The Swedish public inquiries and most of the political science advocate reforms in the spirit of participatory democracy to strengthen the democracy. Although it is striking how limited and narrow the scientific documentation is in analysing the effects of participatory democratic reforms. Still, many of the local governments in Sweden are reshaping their organisations according to the participatory democracy model. Is it a trend and a symbolic action or a veritable action of good-will of the politicians?The paper argues that the idea of participatory democracy has become popular and widely spread.

AbstractAt the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 the nations stated that traditional environmental policies were not sufficient to handle the multidimensional challenges posed by sustainable development. Governments needed to broaden their political decision making procedures in order to coordinate and integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Therefore a new tool was introduced in Agenda 21, National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSDS). The aim of an NSDS would be to bring together actors from all parts of society to jointly reach a consensus on how to work towards the vision of a sustainable society. An NSDS would be seen as a strategic tool to help focus national policies for SD.

The national curriculum states that the school actively should promote that women and men have equal rights and opportunities and that there is a responsibility to counteract traditional gender patterns. However do research observations show that teachers often treat girls and boys differently. Studies show that the teachers are influenced by their conceptions and their expectations of gender behavior. The aim of this study is to examine how teachers in preschool and primary school discuss gender awareness and how they state that they work with gender awareness according to the curriculum goals of counteracting the traditional gender patterns.The study is inspired by the phenomenographic research approach and the empirical material has been collected by qualitative interviews with eight teachers in preschool and primary school. The empirical material has together with earlier research and theories been analyzed and discussed in order to reach a conclusion.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the Swedish model with attention to core values over time, as well as, explain recent changes. It examines changes of the social insurance system, with focus on political reforms in the unemployment insurance, health insurance and family policy, during the last two decades. The thesis is empirical but although a discourse amount political theories and normative conceptions.Conclusions are that the normative basis in the Swedish model contains general equally and uni-versally designed rights and consensus on growth and development as well as a strict focus on an employment oriented society. Important values have also been dialogue between actors as well as accountability, even if these facts appear to have declined in recent years.Relating to three leading theories in political philosophy - utilitarianism, Rawlsian communitarian-ism - explores the directions in later year political reforms. The results show that later years changes seem to go in relative strongly utilitarian direction.

This paper concerns the divide between secularist and anti-secularist groups in Turkey, which is related to a greater antagonism between a Kemalist and an Islamic political discourse, dominant in Turkish politics since the 1980s. The main aim of the paper is to analyse the causes of the conflict using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. The second aim is to analyse the contents of each discourse and identify the main points of conflict between them. The empirical material used in the study consists exclusively of secondary sources treating the topic, and these are analysed using the theory of identity conflicts, which is part of Laclau and Mouffe's theory. It will be argued that the attempts of Kemalism to impose strict secularism by hegemonising the concepts of ?modernity? and ?Islam? led to the creation of an alternative political discourse based on political Islam.

 The purpose of this essay is to study the republican and socialist Northern Ireland political party Sinn Féin and to examine its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens of Northern Ireland. Is it possible to have a political agenda that includes violence and still maintain legitimacy? The Irish Republican Army?s (IRA) military struggle was for a long time a part of the party?s political agenda. This strategy has been described as to have a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other, and successfully made Sinn Féin one of the province?s largest political parties.

AbstractEssay in Political Science, autumn 2010. ?ALBA ? A regional integration project with good conditions?? Autor: Anna Sjögren. Course: Political Science, C-level, Tutor: Sten Berglund An essential part of the political science research on regional integration has been about why states join economic unions and what forces drive the process of integration. This essay is a case study on the Latin American regional integration project called ALBA.

Problemområdet som uppsatsen belyser är sambandet mellan organisationstillhörighet och autonom motivation inom IT-konsultbranschen. Forskning om dessa områden har tidigare utförts främst var för sig, men har på senare år kopplats mer och mer samman. Dessutom har undersökningarna inom konsultbranschen enbart gjorts på bemanningsföretag. Utifrån sambandet och i förhållande till nuvarande teorier tas tre hypoteser fram och prövas. Metoden som använts i undersökningen är en enkätundersökning bestående av frågor angående organisationstillhörighet och motivation.

