The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the representation of student life in Uppsala in the 1860s and 1870s in memoirs. This purpose is achieved by contextualising the memoirs in two different analyses. In the first, the representation of student life in the memoirs is compared to that in another literary genre, the university novel, and it is found that the two representational forms paint completely contradictory pictures, where in the novels the higher education is depicted as rotten and in dire need of reformation, whereas in the memoirs the system, albeit somewhat flawed, works. The memoirs and the novels thus seem to be competing systems of representation, created in different discourses, wherein the purpose and nature of higher education widely differed. In the second analysis, the examination of the memoirs is based on research concerning the nation building process in Sweden during the 19th century.

Although Social Democratic Memoirs comprise an extensive material, these texts have not attracted any systematic analysis as a distinct and yet varied form of textual genre. The focus in this MA-paper is the Swedish Social Democratic Memoir as a rhetoric genre. The main primary material is memoirs of the pioneer August Palm (1849?1922), the father of the nation Tage Erlander (1901?1985) and the political leader Göran Persson (1949?), published 1905, 1972?82 and 2007, respectively.The general aim is to find out what is the driving power of the memoirs and, more specifically, to shed light on the images of the party history and the history of the welfare state. The method is a comparative analysis of these texts.

This essay is called In the head of Garibaldi ? a study about the portrayal of Garibaldi in biographies and focuses on the literary portrayal of Garibaldi in biographies published in the early 20th century and the early 21st century. The purpose of the essay is to describe the possible changes in the way of portraying Garibaldi in biographies and compare the portraying to the portrayal of Garibaldi that Garibaldi himself gives in the American translation of his memoirs, which were published in New York 1859.I have in this study used a constructivist approach with focus on the attributes, ideals and roles of Garibaldi. Research and thoughts from a wide field of science has been used, for example the works on nationalism by Elie Kedourie and Ernest Gellner. The thoughts on biographies as a scientific genre as described in the anthologies Att skriva människan (Ambjörnsson, Ringby & Åkerman red.) and Med livet som insats (Rosengren & Östling red.) has also been of the utmost importance of the study.The results of the study shows that there has been changes in the way of portraying Garibaldi in biographies, as showed in the more unbiased portrayals in the newer biographies.

In 1988 the Swedish Social Democratic Party decided to reform the tax system. In this essay I analyse the motives behind their acting on a basis of the party strategic theories of Przeworski and Sjöblom. The reform commonly referred to as the tax reform of the century, was although they considered that it was a high risk project pursued together with the Liberal Party. The new tax system implicated a less progressive income tax scale, actions against tax avoidance and raised value-added tax. The empirical analysis is primarily based on memoirs written by the key actors.

AbstractTitle: DREAMING OF A UNITED ?NORDEN? (The North)? Four central Nordic actors about the progress and extent of Nordic cooperationThe Nordic cooperation are often spoken as in terms of a peaceful international cooperation that is built upon a wide range of similarities among its members, such as a common culture, language similarities and a related kind of political system etc. But in spite of the fact that these so called propitious factors are present, many of the attempts that has been made trying to bring the states of the North (Norden) closer together has turned out unsuccessfully. Therefore no far-reaching Nordic cooperation has come to be implemented. The aim of this essay is to find out what the main reasons could be why this has been the case.I have chosen to take a closer look at the motives given by the former Nordic Prime ministers Tage Erlander (Sweden), Karl August Fagerholm (Finland), Einar Gerardsen (Norway) and Mauno Koivisto (Finland).

This is an examination of how interdependence affects the behaviour of politicians and their ability to govern the way they want to. I analyze the memoirs of two Swedish prime ministers, Tage Erlander and Ingvar Carlsson to explore their experiences. I focus on how the increasing interdependence affects the politicians with regards to security, welfare, and financial policies. Sweden had a special position between Soviet and NATO during the cold war. This meant Sweden gave priority to it's neutrality policy during the cold war, compared to increased trade cooperation.

