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..

According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

The aim with this paper is to investigate how the Social Democratic Party (SAP) deals with the question of economic migrants, or more specifically how the problem is represented by the Social Democratic Party, and how this representation has developed over time. The SAP's theory became recently contested by a competing theory that was caused by the predicted future demographic development in Sweden, combined with the EU's eastern expansion. The first factor contributed to the re-write of the theory, to a theory that saw economic migrants as a solution instead of a problem, in direct contrast to SAP's theory. The second factor was a direct threat to SAP's labour immigration policy. This leads to my second question, how did SAP respond to this pressure?The answers to these questions are achieved by using discourse analysis by applying a problem oriented theory on empirical material, constituting propositions, articles in mass media and parliamentary debates.

The goal of this essay is to analyse how women belonging to a right wing political discourse talk about feminism and equality. This analysis will be used to determine if right wing feminism exists. The analysis is based on Laclau and Mouffe´s  discourse theory as the primary base. The focus is articulation, antagonism and hegmony; the central terms of Laclau and Moffe´s theroy. The material consists of five interviews with representatives of women wings of liberal political in Sweaden; Liberala kvinnor, Centerkvinnor and Moderatkvinnor.The study shows that there are different opinions regarding feminism in the liberal political discouse, and that those opinions have an antagonistic relationship.

The focus of this essay is Swedish bilateral development aid. With the help of organization theory I analyse the development aid strategies and policies of the 1990s, in order to examine how and why they were introduced. I investigate three different types of aid organization, namely structural adjustment programmes, political conditionality tied to aid co-operation, and equality policy as part of development co-operation. I analyze the introduction and subsequent use of these three co-operation forms to see whether they were applied and adopted into Swedish development aid because more efficient measures were required or because they were the most recent and modern ways of dealing with development co-operation.Organization theory presents these two ways of analyzing organization. They are occasionally competing and sometimes complementing each other in explaining organization.

This thesis analyzes and discusses the role of institutions concerning countries' abilities to create economic wealth. The countries that we are analyzing are the former members of the Warsaw pact and former Yugoslavia. These countries are referred to as transition countries. In order to analyze the transition countries institutional structure we are using Douglass C. North's theory regarding institutions and institutional building.

This thesis examines the possibility of Bolivian indigenous women?s social movements? getting their demands of a gender equal society fulfilled in the new state which was initiated in 2005 when Evo Morales became the first president representing the indigenous people of the country. By using a qualitative method I have showed that although the Bolivian indigenous women?s social movements? historically has been significant political actors for social change in the country, with representation at both regional and national level, Bolivian women are still subordinated in the social and political sphere. By applying a feminist intersectional perspective which takes its point of departure in a understanding of power as multidimensional, where gender, ethnicity and class are constitutive principals, multiculturalism theories and a social movements theory framework, I have found that even if institutional changes, that opened the system increased the indigenous women?s social movements political participation in Bolivia, power structures based on gender limited their possibilities to influence both socially and politically.

In this thesis I examine the development and expansion of judicial power in Sweden. The concept of judicial review is defined and related to democratic theory, and the various forms of judicial review in use in Sweden are explained. The main focus is on the political and scientific discussion concerning judicial review since the mid 1970s. It is shown that judicial review so far has been used only to a limited extent and that the number of court cases has remained quite stable over time. The main cause of judicialization seems to be the supremacy of EU law following the Swedish EU membership in 1995 and the inclusion of the European Convention on Human Rights into Swedish law.

Over the past few years the Åland islands have attracted growing internationalattention as an example of how to successfully secure the position of a minorityregion, and in the current situation the government of Åland has an intention toextend the efforts of spreading the example of Åland. The purpose of this essay isto shed light on the political discussion about the example of Åland, andinvestigate the underlying political reasons for emphasizing the example of Ålandinternationally. Through interviews with leading politicians on Åland I analyzeÅland as a norm entrepreneur. The research shows that besides altruism, selfinterestis a factor behind emphasizing the example of Åland. The essay showsthat the theory of norm entrepreneurship also can be applied on an autonomousarea, but instead of influencing international organizations themselves, theautonomous area use norm entrepreneurship as a tool for influencing domesticpolitics..

This essay constitutes a qualitative case study about democratization theory and the middle class in Russia. This is a very important case to study, especially because of the geographic position of the country as well as the economic importance Russia has as a part of the G8. In the essay the author seeks to answer the question whether the lack of a significant middle class in Russia can be a part of the explanation to the absence of a well functioning democracy in the country. Several democratization theories are presented. The most important being Ruth Berins Collier's theories about ins and outs plus the elite- or working class as the initiator of democratization processes.

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 thesis concerns the policy process of a proposed bill. The specific bill constitute a new penal law which is supposed to replace the old penal law from 1974.The questions asked considers what in the foregoing policy process that has proceeded, affected and also characterizes the proposed bill. In order to be able to produce a deep and reliable analysis to this question I use two different theories.The first theory being used consists of John W. Kingdons theory of ?multiple streams? which I use to answer the specific question ?what can be recognized to have proceeded and characterize the policy process that the penal law bill involve??.The second theory consists of Peter Santesson-Wilsons development of symbolic policy theories which is given a concrete form in the ?taxonomy of symbolic policy? which he presents.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how university students, who are not members of a political party, experiencing existing selective and collective incentives for involvement in a political party. Furthermore, the study will highlight incentives which could help the political parties to increase their membership. The study is based on seven interviews and the respondents were selected after conducting a survey of students? political involvement. The interviews were analyzed through the theory of selective and collective incentives. The study shows that the incentives, both selective and collective, for involvement in a political party in general are weak and that the costs in terms of time, money and education are seen as too high.

Taiwan has over the past thirty years experienced a substantial political transformation. Being ruled by Chinese nationalists since World War II, Taiwan started its democratic transition in the late eighties. The new democratic system did not only provide people with freedom to vote, it also marked the beginning of a search for a new national identity. Based on the international theory of constructivism, this paper defines and studies the Taiwanese people?s progression away from a dominant Chinese national identity towards a uniquely defined Taiwanese identity.

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.