The main purpose of this essay was to study whether Niche parties that were represented in municipal councils in Sweden during the 2007-2010 term of office were politically relevant. Furthermore, factors that might facilitate political relevance for Niche parties were studied. Political relevance was studied using two theoretical perspectives. The objective model of political relevance presents four categories of relevance based on the relations between political parties in a political assembly; governing parties, coalition parties, blackmail parties and isolated parties. The subjective model of political relevance relies on the party representatives? own judgments of the relevance of their parties.

This essay examines the strategies adopted by the Swedish parliamentary parties against the Pirate Party (Piratpartiet). The study uses the PSO-theory, which attempt to explain the success of Niche parties as a consequence of the established parties? strategies against the new competitor. A qualitative analysis and a comparison of the parties? manifestos from the 2002, 2006 and 2010 national elections is used to determine which strategies are adopted.

The purpose of this thesis was to illuminate and create a deeper understanding of how small niche retail businesses within the apparel industry position themselves. We aimed to investi-gate how these small niche retail businesses create their position and how they communicate these positions to their target market. To be able to investigate the positioning-process within these small niche retail businesses a case study was conducted based on interviews with two respondents from two different companies and observations of these businesses physical envi-ronments. The study indicated that the small niche retail businesses mainly make use of emo-tional aspects and their assortment range to create their position. To communicate their posi-tion to their target market they mainly use their in-store personal selling and their assortment range..

A group of scientist, called the council of democracy in Sweden made a predictionabout members of political parties, in 2013 members should not exist. In this essaythat statement going to be questioned. It shows that most of the political parties losesmembers in Sweden. The only differences from year 2000 and now is that in 14 yearsthe parties has lost 65000 members, between 1991-1999 it was about 220000members. Something has changed.

This thesis deals with non-wanted political parties e.g. right wing populism. How should a democracy handle these opinions? So far these parties have been neglected and not even considered as real parties. By excluding them from the debate and the political arena, media and more established parties have seen them merely as a threat than as democratic parties.

A group of scientist, called the council of democracy in Sweden made a predictionabout members of political parties, in 2013 members should not exist. In this essaythat statement going to be questioned. It shows that most of the political parties losesmembers in Sweden. The only differences from year 2000 and now is that in 14 yearsthe parties has lost 65000 members, between 1991-1999 it was about 220000members. Something has changed.

New political parties are increasing as phenomena in Swedish politics. Some of these parties have gained much attention in the media, and recent examples are Junilistan, Feministiskt initiativ and Sjukvårdspartiet. Media plays an important role for political parties as it is a way for the parties to communicate with the citizens. Therefore this essay examines how these three new parties have been pictured in media lately, and with what arguments they are discussed. This is done by argument analysis of editorials in five Swedish newspapers.

AbstractThe recruiting of lay judges to the district courts is managed by the political parties. Despite repeated efforts the parties do not succeed in recruiting lay judges that reflect the structure of the inhabitants. Why not? This is the fundamental issue of this essay.This study is a multiple case study of two parties with different success in their recruiting work. The purpose is to study the process of nomination regarding lay judges at the district courts, at the latest election (2006).

This paper addresses how political parties make decisions. Parties often have to choose between conflicting objectives such as influence on policy, control of the government, and support among the voters. This paper examines the behavior of the two Swedish parties on one of their particular policy positions: Swedish withdrawal from the EU. The aim is to describe why the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) and the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) retain thisspecific policy position when it on one hand seems damaging to their chances of getting into government, and on the other seems to be an unrealistic policy to realize. I undertake a twocase study of the two Swedish parties, which I assume to represent a population of Nordic parties critical to the EU.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the existence ofpersonalization within Swedish political parties along withhow the parties work with this phenomena in order to achievemore voters.The method used is personal interviews with politiciansfrom four different government parties. As a complement, interviews with a political expert was also made. All parties use personalization in different ways as a strategy tocreate dialogues and relationships with both media and voters. We distinguished two sorts of personalization: individualization and privatization, and discovered that not all parties use both..

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an understanding of how Swedish political parties gain knowledge of their voters. The assumptions taken in the thesis were that political parties are using same methods as businesses do to find interesting segments. To attain insight into the purpose of the thesis, two research questions were formulated: how are Swedish political parties obtaining insights in who their potential voters are? With the second question, an attempt is made to answer how the very same parties are using their knowledge about their voter segments. To find answers to those questions, personal interviews were performed with seven political parties.

The subject of this study has been organizational change within two Scandinavian green parties ? the Swedish Green Party and the Norwegian Green Party. Looking at the organizational changes within these two parties using Robert Michel?s famous concept the ?iron law of oligarchy?, I have studied whether these two parties have become more oligarchic after having been elected to the national parliaments of Sweden and Norway respectively. What I have found is that although these two parties still retain much of the original organizational structure that they have had, in particular the Swedish Green Party, change has occurred and seems to be occurring, at least in the Norwegian Green Party, which would indicate that the two parties have become more oligarchic.

This study analyzes the political view of criminality and crime politics in three political parties in the Swedish parliament, Socialdemokraterna, Folkpartiet and Moderaterna. The study seeks to describe which kind of view these parties present on the criminality in our society. The material for this study is the ideologies that the parties descend from which are, socialism, liberalism and conservatism, the political programs of these three parties have also been studied as well as the parties proposals, political documents in the Swedish parliament. The current public debate shows that the crime politics is an attractive question and the parties may seem to have similar proposals on how to lower the criminality in our society. The theory that has been used to describe the results of the study is ?actors and structures? and the results are related to this theory as well as the theory has been used as an instrument to explain and sort the material and the results.The results of the study show that the parties are different in their views on criminality as a problem in our society.

Regionalism is a concept of extensive proportions and as such is complex to define. This phenomenon becomes much clearer by studying it from different perspectives. This paper focuses on regional political parties and description of their political ideas. The goal of this paper is to examine and compare regional political parties in two Swedish regions: Norrbotten and Skåne. By studying two biggest regional parties in these regions, namely Norrbottensparti and Skånepartiet, I will try to get an insight into the regional politics, as well as illustrate regionalism and its meaning.

The aim of this study is to describe the characteristics of right-wing populist parties in Europe. The three parties included in the study are the Swedish Democrats (SD), the British National Party (BNP) and the National Front (NF) in France. The study includes a definition of right-wing populism based on previous research and from that an ideal type of a right-wing populist party has been created. The material used in the study to verify how well the parties were consistent to the ideal type and what similarities and differences the parties in the study have are the parties? political programs and policies.