This essay revolves around two questions: what is the nature of politics, and what kind of political order ensures a high rate of citizen participation? By using Cantal Mouffes theory on the political this essay shows how different understandings of the nature of politics can lead to diverging views on what forms democracy should take. Two such understandings are identified; one that sees the nature of politics as characterized by conflict and power, one that sees it as a space for cooperation in search for the common good. I trace these different ideas about the political in the parliamentary debate concerning Swedish constitutional reform. I conclude that the left-of-centre parties hold a view of the political closer to the conflict-perspective, while the green party together with the liberals/conservatives lean closer to the opposite view..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to research how the Göteborg City Museum places their organization in a context of culture policies andmuseology.The discursive analysis constitutes the methodical frame for this thesis. According to the analysis of this thesis, since an increasing influence of a market-­oriented discourse, an antagonism between a sociological pathos and a market-­oriented instrumentality seems to be the major theoretical clash at the museum. Inside the organization though, the personnel lacks broader insights concerning these theoretical conflicts, but the stressed economic situation creates no room for further theorization. There is a risk to get caught in a market-oriented discourse where there is no time to reflect on the effects of the discourse because of the lack of time that the discourse itself generates.

This essay ? Discourse and Dissonance ? deals with Mary Shelley?s gothic novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818). The focal point is the construction of ?Them and Us?, as defined by scholars such as Stuart Hall, viewed in terms of the following categories: race, gender and family, class, and sexuality. Rather than applying an outside perspective, e.g.

Scientists argue that gender affects foreign policy and security policy, that ideas of gender are inconstant and that there is a lack of feminist perspectives in International Relations. The changes seen in the global security context may have challenged the way politicians and scientists understand war and its impacts, and led to increased gender awareness.Using securitization theory and feminist international relations theory, the aim is to examine how women and men are being spoken of in the Swedish foreign policy discourse regarding participation in the UN-led stabilization mission Minusma in Mali. By applying a feminist perspective on the securitization process, the intention is to increase the knowledge of whether there is gender awareness in this context.The result shows that there is limited gender awareness. There is minor consideration for the conflict?s different implications on the situation for women and men.

This thesis title starting from zero alludes to storstadssatsningen's democratic work being accomplished among immigrants in Malmö. My thesis examines which types of political participation storstadssatsningen were trying to increase. The goal was to turn the immigrants into political participants, but in many of the projects the democratic work had to focus on building a ground for democratic participation by bringing isolation to an end and teaching the Swedish language. This may have been the reason that there were not extensive forms of resources to put into projects actually raising the political awareness. Some of the projects can however be said to increase a very large number of types of political participation, both temporary and every day participation.

This thesis uses statistical methods to investigate if political appointees working for the Swedish government are good representatives for the members of the ruling party. This is a relevant question since the number of political appointees and the political fields in which they are employed have increased. Some say that this is a sign of presidentialism, which in this context means that the prime minister and his cabinet are becoming more independent from parliament and supporting party. The research is done by comparing the political appointees with an select elite of party members regards to socioeconomic background, which interest that are promoted in society and ideology. The consequences of differences on these characteristics between political appointees and the party elite could be that some interest in society are wrongly overrepresented while others are wrongly underrepresented by the unelected political appointees.

Today, Sweden is to be regarded as a country formed by the influences and effects of immigration. The government is considering integration as a process aimed to influent all forms of welfare politics and as a project working both at an individual and at a social level. The aims of integration policies are to guarantee equal rights and opportunities, to form a public community characterized by diversity, and to mobilize all citizens to participate in and to be jointly responsible for a social development characterized by mutual respect and tolerance. During the Swedish election campaign of 2002, integration policies became one of the most reported and discussed political questions in the media. The aim of this essay is to study and analyze discursive statements on integration policies made by politicians during this election campaign.

Partly as a reaction to a perceived crisis in contemporary democracy, the nineties witnessed an upsurge in different forms of citizens? fora, dedicated to the promotion of increased participation by the citizen in the political process. Youth councils are a special point in case as they entail the general characteristics of a deliberative forum, with an emphasis on political learning. This study aims to undertake an evaluation of a regional youth council in the region of Skåne in the south of Sweden. Through qualitative analysis, the study aims to portray the origin, purposes and consequences of such a forum.

