After being excluded from the Swedish Social Democrat party in 1917, the Revolutionary Socialists founded the Social Democrat Left Party. From this point onwards, the Social Democratic hegemony and dominant position within the Swedish workers movement and political landscape was challenged. This thesis aims to investigate the power struggles between these two parties, the Revolutionary Socialists and the Social Democrats, and their desire to influence control of the unions. Taking cues from earlier research calling for a more localized look at this struggle, this thesis turns to a case study of union matters of the the Factory Workers Union Local 84, at Västerviks Tändsticksfabrik, a match manufacturer and largest employer in the Swedish coastal town of Västervik from 1925 to 1930. Organizational material including meeting protocols, annual reports and member registration lists from the local political parties, cooperative union organizations (VFS) and Local 84 serve as secondary data sources.

When Deng Xiaoping introduced his reform program, he began China's transition from a plan economy to a socialist market economy. Liberal theorists often argue that there is an automatic link between ?free market? and ?democracy?, however this link is not evident in China. This contradiction constitutes the problem area of this thesis.With a theoretical framework containing ?totalitarism? and ?Tang Tsous culturalist approach? I have analysed the leadership of CCP (China's Communist Party) and its strategies to maintain the Chinese political system.

This paper aims to present a theoretical understanding of the emergence of extreme right- wing populist parties (ERP), and more specifically the electoral breakthrough of the ERP party, Sverigedemokraterna in the municipality of Karlskrona. By doing so the study is constructed as a theoretical framework, where the empirical material and the theoretical aspects are interwoven. This means that the theoretical framework also functions as an analytical part. The paper shows how Sverigedemokraterna could be understood as an ERP party, based on e.g its populist anti-establishment critique, and its critique towards the ?immigrant issue?.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study what place public libraries have in local politics, particularly from the point of view of the politicians. To answer this, I have interviewed politicians, participated as a silent observer of a public debate, and studied articles on library politics in newspapers and other press. The results show that politicians in general have a positive view of libraries and good co-operation with library professionals, and that they have a fairly up-to-date view of libraries. They are, however, less interested in library issues in general, and are often complacent with the way things are already running. The newspaper studies show that library issues are usually only discussed when a specific library is somehow in danger.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the properties of the municipalities in Sweden that influence the choice of being a certified Fairtrade city. The independent variables which are used in the statistical analysis are municipal governance, local tax rate, whether there is an university and/or university college in the municipality, average income and higher education in the municipality. The variables are examined by logistic regression. Since there are no statistical data on ethical procurement, this exogenous variable isn?t included in the regression.

Gender politics in Sweden is considered unique because gender policies (jämställdhet) are integrated into national politics and politicised both in the public and the private sphere. The Swedish case is therefore considered a role model by many feminist scholars.This view has been criticised by both post modern feminists and public administration scholars. Critics imply that the increased immigration and more heterogeneous population have led to a new challenge for state institutions. The Swedish model, with its universal welfare solutions, lacks the ability to recognise differences within groups. Universal solutions that treat everyone the same is no longer the most just way to treat people.The growing use of goal orientation in Swedish public administration has increased the civil servants discretion in the implementation process, and thereby the space for differentiated treatment.

With varied electoral success for anti-immigration parties across Western Europe, Sweden is often held as an example where anti-immigration parties have been less successful. This have caught the interest of many scientists around the world and have recently developed theories on a subnational level when testing Sweden?s municipalities, on why they have failed here but not in other countries. But in the election to 2010, Sweden now joins the rest of the Western-European countries in having an anti-immigrations party in the parliament.This paper has tested three theories on a Municipality that has shown evident support for the Sweden democrats, both in the local and the national election. This is done with a qualitative approach, made up from interviews with the local established parties.

According to Swedish contract law, a mistake in contract can be categorized as either an error concerning the content of the agreement or an error in motive. An error concerning the content of the agreement could be described as a divergence between a party?s intent and his declaration, while an error in motive is a mistake about the reasons why a party would like to agree to the contract. The borderline between these two types of mistakes is based on Savigny?s theories on echt (error in motive) and unecht (error in content) mistakes.

