On the 8th of May 2007 a local power-sharing goverment consisting of Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was formed in Northern Ireland. The aim of this dissertation is to explore why the DUP, who in the past have opposed all forms of power-sharing decided to form a goverment and take active part in a power-sharing agreement. The study is based on a consociational theoretical framework developed by Arend Lijphart and further developed in a Northern Irish context by John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary. Using this theory the study seeks to understand the broad conditions surrounding the DUP's power-sharing. After a description of consociational theory and the road leading up to the Belfast Agreement,three possible explanations for power-sharing, based onconsociational theory are discussed.

The aim of the study has been to find out children?s librarians? views on and management of media that contains topics with a controversial nature and also to find out how this affects the public library as a democratic institution. We have conducted the study by interviewing six children?s librarians. By using Vestheim?s terms value rationality and instrumental rationality, we have been categorizing the answers from our informants and thus identified two different points of view.

Researchers in the field of political corruption generally expect voters in democratic states to lose trust in corrupted politicians. However, there are cases where corrupted politicians maintain their popularity, a phenomenon studied in this thesis. Focus lies on three cases of political corruption: the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who has been the subject of several judicial investigations and court cases; the impeached former president of Lithuania, Rolandas Paksas; and the German Christian Democratic Union's (CDU) involvement in a party funding scandal. The cases are chosen based on the method of agreement. Berlusconi, Paksas and CDU have all, in spite of their corrupt behaviour, kept or regained popular support among a large group of their country's citizens.

Taiwan has over the past thirty years experienced a substantial political transformation. Being ruled by Chinese nationalists since World War II, Taiwan started its democratic transition in the late eighties. The new democratic system did not only provide people with freedom to vote, it also marked the beginning of a search for a new national identity. Based on the international theory of constructivism, this paper defines and studies the Taiwanese people?s progression away from a dominant Chinese national identity towards a uniquely defined Taiwanese identity.

This essay follows a Media Teacher in her work as a coordinator and an artistic leader for a European project called Legalopoli concerning laws and ethics in a senior level school for 13-16 year-olds in Mora, Sweden. The students write film stories about how their characters have to make choices in ethical dilemma situations. Then the learners create interactive computer games together through practical film work. At the same time we can see how the educator also gets into difficult ethical situations, when she is working with the students. This forces her to self-reflection.

The purpose of this study was to see how teachers experience their own leadership style and how they did to get their leadership to work in the classroom. The purpose was also to understand the teachers? actions, what they think is best for the students? development and how they describe the leadership in the classroom. I interviewed six female teachers and they all have had many experiences since this is their profession. My research was based on Stensmo (2000).

This essay has the ambition to examine and compare Croatia?s and Bosnia and Herzegovina?s development towards a consolidated democracy. By applying Linz & Stepen?s theory on how to consolidate a democracy and put focus on political society, behavioral patterns, attitude and constitutional structure the purpose is to find similarities and differences between Bosnia and Croatia within this field.The focus of this study is to compare two similar countries that have developed in very different ways. By applying the theory and a comparative method the purpose is to examine why two so similar countries with so much in common have developed in so different ways?In order to better answer the question there are two part questions and these are:What difficulties, concerning consolidation of democracy, have Croatia and Bosnia faced since the democratic transition in the beginning of the 1990s?What similarities and differences in the area of democratic consolidation (with focus on political society, behavioral patterns, attitude and constitutional structure) are there between the two countries?As the analysis shows, the main reason why these two countries differ so much is that Bosnia is a divided country with different nationalities and each nationality only wants to realize its own interest and does not care about what is best for the country as an entity.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 moved from a low-key position in exile to become one of the main actors in the political opposition. There appears to be a consensus among researchers today on the democratic commitment of the Syrian Brotherhood. However, ambiguity remains regarding its commitment towards gender equality, women?s rights and participation. This essay focuses on the gender discourse of the Syrian Brotherhood?s leadership, according to its policy-documents, from 2004 ? 2013.

The rapid change within digital medias has increased the possibilities to make information accessible through network. Therefore the European Union EU considers a harmonization within the Union, in order to strengthen the rights of the originator. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how the EUs directive 2001/29/EG regarding copyright is to be implemented into Swedish legislation and assess the common opinion in the public libraries on this matter. The basic methodology of this thesis is a democratic perspective, concerning the public libraries democratic role and the right of the citizens to have access to information. The thesis first part is a study of documents.

This study examines whether social media had an influence on the revolution in Egypt. Social media was an important tool for the revolution since the president Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian regime strictly controls the media. However social media was not the determining factor for the revolution, the revolt evolved due to many underlying factors. Social media facilitated communication, made the mobilization effective and, spread information to the inhabitants and to the rest of the world. The authors are discussing this theme from the new institutionalism perspective, democracy- and revolutionary theories and based on six selected interview persons; activists, researchers and journalists..

This study examined some contradictive results in a report from the Swedish board of Integration. The contradiction was concerning the Swedish populations dismissive judgments of experience a shared ground of values between the Swedish society and those witch are generally held within Islam. These dismissive judgments were given at the same time as the population reported to have a lacking knowledge of Islam in general. To test for psychological aspects of these contradictions, the analysis was based on the theoretical ground of Social Identity Theory and Theory of Attributions. The study used an existing survey that examines people´s estimations of their own and other members of society´s fulfilling of democratic values.

This essay studies the relationship between politicians and municipal chief officers from the point of view of the bureaucracy and its role in democracy and the substance of the chief position. I conducted interviews and observations with politicians and senior officials from the local public administration in Bromölla. The roles of the chief officer and politicians have certain common characteristics which makes it difficult to separate them. Senior officials working full time in contrast to part time politicians give them an advantage in the political process. Budget cut backs both enhance the role of politicians and chief officers in the administrative organisation.

Swedish public administration has for the last few decades undergone reforms aimed at making it more efficient. A substantial part of these reforms have concerned creating clearer roles for politicians versus officials in the public sector, i.e. giving politicians a responsibility for setting goals and steering activities and public officials the role of implementing them.This study aims to examine one reform following this path that is under implementation in a Swedish public authority; Försäkringskassan, the Social Insurance Agency. The purpose of the reform is to increase the organization?s effectiveness and the rule of law.

The purpose of this study is to investigate four students in grades six by interviewing them. It will find out how they personally perceive their own learning in group work and why they work in groups. In my investigation, I will rely on these two questions:How do my subjects reflect on their own learning during group work?Why do my subjects think that they work in groups?For my study, I selected four students from the same school, two girls and two boys, who are 11 to 12 years old. The interviews were individual because I wanted to get a deeper view of how students perceive their own learning in groups and why they are working with a group of other students.

The political and civil unrest during the last years of the First World War had a profound impact on the political life in many European countries. Academic research on the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the development of the parliamentary system during these years, often focus on the civil unrest and the mobilization of the labour movement during the spring of 1917, and the impact on Swedish politics of the Russian and German revolutions.This study is an examination of the relation between the Swedish labour movement and the Finnish Civil War of 1918. The general aim of the study is to examine how different levels and organisations of the labour movement acted in regards to the situation in Finland, and how these different levels and organisations interacted with one another. A second aim of this examination is to better understand during what kind of processes of the Swedish labour movement?s history that the Finnish Civil War occurred, and how it affected them.The conclusion of the study is that the there was a disparity between the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SAP), which at the time was part of the Swedish government together with the liberal party, and the grassroots of the labour movement, organized in trade unions, and in the local organizations of the SAP and the Social Democratic Left Party (SSV).