The idea that I put forward in this thesis concerns the democratic system and the threat from discoursive impact on its core values. I focus my normative analysis on three of these democratic values: transparency, accountability and influence ? and what democratic problems the discoursive impact causes in conflict with them. I have used a critical discourse theory to define discourse and discoursive impact, by focusing on the process of discourse, rather than its nature. I deal with the political structure where I claim that the essential relation between citizen and politician is disrupted, due to lack of information and the imminent problems of the existing network society.

In this thesis we have tried to show the problems that the categorisation of ?norrlänningar? generates. We have also tried to describe what the stereotypes of ?norrlänningar? are by examining what people say on web logs. The method we have used to find the stereotypes in our empirical material is the discourse analyse.

This thesis highlights the complex relationship between social movements and the mass media. The new social movements really have to struggle to get access to the media sphere, often enforced to use spectacular media strategies, and at the same time maintain their political messages. This struggle gives us reason to question the liberal notion of the media as a neutral arena for political communication and debate. In fact we argue that the media industry should be seen as a powerful actor and that the mass media serves to maintain and enforce an ideology that serves the political and economic elites in the liberal capitalist democracy. The Social movements that seek to question these elites and present an alternative, as they did during the EU-meeting in Gothenburg 2001, quite clearly gets far from neutral media image of the political actions taking place instead the are portrayed as violent or associated with violence and not presented as legitimate or believable political subjects..

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.

Den första juli 1997 firades Hongkongs återförening med Kina med pompa och ståt. Den brittiska kolonin blev Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) inom Kina. Hongkong skulle behålla sitt politiska system sida vid sida med fastlandets under principen "ett land, två system". Vi har identifierat att principen innebär en konflikt i den specifika situationen och använder oss av Browns teori om tre typer av nationalism. Kinas kommunistparti använder två typer av nationalism för att samla invånarna i en nation och legitimera sitt styre.

This study concerns ways in which Muslims in Sweden construct their identities. The theoretical approach of the study is based on the assumption that people construct their identities through narratives. Circumstances such as time, place, and relationships affect how narratives are told and therefore how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.In the wake of 11th of September 2001, the old colonial narrative of ?the West vs. the East? has become powerful, and makes many question the possibility of successfully integrating Muslims immigrants in Western countries.

I Colombia idag råder det efter nästan 50 år fortfarande inbördeskrig mellan vänsterorienterade gerillor, paramilitärer och den colombianska staten. Colombia har också stora problem med droghandeln. Konflikten och droghandeln är djupt förankrade i varandra. För att få ökad förståelse i detta samband belyser denna uppsats situationen med hjälp av teorin om nya krig. Denna teori tar fäste på krigsekonomins betydelse i de nya typerna av krig.

This essay examines the international communitys intervention in Bosnia. The purpuse i to give the reader a deaper understanding of the problems appeared in re-building the bosnianstate. Office of the higher representive (OHR), was to become the koordinator of therecontruction of the institutions and governance. The theory used fore the examination isstate-building, whith an alingnment of state-building trough the international community.The second part of the essay examine the ideas of the High representive (HR) trough threedifferent dimensions. The idea-analysies search to present the core of ideas of OHR, nationalparties and the reconstuction of media.

När personvalet infördes 1998 fick väljarna ett större inflytande över vilka våra riksdagsledamöter skulle bli. Min frågeställning är om denna möjlighet har gett upphov till en ny roll för politikerna, friare från partiet och närmre väljarna. Jag har i denna uppsats bl.a. använt mig av en frågeenkät till de senaste två valens personvalda för att se vad de anser om sin roll som politiker.Min slutsats är att det idag inte går att säga att en ny politikerroll skapats genom personvalets införande. Däremot finns det tecken som starkt pekar i den riktningen och gissningsvis dröjer det inte allt för länge tills vi får se dess fulla genomslag..

What kind of international actor is the European Union and how shall we define it? These are questions that many have tried to answer often by addressing the apparent uniqueness of the EU itself. One of these theories is Normative power Europe. A theory whose main argument is that the EU is best perceived as a changer of norms. My aim with this thesis is to test this claim and to see if the Union should be regarded as a normative power.

The special relationship between Israel and the US has been subject to questioning, and good many theories have tried to explain why it is so strong. The most common explanation is rooted in the school of realism, where strategy and national interest decide who one's ally is. This essay aspires to examine another possible reason for allianceformation; identity. Several books, which make for the theoretical backbone of this study, have been written on the subject of sharing beliefs, identifying with others and the consequences of this. The question being asked is whether Israel and the US actually share beliefs and, if so, which ones.

This thesis has the purpose of developing a normative theoretical framework based on different political philosophers and scientists view on deliberative democratic theory, discourse ethics and a modified norm of citizenship. This framework is supposed to contain the ideal communicative situation for people seeking asylum. Hence, the thesis argues that political influence is best practised through communicative rights, and that people seeking asylum are in title to such rights. We conclude that the standards needed to be met in order to reach the ideal are: translators, translated information, arenas for- or channels of communication, language education, and deliberative education. Once the framework is established we focus our interest on the Swedish state.

Doharundan inleddes på initiativ av EU i samband med ministerkonferensen i Doha 2001. Utvecklingen i rundan har varit begränsad, främst på grund av EU: s roll som försvare av egna intressen. Unionens roll har lett till framsteg på många områden. EU har i rollen som ledare varit pådrivande för en ny och ambitiös runda samt gång på gång förmått övriga parter att återkomma till förhandlingsbordet. Dock har ett försvar av unionens jordbrukspolitik orsakat en rollkonflikt i EU.

Which general outlines are preferable in the relation between organizations and government? From normative theory and method I throw light upon this question by defining and comparing two different democratic standpoints. The substantial democratic standpoint focuses on political effectiveness and the procedural democratic standpoint focuses on equal representation. The normative discussion aims at comparing how well the different standpoints function in political praxis. Since the ambition is to discuss concrete praxis I have also chosen to analyse an extensive case of interest influence in Swedish politics empirically.

In this thesis I analyse civilizations in South America. I construct civilizationalnarratives through the method of emplotment, to build a historic continuity, whichI subsequently connect to the theoretical framework. The theory emphasise that,when confronted with globalization and free market capitalism, civilizationsembark on different strategies to challenge the power of transnational marketforces. I find that South America is a polarised continent, and is divergingconcerning the relationship towards the USA and free trade agreements. On thesame time the issues that concern the social movements are not being reproducedin a significant matter at state level.