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?.

 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.

The purpose of this study is to survey how the Sweden Democrats? success in the latest election to the Swedish parliament has changed teaching in social science. The main question is: in what way has the success of the Sweden Democrats influenced social science teaching? This leads to following sub-questions: 1) how do the social science teachers define the Sweden Democrats, 2) how do teachers relate to the Sweden Democrats in the classroom, 3) has there been a change in students? political opinions and 4) were there any discussions or proposals from the school administration which followed the parliamentary election of 2010? To answer these questions, interviews were made with four teachers. The main conclusion of this study is that the Sweden Democrats? success led to a simplification of teaching because phenomena and opinions that were previously taboo nowadays are normalized and thus have its place in the classroom.

The Voices of ParliamentCongruence between party and personThe purpose of this study is to determine the congruence between the opinions of members of parliament and their respective party policies, in order to further determine the cause of poor voter-party congruence and whether or not the individualization of the parliament could affect the character of legislation. To do so, the study asks two primary research questions;- "Are the communicated party policies representative of the opinions of the members of parliament?"- "Is the discrepancy between party policies and the opinions of the members of parliament sufficient for the individualization of parliament to substantially affect the parliament's decisions?"The study answers these questions by comparing the average of self-described left-right stances of members of parliament with the average of voter-described left-right stances of party policies, using existing survey data and a constructed left-right dimension. The lower average is then subtracted from the higher average, creating a value of congruence that is then inserted into a constructed congruence dimension. The primary findings of the study suggest that there is substantial congruence between party policies and the opinions of the members of parliament, and that the discrepancy between them is unlikely to substantially affect the parliament's decisions..

The purpose of this study is to survey how the Sweden Democrats? success in the latest election to the Swedish parliament has changed teaching in social science. The main question is: in what way has the success of the Sweden Democrats influenced social science teaching? This leads to following sub-questions: 1) how do the social science teachers define the Sweden Democrats, 2) how do teachers relate to the Sweden Democrats in the classroom, 3) has there been a change in students? political opinions and 4) were there any discussions or proposals from the school administration which followed the parliamentary election of 2010? To answer these questions, interviews were made with four teachers. The main conclusion of this study is that the Sweden Democrats? success led to a simplification of teaching because phenomena and opinions that were previously taboo nowadays are normalized and thus have its place in the classroom.

This study attempts to answer the question of whether the propaganda of the Swedish political parties ?Socialdemokraterna?, and/or ?Sverigedemokraterna?, used for the election to the European parliament 2009, are to be viewed as populistic. Furthermore, is the propaganda to viewed as included in the ?Classical populism?, the ?New populism?, both, or none of the above genres? With a theoretical approach deriving from earlier works on the subject Classical/New populism from a number of writers, the study uses empirical and qualitative text analysis to study the parties propaganda. For each of the two genres of populism an ideal type is set up, which is used to define their core elements.

Our social lives and where we live shape our choices in life. One of those choices is which party we vote for in the general election. The aim of this thesis is to see if there are any connections between the Swedish general election of 2010, demography, socioeconomic factors and geography. This is done with regression analysis and chosen variables. Another aim is to see where in Sweden the chosen variables aren?t enough to explain the results of the election.

A B S T R A C TTitle: Democracy- Choice of the people or the voice of media? (Demokrati- Folkets styre eller Mediernas Makt?)Number of pages: 36Author: Carolina VallinTutor: Else NygrenCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Autumn term 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose with this essay is to discuss which influence media has on the democracy.Material/Method: Qualitative explorative research method is used to see how much space the newspaper Dagens Nyheter gave to the parties represented in the parliament, and compare the results with the numbers the parties received in the general election 2006.Main results: This research showed similar results in the survey made of DN and the numbers the parties received in the general election 2006. Media can?t decide how people should vote in a election, but they can influence what citizens think and talk about by having the power to choose which information that shows on the agenda.Key Words: Dagens Nyheter, Agenda setting, Media, Power and Democracy..

This study aims at describing if discrepancies can be found between the rhetoric in Swedish political parties? electoral campaigns to the European Parliament elections in 2004 and their representatives? actual behavior in the European Parliament and to develop plausible explanations to these possible discrepancies. The research method that is being used is content analysis, aiming to answer four research questions regarding the electoral campaigns to the European Parliament elections in 2004 and the behavior by the parties? representatives during the following term of office. The main findings are that some discrepancies can be found regarding which questions are raised most frequently in the electoral campaigns and in the European Parliament, but that no discrepancies can be found regarding the positions taken in questions in the electoral campaigns and in the European Parliament.

During the 1994 Italian elections many things were new for the voters. A new election system, new parties emerging where old traditional ones were dying out because of long ongoing corruption scandals that were coming up to the surface. In all this one man, Silvio Berlusconi, a famous Italian businessman, stepped in and with his two allied parties Lega Nord and Alleanza Nazionale he swept away the nation in a never before seen election campaign. Many things have been said about the motifs and the way he prosecuted the election campaign for the Forza Italia. But what I try to see for this thesis is the awereness in the Italian print media from this particular period - how and if the debate about an in just electoral campaign existed in the country from the date Silvio Berlusconi entered ?the playing field? as he called it and up to the days of election..

This essay will cover the Swedish electoral system with a focus on the proportional representation andthe process involved from the conversion of votes to seats in the parliament. This process consists ofseveral methods which are created by political decisions as well as mathematical formulas and is notalways perfect in terms of equalization. An increment of six adjustment seats would have made thegeneral election of 2010 more proportioned. Despite this, the Swedish electoral system is wellconstructed and the essay will highlight areas which could be subject for improvement as well asexplaining fundamental concepts of the process..

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.

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.

Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the content and political message in the election posters of the political parties Sverigedemokraterna and Feministiskt Initiativ. This is achieved through a qualitative content analysis combined with text and rhetorical analysis as well as semiotics. Out of all the election posters from Sverigedemokraterna and Feministiskt Initiativ with national spread, eight were analyzed. The conclusions of this analysis are that both political parties prefer posters with high text content with the main purpose of gathering votes, and that persons were used as motives with the objective to present the party representatives and strengthen their perceived ethos..