People are given better opportunities to participate in polity today. Democratic equality entails that all individuals are equal and therefore they should be included in the process of making the decisions. How can participation be defined and does it mean that having the possibility to participate means that people can influence the process of making the decisions in polity process?This paper focuses on participation and influence in polity and examine the relationship between having the possibility to participate and having the possibility to actually influence polity process on more local level. Therefore I have been examining the citizens? participation and influence in Helsingborg which is my case study.

The first of the dual purposes of this work has been to describe the research that has been done regarding the root causes of terrorism and second, using a general causal theory and examining the political dimensions of it, to discuss whether or not general causal theories (grand-theories) are helpful for researchers and policy-makers when reacting to social developments in the form of terrorism. The essay is a qualitative literature analysis and I have based my studies on mostly new books treating root causes of terrorism. I have concentrated on discussing international terrorism and how political dimensions may impact the occurence of this form of political violence. The conclusions I have made is that there is no widespread consensus among researchers and scholars as to what really causes terrorism. Neither can the general model examined in chapter 5 be used to predict when and where terrorism will occur next.

This examination project is an investigation about the opinion and comprehension for political engagement of four young municipal politicians. The purpose with this project is to describe and understand the pronounced comprehension for political engagement. There is also an intention to investigate the educational in discussing political engagement with students in social studies at upper secondary school. The method that has been used is ?map of conceptions? because of its appropriate way to elucidate the comprehension and understanding of a certain subject. Those four young municipal politicians see political engagement as the will to improve the community. There is also an importance to have a large engagement in more areas than just one.

The purpous of this master?s thesis is to explore how the swedish public library evolved between 1890-1911, before the state implemented the library reform in 1912. The material used to cunduct the study concists mainly of texts published during the time frame of the thesis in the form of books, booklets and articles from Folkbiblioteksbladet, a journal dedicated to the subject of the swedish public library.Drawing upon Habermas theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere and Bourdieus theories about taste as social distinction and symbolic capital, the thesis seeks to show how the public participated in the evolvement of the public library and which aspects of society that contributed to the public library?s establishment as an institution. The findings are also discussed in relation to previous research of the history of the Swedish public library.

This thesis discusses the 2007 elections in Kenya, and its aftermath. The aim is to examine whether or not ethnicity played a major role in the outbreak of violence that followed the referendum. As well as different theories and discussions on ethnicity, I will also try to explain the course of events by using theories of increased civil violence during a democratic transition, and the fact that weak political institutions can cause violence. My conclusion is that ethnicity has played a part in the violence, but is too simple to blame the events following the election on just that. A number of different factors all contributed to the outbreak, but all to a different extent.

The purpose of this study is to examin the depiction of culturalmeetings in history books in relatioon to the schoolguidelines, and how and why the description may have changed over time. To achieve this, a qualitative method was used to analyze the content of cultural meetings in Swedish schoolbooks after the World War II. The material used in the study was taken from eight editions of Alla tiders historia published between 1985-2011. The material was then put together and analyzed from the theoretical perspectives, which try to explain the factors that influenced the depiction of the texts.The results of this study shows, that over time, the school guidelines have incresed their focus on human value and the need for students to interact with people from other cultures. The depictions in the history books lives upp to the demands of the school guidelines, but this study shows that the main influence of the content of the book is the social context.

The main purpose of this essay was to study whether niche parties that were represented in municipal councils in Sweden during the 2007-2010 term of office were politically relevant. Furthermore, factors that might facilitate political relevance for niche parties were studied. Political relevance was studied using two theoretical perspectives. The objective model of political relevance presents four categories of relevance based on the relations between political parties in a political assembly; governing parties, coalition parties, blackmail parties and isolated parties. The subjective model of political relevance relies on the party representatives? own judgments of the relevance of their parties.

The following study is a comparative analysis on the usage of history in Ridley Scott?s epic Kingdom of Heaven. Based on the thesis that this movie has a lot to say about contemporary political values, it compares the theatrical version from 2005 with the 45 minute extended Director?s Cut, which came out on DVD in 2006. Firmly based in the popular-cultural context I tried to evaluate whether these changes related in any way, to matters concerning the current gender debate and post-colonial theory.

This paper is about finding a set of unwritten rules pertaining to the teaching of history in an exclusively Swedish college. I want to know if truancy among immigrants has anything to do with SO teachers? choice of content or their teaching methods. Unwritten rules are a complex phenomenon but by applying different perspectives and teaching methods a pattern will emerge. It is possible to discover different influences in the way the teacher chooses their material and work plan.

This thesis deals with non-wanted political parties e.g. right wing populism. How should a democracy handle these opinions? So far these parties have been neglected and not even considered as real parties. By excluding them from the debate and the political arena, media and more established parties have seen them merely as a threat than as democratic parties.

In December 2004 an earthquake coursed waves that hit Thailand. Over 5000 people died, and Sweden was the tourist country that has been effected the worst. The catastrophe precipitated Sweden in crises and the demand became high for Swedish government to act. Swedes followed the development via media, why media became the crucial element for how the public perceived politicians? acting.

This study aims to investigate the origin and the development of a certain type of decision phenomena, namely political decision chains. A political decision chain is defined as a seemingly rational decision being made, that is reverted through a new decision and this for other reasons than the original decision being regarded as having fulfilled its intended purpose. The essay attempts to explain the occurrence of these decision chains through a case study in order to thoroughly examine the complexities that surround political decisions overall. The essay concludes that uncontrollable factors and chance to a large extent affect the origin of these chains, allowing actors to change the political agenda according to their preferences. The relative weighting of these factors that is made by the actors, which exist within the decision chain, makes them underestimate the relative power of other actors that may have different preferences.

There are three main purposes for this thesis; the first is to distinguish the possible violations that can occur in time of natural disasters. The second is to analyze if there is a correlation between political systems and how the effected country handles the aftermath of a natural disaster. The third purpose is to determine the role of the global community and what responsibility lies with them. The issue is often that the aid becomes the main object for discussion and analysis, but the focus rarely shifts to the effected State. Therefore the focus in this essay is the political system and how they cope with the human rights violations that can occur in a time of natural disaster.

The aim of this paper is to elucidate and analyze history teacher's didactic choices in the conflict between unequal educational materials and the requirements of equality in the curriculum of Swedish secondary school. The empirical data consists of interviews with five secondary school history teachers, observations of their lessons as well as analysis of their tests. The starting point was to investigate teachers' didactic work in the role as a bridge between the non-equal historiography presented in textbooks in history and the curriculum?s demands for equality. Three different approaches have been observed in the teachers' didactic work when considering gender perspective into their teaching: that women become extensions in a male-dominated historiography; that another part of the story is presented when a gender perspective is considered; and that the gender perspective is included in history teaching and becomes an integral part of all the content of the subject.Several of the teachers acknowledged that gender equality is less prioritized than the courses core content and related assessment criteria.

Political disenchantment and detachment is proven to be growing in well established democracies. This development brings along concerning behavior regarding general political participation. Fewer citizens participate in elections, parties are losing members, and the trust in politicians is steadily decreasing. IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has been registering voter turnout worldwide for the last 60 years and their publications show a decline in voter participation since the 1980s.During the same period of time another development has caught attention, namely the fast progress of the medium Internet. The new generation of Internet functions is called Web 2.0 and allows users not only to create content, but also to interact with each other.This dissertation aims to explore the possibilities emerging when integrating Web 2.0 in political processes.