Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

Analysmaterialet i denna uppsats består av en rad riksdagsdokument behandlandes den svenska riksdagens cannabisdiskurs. Detta analysmaterial som behandlas är under perioden 1990 till 2007. Vi har även studerat hur policydebatten har förts i ett historiskt perspektiv under perioden 1968 fram till mitten av 1990-talet.Frågor utifrån en Foucaultinspirerad diskursanalys behandlar en rad ämnen inom diskursen och vid närmare analys beskrivs den svenska riksdagsanalysen som synnerligen ensidig.Nyckelord: Foucault, cannabis, diskursanalys.

The purpose of this study is to present populism as a political phenomenon and to impose focus on the rightwing populist parties that are active in Scandinavia. This essay begins with a presentation of the three rightwing political parties in Scandinavia. The rightwing populist parties have successfully developed their rhetoric and effectively influenced the political establishment in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The parties that the essay focuses on are theSwedish democrats (SD), the Norwegian Progress party (FRP) and the Danish People`s party (DF). These parties are interesting in the sense that they share many opinions and are active in comparable political atmospheres, but also that they use approximately the same rightwing populist rhetoric as a way of exerting leverage on political policy.The theoretical segment is constructed on a descriptive historical background of populisms three different phases.

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

The aim is first to identify concept of citizenship and the dimensions of the same, in the political science theory, which can be crucial, to that a citizenship may be found available for people who have a cognitive delay. Thereafter examine the prevalence and significance of these, in policy documents from two different organizational forms, through an analysis, in the form of a discussion, on the basis of political science theories in the field. The study's aim in a reflective way, highlighting key requirements for an accessible citizenship for the target audience, and thereby clarify the priorities in daily activities that can support an emancipatory citizenship process for people who have a cognitive delay..

The purpose of this study was to investigate the problems of building a new region in the Southeast part of Sweden. The idea of a big south Swedish region is brand new; no former studies in this area have been done before. The main analytical focus of this study is legitimacy, identity and democratic credentials. The study has been carried out by interviews with several leaders in organizations working with the collaborations of the smaller regions in to the big region. The method of this study has been a single-case study and dialogue interviews.

How stakeholders can influence EU in global environmental politics and what consequences and risks this brings are heavily debated. Some scholars argue that civil society are being disenfranchised from the global political arena while others seem to find them having influence in areas where they normally shouldn´t have any influence. In this this paper I will compare the Europan Union policy on GMOs with the process in producing the Water Framework Directive using an analytical framework to study the level of stakeholder influence. Following the framework I will use two types of data namely NGO participation and Goal attainment. The data once summarized will be analyzed by using the methods of process-tracing and counterfactual analysis.My conclusions regarding both cases are that stakeholders, most notably, were able to influence policymaking in EU by using the internal revisions and by networking in smaller partnerships.

I have studied how human networks can affect decision-making and different constellations. The primary purpose is to clarify the possibility to affect the decision to move the infrastructure investments from Region Skåne to Region Västra Götaland. The study starts at the EU-level and continues to the Government and on to the region. Region Skåne is studied especially since it was from there the infrastructure investments were moved.The conclusion is that there is no specific representation in the government that represents regional topics, in spite of the fact that almost 30% of the members of the Parliament come from these regions. There is no discussion between the members that could be considered a networking-activity beneficial for the regions.

The study examines the massacre of the garrison of the castle of Kalmar in 1525 and its causes. The goal of the investigation has been on the one hand to elucidate the most probable sequence of events, and on the other to identify as many different plausible explanations to the massacre as possible. For this end, four contemporary sources have been examined and compared in their details. To enable a broad basis for interpretation, the author has consulted various works on the themes of warfare, soldiers and violence in the late middle ages and the sixteenth century. Apart from political aspects, the study highlights social and cultural conditions as important factors in explaining how the massacre could be carried out without provoking any single part of society.

This study focuses on the politics around ecological sustainable development in Sweden today, with emphasis on urban development, building and living. The starting-point for this study is the environmental adapted city district of Stockholm, Hammarby Sjöstad. The primary focus of the study is to investigate what means of control the environmental investment in Hammarby Sjöstad is expressing, and to elucidate their ideological, political and social implications. The empirical material is primarily based up on the local Hammarby Sjöstad environmental program along with qualitative in-depth interviews with citizens of this district. The study is based on critical discourse analysis The result of this study is that the ecological investment in Hammarby Sjöstad partly constitutes a hidden exercise of power, taking shape as built-in physical measures in the dwellings and the neighbouring surroundings.

This essay is about use, misuse and non-use of history in politics. To recognize genocide is a use of history that has been established in politics, but also sparked debate. The position of non-use of history in international policy towards Turkey's denial policy has increasingly been replaced by recognition of genocide as a matter of making up with the story, moral consider, and where fundamental issues of culture, identity, history and morality has become guiding element in the discourse behind European expansion and integration policies. A breakthrough for this change is due to the Cold War's end; since the 1980s it has become possible to realize the humanitarianism which has its roots in the Enlightenment humanism underlying the United Nations, and later the EU conventions on human rights and genocide conventions. A genocide concept has become an important discourse in world politics that puts moral pressure on states to act.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..

This is a study of democracy on the local level. It?s a comparison between the municipalities of Mo?rbyla?nga and Mo?nstera?s in the region of Kalmar in Sweden based on most similar design. The question is if the structure of the political organisation affects the quality of democracy, with focus on the reorganisaton in Mo?rbyla?nga and the quality of the political process.

Title: What is important knowledge in social studies- An analyse of opinions among teachers in social studiesThe aim of this paper is to increase the awareness about how teachers in Social studies think about goals and substance in the subject. I also want to get a picture about what kinds of problems teacher?s experiences when teaching Social studies. My expectations told me that Social studies are complex to teach, because it derives from several university disciplines such as Political science, Economics, Sociology, Law and Geography, which I believe makes the subject harder to define and what to give priority to. Finally, I want to increase the awareness, if it seems to be any fundamental essence in Social studies as a subject.To achieve my goals with this paper I have studied relevant literature about Social studies.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain the European Union was challenged partly by an institutionalized organization of the union, as well as by a socio-psychology awareness concerning the meaning of the European Union. The increase in European integration has generated a political collaboration where national understandings in identities are constantly being exposed for reconstruction. This results in a collective European identity where states are united in diversity.National identities are created when boundaries are set up in a relation to other states. In these identity constructions there are thoughts and questions raised such as who we are and who we are not. Ukraine and the European Union has, during a long time, had diversified preconceptions concerning who has been the others.