The purpose of this thesis is, through both a quantitative and qualitative study, to map out how the interaction appears between the established parties and the radical right-wing party, the Sweden Democrat?s (SD) and their core issue ? immigration in the Swedish parliament. By applying analytical dimensions on the parliamentary protocols regarding the immigration issue between the years of 2010-2012 this study will get an insight on how the argumentation concerning immigration has developed since their entrance into the Swedish parliament in 2010. The result shows that SD, through the rejection treatment of the established parties, fulfilled the three conditions which accordingly to the study's theoretical framework are crucial for the party's future success. In the established parties? reception of SD regarding immigration, SD is, to a large extent, left unchallenged as the established parties rather focus on integration instead of challenge SD in the immigration issue.

When studying the voting behaviour of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) concerning the Services Directive within the EU, what patterns can be observed? With a starting point in previous findings about voting behaviour, this study analyses the results of the given Roll-call votes in the European Parliament in regards to the Services Directive. Here I focus on the division of votes within and between the member states and the parliamentary political groups; with the aim to identify patterns that might show clash of opinion concerning this issue. I found that ideology seems to play a role in the MEPs voting behaviour. Parties on the far left reach the highest level of cohesion and together with the party on the far right, they voted against the Directive, but due to different reasons.

This thesis aims at studying the development of the party cohesion and oligarchichaltendencies in the party groups of the Swedish national parliament, riksdagen, after theintroduction of two clear block coalitions during the years 2006-2010.The result of the cohesion during these years has been compared towards the years 1998-2006.The research method being used has been 18 semi structured interviews with member of the parliament during the examined years. The main findings show an increment of both the cohesion and the oligarchical tendencies after the block coalitions during the years 2006-2010. The result verified therefore also the two originally stated hypothesis..

Title: Det bortglömda valet? ? En kvantitativ undersökning av mediernas bevakning kring Europaparlamentsvalet 2009Authors: Elin Kullander and Sara LundinSubject: The media coverage of the election of the European parliament 2009Term: Spring 2014Supervisor: Mats Ekström, JMG, Gothenburg UniversityPages/words: 44/11 065Purpose: The purpose has been to investigate how great the media coverage was on the European parliament elections in 2009 and then compare the result to previous elections. The discussion is based on media?s role as a multiplier in a democracy.Method: We have used a quantitative method and studied the media coverage in four Swedish newspapers 23 days before the Swedish election on 7th of June 2009.Results: We have come to the conclusion that media is in fact meeting its democratic role as a multiplier, in any case as long as we only take in conclusion the amount of articles that has been published. We have seen that the media coverage for the first time has increased both in number of articles and in how big the articles were.

In this essay my aim is to examine how the term utanförskap is constructed and defined as a social problem in the public arena of the Swedish Parliament. The term utanförskap was widely used in the election-campaign prior to the Swedish Parliament election in the year 2006. The term, mainly articulated by the Right-wing Alliance, was used to describe indi-viduals and groups that were depicted as being outside the Swedish society. In the political debate, work and benefit dependency were constructed as binary opposites, with the latter describing the individuals in utanförskap. Translated to English the term utanförskap would be something like ?the state of being outside? or ?outsidership?.

This bachelor thesis explores the conditions for a harmonized EU gender equality policy. Recently the maternity leave directive has been introduced by the European commission and seeks to improve the conditions for pregnant workers. The controversial subject of this maternity leave has illustrated many of the problems connected to the development of a social dimension in EU. First of all, the debate concerning the maternity leave directive in the European Parliament has shown that both sides in the parliament seem positive towards creating legislation in this matter on EU level. However, parties at the right tend to disagree to many of the amendments in the proposal, such as the maximum entitlement.

This is a study about the relation between the Swedish school and the political system of Sweden. I wanted to see if the relation had changed since the election of 2010 as it was in that election the Sweden Democrats got over five percent of the votes and took seat in the Swedish parliament. The thing that is unique about this election is that it was really the first time a right-wing party had been elected into the Swedish parliament. Many experts argue that this is the first xenophobic party that has been elected into the Swedish parliament. This led to a problem for schools and their principals and a difficult question to answer because xenophobia is contrary to the school?s core values and the school?s democratic mission.Should the school still be open for political parties? How do schools manage to distinguish between political information and political propaganda? If parties still are welcome into the schools, which parties should be allowed? The equality ombudsman has said in a report that the schools have to comply with the principle of objectivity, which stipulates that the public sector has to be unbiased.I have chosen to make use of a qualitative method because I think the study then gets a deeper understanding of the topic.

