewing Kenyan teachers in history and government, to receive their view on globalization and its affects on democracy. Another purpose is to discuss this in didactic terms as a way to see how it can be practically used for upper-secondary schoolteachers in the subjects of civics and social studies. The procedure of the project and the method of use are interviews that have been analyzed in all with theoretical perspectives. My queries to be answered for the research are:1.

Sedan det kalla krigets slut har en förändring i konflikters karaktär ägt rum, från mellanstatliga till inomstatliga, varav alltfler idag beskrivs som "etniska". Arend Lijpharts teori om "consociational democracy" ger en lösningsmodell för att skapa och behålla en stabil demokrati i ett pluralistiskt samhälle. Han identifierar fyra grundläggande element för teorins tillämpning: grand coalition, proportionalitet, ömsesidigt veto och federalism.Just nämnda teori prövar vi på Malaysia - som har ansetts vara en "consociational democracy" - för att kunna dra slutsatser om dess för- och nackdelar. Dessa erfarenheter använder vi sedan för att modifiera och applicera teorin på Sri Lanka, i syfte att ge ett konstruktivt förslag till att minska de etniska motsättningarna där.En "consociational democracy" har visat sig vara svår att i sin helhet omsätta i praktiken, eftersom förutsättningarna för dess optimala effekt är tämligen orealistiska. Vi anser dock att vissa delar kan vara fruktbara för att minska etniska motsättningar i pluralistiska samhällen..

The starting point of this thesis is the debate surrounding the two referenda?s in France and the Netherlands in May and June 2005, regarding the proposal of a European constitution. The aim of this study is to analyse how democratic legitimacy and the role of the citizens portrays within the democratic discourse of the European Union. The empirical material is based upon both speeches from the European Commission and news articles from the French newspaper Libération and the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Discourse analysis is used as a theoretical frame of reference combined with models of democracy.

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.

In contemporary Sweden political participation among foreign-born Swedes is viewed as low and it is well known that foreign-born individuals do not use their voting rights to the same extent as the general population. At the same time there are numerous ethnic associations around the country who work with various activities involving political, democratic and integration issues. This study aims to study how four members of a Somali association regard, relate to and work with politics, democracy and integration. The study is based on these four people, but also on their relationship with authorities and other agencies in the community. The conclusion of this study shows in brief that the desire to participate politically is great, but that democracy and politics is accessible to all, depending on the level of language skills and what political knowledge the individual has.

In this thesis we investigate the level of deliberative democracy in the current implementation of the 24/7 Agency in the local government. We are interested in how the combination of the two seemingly opposing ideals of Demokratiutredningen and the 24/7 Agency is solved. Our analysis is based on interviews with civil servants from three kommuner in Skåne and a schematic overview of their websites. As a theoretical framework we use New Public Management Theory, Deliberative Democracy Theory, and Citizen Theory.We have found that the local 24/7 Agency is initiated and implemented by public servants. Their experiences and worldview is mirrored in both process and result.

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.

When Sweden acceded to the European Union in 1995 the term social economy was introduced to the Swedish context, gradually replacing the term civil society. This replacement can be seen as an indicator of a changing meaning of what the concept of civil society used to stand for.The aim of this essay is to study if it is possible to identify changing perceptions of the role of civil society for democracy in Sweden in government bills between 2002 and 2008, and, if so, what effect does this have on the delineation between the civil society and the government.An analytical model is proposed consisting of two dimensions which both capture the roles of civil society for democracy and the model examines how those roles relate to the government.The conclusion is that the government still sees the main function of civil society as a democratic school and a change agent for democracy. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the civil society is increasingly regarded as more of a welfare producer than a fosterer of democracy..