This essay seeks to gain understanding on the thoughts of Konrad Adenauer regarding the future of Europe in the post-WWII era, and European integration in particular. The material used is his memoirs, which gives an insight into the part of his thought that he chose to share with the rest of the world. The essay uses an analytical framework of three theories, popular within the academic discipline of international relations: realism, liberalism and constructivism. The conclusion it draws is that none of the theories can in a satisfying way describe Adenauer?s thoughts, but rather that they all in some way describe certain elements of his thoughts.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine the current situation as regarding the political equality in Iran. The method of this reaserch is based on a single-case studie wich grounds in secondary sources. The analysis of this paper is based on fields that concern political equality which in this study will focus on the right to vote, candidacies in the parliament election 2004 and the presidential election 2005. A democracy theory by Jack Lively is used to analyze the political equality in Iran´s political system.The Iranian regim is strongly criticized by the goverments in the Western world and NGO´s for the situation of the democracy and the human rights in the country. Despite the criticism, Iran still continues in the same political direction, although the democracy has gained a stronger role in the political sphere.

This thesis contains a wider discussion on the analytical framework of classstudies in political science. The purpose is to put class into the light of a usefulmethodological and theoretical tool when it comes to studies on inequality and political,as well as scientific approaches and explanations to why people have awide range of differences in how they pursue their lives. It is my ambition to discusshow class relations can be theorized and explained within a given context, aswell as in society as a whole. I see the complexity of this field as a resource to enhancethe epistemological as well as the empirical discussions within the politicalscience scholars..

This paper examines the consequences of membership and participation in immigrant associations on individual immigrants? political integration and indirect political participation with reference to Swedish society. The theoretical underpinnings consist of a social structural outlook on social capital, combined with the Civic Voluntarism Model, both of which focus on the potential role of social networks for moving people into political action. After a presentation of parallel qualitative data over the experiences of individual members in a Finnish and Bosnian-Hercegovinian organisation, it is suggested that immigrant associations support the political integration of their members into the host society. Firstly, the case studies indicate that members of immigrant associations gain the opportunity to augment their civic skills, which is a significant prerequisite for political participation.

Tove Jansson was born in 1914 and died in 2001. She was a Finnish, though Swedish-speaking, novelist and painter. She wrote many books of which the Moomin books were the most popular. She wrote in total eight Moomin books (picture books not counted) of which some were rewritten one of more times. The first Moomin book appeared in 1945 and the last as late as 1970.

The purpose of this essay is to study causes for the lack of political trust in Europe and especially in Sweden. The essay starts with a presentation of two theories about the reasons for low political trust. Robert D. Putnam among others presents a theory that gives social capital an important role when viewing the low political trust. As Putnam sees it a person that participates in any kind of organization, political or not, develop trust for other human beings that in the long run affects political trust.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union a lot of hope has been put on civil society to help develop Russia into a more democratic society. This study explores the constructive elements in the relationship between civil society and the state in Russia, and how this enables the work toward political development. By using Julie Fishers theory about political development and organisational autonomy I discuss the varying and often complex ways in which civil society and the state interacts. These are often not mentioned in the liberal tradition, which believes that civil society's most important democratic function is to act as a watchdog for the state.There is very limited political space for NGO's in authoritative Russia. The existing oppositional NGO's are important for the political development, but they are few and their impacts on society are limited.

The purpose of this thesis is to expose the political myth in the West about the ageing population seen as a threat against the welfare society. To do so I have described what a political myth is, and showed how it is presented in the most influential newspapers and organisations in the West. I have also presented alternative perspectives to the dominating view on the ageing population and it's impacts on welfare. In this way I have tried to point out that the subject has a political dimension. In the thesis last section I compare the message presented in the newspapers and the organisations with the characteristics of a political myth.

In contemporary global environmental governance stakeholding, as a means for defining legitimate participants in democratic decision-making, has become of great importance. In this essay I deploy the concept of ?the stakeholder perspective? to denote arguments that all stakeholders ? defined as carriers of particular interests ? should be able to participate in political decision-making affecting their interests. The purpose of the essay is to analyze the stakeholder perspective's potential to change environmental politics. Departing from the philosophy of Heidegger, I develop a theoretical approach that separate the concept of the political from that of politics.