The main purpose of this study is to examine celebrity candidates in the European Parliament election in Sweden and Finland. The theoretical background assumes that candidate voting is beneficial in the election to the European Parliament. Previous research also shows that there are some opponents towards candidate voting, claiming it personalizes politics and it might lead to celebrities getting elected simply because they are well known to the voters.This study is a comparative analysis and analyzes the differences between Sweden and Finland when it comes to celebrity candidates. Furthermore, Max Weber?s theory on leadership will be used to categorize the celebrity candidates further.

The government appointed in 2004 a special investigator with the objective to investigate the possibility of introducing a new law concerning implementation of obligatory cash registers with certain certification. This resulted in SOU 2005:35 ?Krav på kassaregister - Effektivare utredning av skattebrott? (Proposition 2006/07: 105). Following advice received from the respondents, the government has drafted a bill submitted to parliament in March 2007. Government bill 2006/07: 105 proposals for new law on cash registers, and submitted to parliament 2007th Act (2007:592) on the cash register was adopted by parliament in March that year and came into force on 1 January 2010.

The number of parties in the Swedish parliament has increased from five to eight during the last twenty years. The political agenda is still based on a two-block system with the consequences that the number of parties in each block has increased. To be represented in the parliament, a party needs at least four per cent of the total votes in the election. If only one party fails to achieve that, the whole block will lose the election to the other block. This could encourage voters to vote tactically for the small parties in the block to ensure that the block wins the election.

This essay examines the 1962 Swedish parliamentary debate preluding the proposition to introduce a uniform compulsory education for all Swedish children. The proposition aimed at ending the previously heterogeneous educational system and replace it with a more equal and democratic system.A widespread debate ensued, regarding the status of Christian religious education (kristendomskunskap) and its new emphasis on scientific objectivity. This essay will examine the relative position of Christianity within the new uniform school system, as it was articulated by the members of the Swedish parliament. This analysis will be achieved through the use of a discourse analytical study of the parliamentary records, the recorded motions and bills. From these records a substantial disparity in the parliamential members articulation of the concept of Christianity can be ascertained, even within the discourse of an educational regime.

The purpose of this study is to find out why the EU has not yet implemented the EuropeanCivil Peace Corps (ECPC), which the EU Parliament took a resolution about in 1999. Themore specific questions posed are whether the concept of ECPC has been redefined, whetherthe issue of ECPC has been prevented from coming up for discussion and decision-making,and what this has meant for the non-implementation. Steven Lukes' theory about the threedimensions of power is used in combination with a discourse analysis method. The materialused is documents from the EU Parliament's decisions and debate about ECPC, and ECPCfeasibility studies. In the analysis I find one "law and order"-discourse and one "peaceknowledge"-discourse.

 The 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections were in many ways special, where the USA got its first president of Afro-American origin, Barack Obama. The elections will also be historical since the great use of social medias - as the community Facebook, the video sharing site YouTube and web based diaries, blogs - broke through during the campaigns. This study's purpose was to examine how a few members of the Swedish parliament described the result of the Presidential Elections in their blogs. The main question - how the election results were described in the blogs - was divided into three themes, created on the basis of the blog's content.

This is a study about the relation between the Swedish school and the political system of Sweden. I wanted to see if the relation had changed since the election of 2010 as it was in that election the Sweden Democrats got over five percent of the votes and took seat in the Swedish parliament. The thing that is unique about this election is that it was really the first time a right-wing party had been elected into the Swedish parliament. Many experts argue that this is the first xenophobic party that has been elected into the Swedish parliament. This led to a problem for schools and their principals and a difficult question to answer because xenophobia is contrary to the school?s core values and the school?s democratic mission.Should the school still be open for political parties? How do schools manage to distinguish between political information and political propaganda? If parties still are welcome into the schools, which parties should be allowed? The equality ombudsman has said in a report that the schools have to comply with the principle of objectivity, which stipulates that the public sector has to be unbiased.I have chosen to make use of a qualitative method because I think the study then gets a deeper understanding of the topic.

Since the introduction of the European citizenship in the Maastricht treaty, social rights havetaken a back seat to the economic and political elements. Nevertheless, over the past yearssocial issues have been increasingly included on the agenda following the universalrecognition of challenges resulting from further economic integration and demographicchange. The extensive research on European social policy so far tend to focus on initiativesput forward by the European Commission, and offers little to explain the multitude of lines ofreasoning on how far EU social policy should be taken or why it still remains one of the leastdeveloped policy areas. By examining plenary debates in the European Parliament concerningfamily policy, this Bachelor thesis aims to describe the complex of problems connected to afurther development of the social dimension of the European citizenship.The analysis finds that the most imminent problems impeding an expansion of the EU familypolicy lie not only in the many clashes of opinions between advocates of the various existingwelfare models, but also in the conflicts of interests and the different levels of ambitionbetween EU institutions - most notably the Commission and the European Parliament..