Title: Images of Sweden in ItalyNumber of pages: 5252 (589 including enclosures)Author: Oskar GustafssonTutor: Martin NilssonCourse: Political Science C level ? Bachelor?s ThesisPeriod: Spring term 2010University: School of Social SciencesLinnaeus UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose of my research study is to, through the use of political science theories on soft power and marketing theories about nation branding and in comparison to previous studies on the image of Sweden in Italy, gains a better understanding of the image of Sweden in Italy, with special focus on national political institutions and young Italians.Method: The method of analysis is a combination of qualitative methods: interviews where information about the image of Sweden amongst national political institutions were gathered and a survey where information was gathered about the image of Sweden amongst young Italians.Main results: On the basis of the results I have gained it can be concluded that a positive and well informed image of Sweden emerges when it comes to cultural and social factors but a more restricted and somewhat negative image come to light when asking national political institutions and young citizens in Italy about their views and knowledge on Swedish domestic and international politics and economics.Keywords: Soft power, Public Diplomacy, Nation Branding, Images of Sweden, Italy..

As the numbers of immigrants to Sweden and the EU are ever increasing even the right-wing populist parties grow faster in number. Sweden, Germany and France are three European countries that receive 90 percent of all asylum seekers and should therefore have a well-established and talked about immigration policy one can think. Yet the political parties in Sweden do not mention much about the immigration policy apart from the political party Sweden Democrats. This study aims to analyze eight different political parties in the Swedish parliament through a textual analysis to see what kind of immigration policy they share. Carl Dahlström has a theory to determine what type of policy a certain party has and whether they want to assimilate or integrate immigrants.

ABSTRACTEssay in political science, C-level by Cecilia HolmbergSpring semester 2006, Tutor: Arne Larsson- Ideological similarities between the Swedish Socialdemocratic and the Swedish conservative party- An idealanalysis of different political issuesThe purpose of this essay is to examine wheater the political ideologies have lost their importance in the Swedish political system. The study will focus on the ideological similarities or differences between the two largest parties in Sweden, the socialdemocratic and the conservative party. Therefore, the main research question is:? Are there any ideological similarities or differences between the socialdemocratic and the conservative party?To be able to answer this question, I have used Herbert Tingsten?s idealanalysis. This type of analysis examines how someone, in this case a political party, describes reality.

This Bachelor?s thesis is related to the area within library and information studies that focuses on information seeking and information practices. The study deals with how politically engaged young people seek information in relation to their political interests. The purpose of the study is to create an understanding of the roles that different forms of information-related activities play within the framework of political interest and of the feelings, experiences and challenges that such activities may give rise to for those involved. The study also discusses purposes and motivation for information seeking and use in political engagement.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitude of teachers regarding including democratic behaviour when grading students in social science. The purpose is also to investigate whether the teachers consider there to be a conflict between the right of freedom of speech and the democratic values that the school is supposed to make sure the students have when they graduate. The study also investigates the problems political decisions encounters when going from theory to reality.The theory of Ulf Petäjä on why the freedom of speechs is important, Robert Dahls theory about the democratic process and Anders Sannerstedts theory about converting political decisions to reality is what this study is based on.The study was carried out at three different schools; Teleborg Centrum, Växjö, Dackeskolan, Tingsryd and Centralskolan, Virserum ranging from the spring of 2006 and the spring of 2007. The method used except from litterature studies was interviews with active teachers.This study shows that teachers don?t think it?s acceptable to grade students based on their political ideology.

The aim of this essay is to investigate and evaluate the arguments made by municipal politicians in Ulricehamn, regarding the planned Knowledge and Culture Centre. A part from the search for these arguments, I also investigated the attitudes among politicians regarding municipal culture investments in general. I furthermore investigated whether any national, regional, or local culture-political strategies were important in the local debate. The time frame within which the local political culture debate was investigated was from 1997 until present time 2002. The investigation methods used were partly a study of official documents such as political protocols, two articles from the local newspaper, and a clean copy from a web chat, and partly a qualitative study I sent a question regarding the planned Culture Centre to every political party active in the Ulricehamn municipal assembly.

This study examines why the United Kingdom recognised Palestine as a state in September 2025. Using theory-testing process tracing, two competing theoretical frameworks are tested against empirical material spanning January 2024 to September 2025: Putnam's two-level game theory and Finnemore and Sikkink's norm diffusion theory. The study finds that the recognition is primarily explained by two-level game theory. The decision was enabled by a convergence of domestic and international support that gradually expanded the government's win-set to the point where recognition became politically feasible. The conditional recognition pledge of 29 July 2025, in which the Prime Minister stated the UK would recognise Palestine "unless" Israel changed course, constitutes the strongest single piece of evidence for this conclusion.