Den här uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka vilken iransk identitet som skapas av landets ledning och på så sätt bidra till förståelsen av den iranska politiken. Frågeställningen är: "Hur ser den identitet ut som konstrueras av det iranska ledarskapet genom deras offentliga tal gällande kärnkraftsfrågan?". Frågan besvaras utifrån ett konstruktivistiskt perspektiv och med Laclaus och Mouffes diskursteori som metod. Analysen består av en kartläggning av ekvivalenskedjorna för Vi, "Den iranska nationen", och De Andra, "Irans Fiender".

This thesis is a qualitative study of a new law that was applied in December 2010. The law is called Lagen om etableringsinsatser fo?r vissa nyanla?nda invandrare, and is meant to help newly arrived immigrants that come to Sweden to establish themselves in the Swedish society. The aim of the study is to see what discourses the Swedish government produces as a result of this new law. Interesting for the study is to see what happens in the implementation stage at a local level, in this case in the municipality of O?rnsko?ldsvik.Theoretically and methodologically I emanate from critical discourse theory and institutional theory.

In 2002 the local council of Lund, Sweden, decides to implement the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. A number of actors, such as the state, the civil society, the political society and the bureaucracy, participate in the political process with different authority and points of departure. This thesis studies the actors´ interactions from an inside perspective by applying concepts such as political power, democracy and implementation. The methodological departure is action research from within, a local NGO, the local board of Save the Children Sweden. The results of the study indicate that governance and steering of the implementation process at the communal level is weak.

This paper examines how remedial teachers and subject teachers in two secondary schools talk about pupils with special education needs (SEN) both in general, and more specifically about boys and girls who need special education. The study is based on 6 interviews with teachers in two secondary schools in the Stockholm area. In the analysis of the interviews, two different theories have been used. Firstly, the teachers´ speech has been analyzed based on three perspectives; a compensatory-, a critical- and a dilemma perspective (see Nilholm, 2007). Secondly, discourse analysis has been used to examine how the teachers in the study talk about boys and girls in the special education.

The aim of this thesis has been to analyze and interpret several different discourses in Japan and from the findings see how the Ainu people and their existence in Japan have been defined in today's Japan and in who's interest it is to keep it this way. My findings was that the Japanese nation in all channels of society are reinforcing and perpetuating the belief that it constitutes an ethnically homogenous nation and that there exists no ethnic problems in the country. I found that schoolbooks don?t give adequate information about the Ainu people and its history, and the Japanese press is reinforcing the status quo by their selective silence and limited coverage on issues concerning the Ainu. The government has defined and legitimized the problem of Ainu within the framework of culture and tradition.

English title: "Motivated system technician wanted" A study of the relationship between two parts in job advertisements". The purpose of this study is to describe the linguistics of job advertisements. The focus is on discursive practice and how the relation between employer and the proposed employee is created through the process of communication in job advertisements. The method concists of two parts: A critical discourse analysis using the three dimensional model for critical discourse analysis by Fairclough and a text analysis inspired by Hellspong & Ledin. 40 job advertisements were examined and the analysis revealed that the majority belongs to the category traditional job advertisement and a minority uses more than one discourse.

The paper is a discourse analysis of the liberal environmental discourse in Sweden today. It is based on articles in two of the main liberal Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Sydsvenska Dagbladet, and a liberal periodical, Neo.The purpose of this study is to analyze how the environmental problems that have been produced by the industrialised society, especially global warming, are seen upon in the liberal discourse in Sweden today. The theoretical point of departure is a discourse analysis that as a method seeks to analyze the material to reveal what assumptions the discussion departs from, and what assumptions the discussions reject.The thesis concludes that the main trends in the discussions are to position the environment against the financial system and state that the capitalist system is the only system that can solve the environmental issues. The existing environmental problems are not denied, but constantly belittled and only considered to be a problem if it poses a direct threat to humans. The solution for these environmental problems is believed to be the strengthening of the financial system and the development of new technologies..