In this undergraduate thesis you will venture on a journey through the land of democratic values and urban planning. My research question is stated as: whether or not urban planning can show effects on democratic values and whether or not the municipalities in Sweden takes these possible effects into account when planning their city centres. You will in my theory part of this thesis be able to read about different views on urban planning and on democracy. Famous authors like Robert D. Putnam and Richard Florida will be examined as well as other theorists on democracy and urban planning.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the prerequisites for children?s participation in the activities of the public library as expressed by six children?s librarians. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out to investigate how the librarians interpreted the concept of participation and viewed power issues between children and adults. Further, difficulties and possibilities experienced in working with children?s participation and manifestations of children?s participation in everyday library work were also investigated.

The purpose of this study is to determine if and how municipal consultative entities through influence may affect the legitimacy of the Swedish democratic model. The study aims to do this through analysing the opportunities for influence present with the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality, to determine how the councils may affect political participation and the role of elected representatives. To do so, the study asks the following primary research question:"What requisites for influence are present for participants of municipal consultative entities, as found for the representatives of the youth and the retired within the framework of their participation in the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality?"The study answers this research question by dividing it into one question of policy and one question of democratic perspective, and investigating these matters through nine snowballing interviews with the decision makers, organisational actors and participants of the councils. The information from the interviews is then analysed per council through a framework of democracy theory, policy process theory and organisation theory.

Local participation in nature conservation has gained more attention over the last decades due to international conventions as well as local and national initiatives. This development can be seen as a reaction to a more expert oriented nature conservation characterized by centralized control and strict preservation of so called "original" nature. The overall objective of this thesis is to contribute to research on new forms of conservation where democracy and local participation is included. The case study focuses on the process of producing a pre-study for a suggested national park in southern Jämtland in the Swedish mountain region, and aims to investigate to what extent local participation was included. The pre-study was led by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) and the County Administrative Board (CAB) in Jämtland.

The purpose was to describe the significance of participation concerning leisure time and household duties for persons with mild intellectual disability living in a group home with some support from caretakers. Interviews were performed with five persons, two men and three women, living in such a group home. The questions in the interview guide had an open character and were divided into four different areas, leisure time, economy, cooking, cleaning and laundry. The results indicate that all informants felt they participated in all four areas. Further on, the results show there was participation of three different kinds.

The aim of this essay is to explore the lived citizenship and its ideal. First, the form and expression of citizenship practice and ideal is explored through a qualitative interwiev study of ten citizens in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. The perception and expectations of the nature of citizenship, presented by the informants, is then compared to their citizen ideal, as well as to the ideal presented and promoted by the Swedish government. The point of departure is theory of democracy. The essay calls attention to an observed lack of empirical studies in the field of deliberative theory of democracy as well as studies that more broadly bring the theory down to empirical earth.

The purpose with this paper is to examine if tertiary education and democracy have an impact on economic growth. In order to decide how democratic the examined countries are the democracy index constructed by The Economist is used. Besides the two central theories the purpose is also to explain why these variables could affect growth and to examine direct and indirect effects. Indirect effects mean that one variable affects another variable which thereafter has an impact on economic growth.34 OECD countries are compared in order to investigate whether education and democracy are strongly correlated with BNP per capita. Therefore a statistical design is used as method.The empirical results suggest that there is significant correlation between democracy and economic growth.

For the last decades, Sweden has transformed from a state with strong elements of corporatism, to a governance of pluralistic character. This development has opened up to a new form of participation ? lobbyism ? which since has spread and commercialized. Because of this, a report on the state of Swedish democracy ? Demokratiutredningen ? was issued to examine the phenomenon of lobbyism as it was feared to challenge the functioning of a representative democracy.

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.

The state of Israel is known as the only democracy in the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to examine if there is aspects in the Israelis society that can be questioned in terms of liberal democracy.Areas of concerns in the study are the Israeli official policy's concerning inclusion and exclusion of their citizens in areas of property owning, personal status and the duty of military service.The results show that the Israeli society distinguishes their citizens in these areas by their ethnic origin, in favour for the Jewish population. The law prohibits changes in the states Jewish character. One clear example how this is presented is that a Jew is prohibited to marry a non-Jew. The results show also that this official policy by the Israeli state violates important principles of liberal democracy.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine if the school's democracy project is successful. The objective is examined in relation to two specific questions. The first question is whether students, after completing their studies in civics A, understand the relationship between the concepts of human rights and democracy. The second is if the students understood the concepts of practical significance and impact on society and the individual. Variation theory comes from the phenomenographic theories and is central to this work. The approach to learning, in this essay, is a change in how a person experiences, understands or perceives a phenomenon. Variation theory focuses on a learning object and contextualization sees as crucial to how the individual perceives the object.The study is based on a quantitative research method in the form of a survey at a secondary school. A number of students may respond to valuation questions about how they perceive democracy and human rights in practical situations. The results are related to curriculum goals.The results of the study is not positive in relation to curriculum objectives, where many students respond negatively to questions..

The three post-communist states - Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine ? have gone different ways in terms of freedom and democracy since the breakdown of the Soviet Union 1991. During these years, the state and the civil society have been fundamental actors in the struggle against, and even for, authoritarianism.A strong state with great capacity in Belarus has undermined the chances for the civil society to fulfil its task as a watchdog of the state and link between the citizens and the government.Failed authoritarianism in Moldova has led to a situation where both the state and the civil society are weak. The major problem is lack of organization and cohesion; both the state and the civil society have often been divided by ethnical differences and are therefore not strong enough to promote democracy.In Ukraine, the dominance of a strong state ended in 2004 when the Orange Revolution took place, sometimes called a ?peak of democracy? where popular mobilization and protests succeeded in it's opposition against the state.

There are lots of theories about participatory democracy, but rather few examples of how to create it in practice. In the 1930´s, scientists at the Chicago School, implemented some projects within the Chicago Area Project, with the aim to decrease the youth delinquency in the socio disadvantaged areas surrounding Chicago. In this thesis, I assess wether these projects, and in particular the one at the Russell Square Area, have some common features with the thoughts of two of the most famous participatory democrats, Carole Pateman and Benjamin Barber. My question is if the Chicago Area Project could be seen as an experiment in participatory democracy. I find that participatory democrats could benefit from the experiences of the Chicago Area Project.

What every theory of democracy has in common is a reference to ?a people? who are, in one way or another, collectively self-governing. Given that, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the so called boundary problem of democratic theory, or, in other words, the question of who should be included in the democratic community. Lately, the historically given boundaries have been questioned in favour of a cosmopolitan democracy. Still, little has been said about the boundary problem in general, especially from a theoretical point of view.

The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.