This thesis title starting from zero alludes to storstadssatsningen's democratic work being accomplished among immigrants in Malmö. My thesis examines which types of political participation storstadssatsningen were trying to increase. The goal was to turn the immigrants into political participants, but in many of the projects the democratic work had to focus on building a ground for democratic participation by bringing isolation to an end and teaching the Swedish language. This may have been the reason that there were not extensive forms of resources to put into projects actually raising the political awareness. Some of the projects can however be said to increase a very large number of types of political participation, both temporary and every day participation.

The Swedish school law says that students who need special education should have all the support they need to reach the qualification that is set up. The arrangements have to be written down in an Individual education plan (IEP). Before the IEP is set up there has to be an investigation about what kind of support and measures the student needs to reach the qualification that is set up. The aim of this study is to examine student?s participation in school and in the progress with their own IEP.I have accomplished a qualitative study by interviewing eight students during the letter part in the nine-year school.

Studies show that older is an increased proportion patients in hospital and that it is a patient group that can be difficult to communicate with because of older patients' often multiple disease picture. Relatives to the patient can be help for caregivers in the communication and the care of the patient. The aim with the study was to examine relative's experience of participation, meeting/support, accessibility and information on a geriatrics rehabilitation care unit. The study had a descriptive design and was designed as a questionnaire study. It was implemented on one geriatrics rehabilitation care unit on the countryside in central Sweden, belong to Uppsala University hospital.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the extent of the civil rights political participation on a municipality level. The starting-point is the participatory democratic theory. I have chosen to make a case study of the extent of participation among KPR ? the board of the pensioners in the municipality of Skara. KPR is represented by fourteen members from the seven existing associations for pensioners.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the places importance for young people with disabilities. The study?s central questions are what type of places they visit and what characterizes them. It is also about answering the questions why the places are visited and what meaning this has for participation and identity. The study´s central concept is room/place, participation and identity.

The purpose of the study is that based on focus groups with personal assistants understand how self-determination and participation, expresses itself in work with the users. The study has a focus on the concepts of power and help and social citizenship in the context of self-determination and participation. We are interested to explore how personal assistants reason and argue about different design cases and situations related to self-determination and participation in the relationship with the users. For this study we have used a qualitative method and to collect our data we have used focus groups and different design cases (vignettes). To analyze our data we used the theory about power and help and the theory about social citizenship.

Lately information- and communication technology (ICT) has been seen as an important tool to vitalize democracy. What kind of democracy it generates is however debateable. The objective with this thesis is therefore to examine what democratic ideal that dominates the use of ICT in Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen and what kind of citizenship it brings. The two case studies were chosen because the Swedish regional level is facing a reorganization with democratic ambitions which in relation to ICT is fairly unexplored. To fulfil the objective there are two perspectives; e-democracy and e-administration, which are defined and integrated with democratic theory including Premfors´ "Fast, Strong and Thin" democratic ideals and Marshall´s three citizenship rights.

The aim of the study has been to gain an increased understanding of the sense of participation and influence that the enrolled nurses, working with home-help services within the purchaser ? provider model, feel and how this participation and influence affect them. Five enrolled nurses in three of Stockholm's districts related their experiences of participation and influence at work in the qualitative interviews that were conducted. The result was then analyzed with the help of two theories, Karasek's and Theorell´s Demand- Control Model and Antonovsky's theory regarding ?a Sense of Coherence (SOC)?.

The purpose of this essay was to research the level of condition and requirements of democracy which faces states applying for a membership in the European Union. The focal point was to research the levels of democracy requirements on two set enlargements which are the cases of the 1981 and 1986 enlargements together with the 2004 and 2007. The states that did reach the goal of becoming member states had similar political backgrounds that made them suitable for a most- similar system study. By using my theoretical framework which consists of democracy theories, together with the chosen method was I able to find answers to my research questions when examining the material. The result of the study is that even though the condition might have been quite similar but the reality of them was different.

Information technology (IT) with its enormous capacity involves more and more in our daily activities and public sector is using IT to make their activities more efficient. The government goal with electronic government (e-government) among other things is increasing the availability and service to the public as well as improving the democratic process. Democracy can be strengthened by involving citizens in public decision making process but this goal has not been achieved yet and the development of e-government has mostly been focused on improving efficiency within administration and electronic services (e-services). Promoting the democratic process has been postponed in the development of e-government because of the lack of political commitment and decision. Digital divide is also preventing public sector to promote democracy with the support of IT.

In recent years the concern about the future of the European Union and itssupposed lack of democracy, efficiency and legitimacy has increased. Thisconcern has resulted in extensive debates and the establishment of a conventionwith the task to create a draft treaty for a European Constitution.The aim of this essay is to study how the three theoretical concepts,democracy, efficiency and legitimacy, have been described and used in the debateabout the future of the European Union. My main interest is to see how theseconcepts are described in a debate regarding a political system that goes beyondthe borders of the nation-state. I have made a comparative textual analysis of thedebates taken place in Sweden and Spain during a period of over two years. Ihave, for instance, found out that openness and clearness have a prominentposition as democratic values together with equality and justice (in Spain) and theinstitution of accountability (in Sweden).

After the fall of communism in Yugoslavia the ethnic resentment grew stronger and escalated in to interethnic civil conflict in 1992. After international intervention the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) installed peace in 1995. The treaty's aim was not only to establish peace but also to institute democracy in Bosnia. The OSCE were given the task to implement democracy within political institutions and civil society. This in a country with a lack of democratic experience and where great problems with ethnic antagonism still exists.By using democratization and transition theory this single case-study examines how democracy is implemented in Bosnia by the OSCE and clarifies difficulties that this democratization process is facing.

Discussions about the democratic deficit of the European Union have gotten more intense and the criticism usually points towards a great gap between the citizens and the EU politics. In this study the political communication policy is being put under the scope to investigate to what extent the policy is designed to counter the democratic deficit, supported by the theory of deliberative democracy. The analysis examines three aspects of the deficit ? decentralization, participation and the distribution of information ? and makes research into the communicative measures that have been implemented. The importance for EU to make deliberation possible is stressed throughout the essay and in the conclusion I argue that improvements still need to be made.  .

The purpose of this study is to describe the motivations of women to participate in politics and to examine whether women feel that they are held back by something in their political participation. The questions of this study are:How do women motivate their participation in different fields in politics?Are there any obstacles that are holding women back in their political participation? Interviews have been used as the method to gather the empirical data. When applying the theoretical framework on the empirical material the main conclusion is that women tend to participate more frequently in political activities that are less time consuming and more sporadic in comparison to more traditional forms of political participation. Women are also more inclined to participate in political activities on a lower level that makes up part of their everyday life, one example of this is women?s increasing participating in political consumerism. Keywords: Politiskt deltagande, kvinnor, motivation, politik, politisk jämlikhet, politiska sfärer.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood a political force that can be able to push Egyptian society in to the process of democratization? We think that the answer to that question is yes, even though the movement clearly state that their main aim to create a democratic state, but based upon the Islamic shari?ah-laws. In this paper, we examine if the Brotherhoods? political platforms and ideas are compatible with the classic ideas of how a democratic state should be. We discuss Robert A.