The aim of this essay is to examine which of the two approaches within the field of conflicts that best explains the conflict between Georgia and Russia using negotiations, dialogue and conciliation. According to the first approach negotiations are used to handle a conflict, according to the second approach negotiations are used to solve a problem.  The focus will be on how the two states acted and how the dialogue from the European Union as a conciliator was brought before the war escalated in 2008. The EU is today an important actor within the international politics and has established close relations to the two states. The conflict goes back in history and is still not solved. In the fields of international studies, there is a realistic view that claims the international politics to be shaped by suspicions between states as main actors. War is never far away, what is claimed to be solved through diplomacy.

The Stockholm Bypass is an infrastructural project planned to be located west of Stockholm. This study investigates the argumentation concerning the project from different perspectives. The theoretical starting point is within Decision Theory. The main theories include Bounded Rationality, Kingdon's study of the political agenda and theory regarding venue shopping, framing and lobbying. The method chosen for this qualitative case study consists of both gathering data through semi-structured interviews and through documents provided by stakeholders and information available publically through archives and media.

Eleven years after broking the Kyoto-protocol, the European Union still stands in the front line, combating climate change. How come the EU, with 27 diversified states, is able to integrate its members to what is widely considered the most progressive climate policy in the world? This thesis takes a closer look at the negotiations that have shaped EU climate policy. Using negotiation-models to categorize different aspects of EU climatenegotiations, several key-findings are presented. The thesis concludes that while EU entered the Kyoto-protocol with little to lose because of external factors like previous energy-reforms in key member countries, it had plenty to win in global influence and the satisfaction of an overwhelmingly Kyoto-positive public.

The local politicians in Sweden are responsible for a great deal of the welfare system why one would assume that there are a lot of demands put on them - demands for certain skills or a certain level of competence. I have in this study tried to find out how the demands on the local representatives concerning the demands for competence and the actual level of competence among the politicians are affecting the local politics. This was done through investigating how the local politicians are perceiving their level of competence and the demands put on them, but also how the employees are perceiving the demands and the level of competence put on the politicians. The study was made in the municipality of Gislaved in Southern Sweden. I was using both quantitative method (an opinion poll among the politicians and employees in the municipality) and qualitative method (interviews with three politicians and three employees and literature studies).In order to investigate the demands for competence I split the concept into ?soft? competence (socially and emotionally based skills), and ?hard? competence (skills based on knowledge, education and experience).

This thesis title starting from zero alludes to storstadssatsningen's democratic work being accomplished among immigrants in Malmö. My thesis examines which types of political participation storstadssatsningen were trying to increase. The goal was to turn the immigrants into political participants, but in many of the projects the democratic work had to focus on building a ground for democratic participation by bringing isolation to an end and teaching the Swedish language. This may have been the reason that there were not extensive forms of resources to put into projects actually raising the political awareness. Some of the projects can however be said to increase a very large number of types of political participation, both temporary and every day participation.

Over the past twenty years, the cooperation within the European Union (EU) has strengthened and expanded with both more number of Member States and stronger influence on international politics. The unique character of the Union and its ability to enforce peace and humanitarian intervention has attracted attention in political science. This prominent position of the Union is perceived by many scholars who often hold this derived from the Union's influence in international relations. Various terms have been used to define the powers of the Union. The British researcher Ian Manners states that the unique identity of the Union in the international arena is formed by its normative power.  An important policy area within the Union is the environmental cooperation.

The Swedish security policy has changed from stressing neutrality to embrace co-operation within the EU and other organisations. New threats like terrorism, boarder-crossing criminality and natural disasters require new ways to deal with this type of problems to protect the society. Since the beginning of 21st century the high Russian economic growth has made it possible for the country to play an increasingly role as a superpower on the international political stage. In the same time the democratic development has been replaced by an autocratic rule which has obstructed the Russian- European relations. From a Swedish security policy view the Russian political development is of importance and the picture of Russian as a threat has changed from 1996 to 2008/09.