Since 1983 the people of Sri Lanka has endured an ongoing Civil war, however the intencity has varied over the years. The aim of this theses is to examine what influence the asymmetric relationship between the Sri Lankan goverment and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has on the process of negotiating a solution to the civil war. I am also examining whether the asymmetical relationship has changed over time and if these changes have had any effect on the process.To analyze the asymmetries I divide them into material and non-material. I measure the material asymmetries in economic and military resourses, and to measure the non-material I use indicators such as commitment, alternative, controll and legitimacy.The results show that the asymmetrical relations between the parties in Sri Lanka have changed since the 1990s. Factors like 9/11 and the recurrent suicide bombings by the LTTE has had a great influence on the singalese-tamil relationsship.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the political ambitions regarding culture inVärmland, and the situation for artists living on the countryside in Värmland. This meansthat the conditions surronding the artists situation will be looked upon. I have chosen thepolitical document Kulturplanen, created by Region Värmland, as my guideline to whatkind of political view there is on art and cultures role in the region. Furthermore, I havechosen Pierre Bourdieu`s theory about art as a field controlled by and under the influenceof different rules within the filed itself and what or whom has the power to act and be apart of the filed. I also use interviews as my method for this study.

Sweden was transformed to a democratic industrial society in the late 19th century. Political influence had been bound to the four estates, nobles, clergy, burghers and farmers. The reforms of the 1860s moved Sweden towards political democracy with universal suffrage. At the national level a two-chamber parliament was established in 1866. Political power should now be a function of economic status.

This qualitative study is aimed to find out how teachers at one preschool relate to influence and boundaries. This has been carried out through qualitative interviews whose contents have been analyzed and processed. The theoretical framework of the study is the philosophy of John Dewey derived from Pragmatism, where thought and action is seen as one where the child needs to try and experiment to learn. We are two authors who stand for this study in which we both were present at all times for the interviews.The interviews revealed that teachers believe that influence is important for children's self-esteem, to become a good citizen of the community and to learn that certain things are expected. It also emerged that influence combined with boundaries is seen as very important.It appeared that the teachers look at influence in preschool in three different ways - influence here and now, influence in the future and influence for the children self-esteem.

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..

The purpose of this study is to examine the Swedish national student organizations attitudes towards school food and the school food debate between 1957-1982. The previous research on the subject maps the historical background and development of the school meal, but lacks a contemporary student perspective from the chosen time period, not least on a deeper and more political level. The theoretical starting points in the study concern organizations and their influence on public authorities as well as student influence. These theoretical frameworks are used to describe the conditions for the currently active national student organizations; Elevf?rbundet and SECO, in the political arena.

This Bachelor Thesis is entitled "WTO-spelarena för utvecklingsländer? En studie om avgörande faktorer för utvecklingsländers förmåga att implementera sina regimpreferenser". Through our empirical results in conjunction with realist theories, this Bachelor thesis attempts to answer the questions: (1) How does the decline in American power, the nature of existing institutional structure and Third World unity, influence the ability of developing countries to secure its preferred regimes? (2) What function do informal meetings in the WTO have? (3) How does access to informal meetings influence the ability of developing countries to secure its preferred regimes? The paper makes use of case studies from the Ministerial meetings in the Doha development round.The conclusion is that access to these meetings is an important variable to explain the extent to which the Third World can be able to secure its preferred regimes. The degree to which developing countries can secure their preferred regimes is therefore a function of four variables: the nature of existing institutional structures; Third World unity, the attitude and power of the United States and foremost access to informal meetings..

AbstractBachelor thesis in political science by Alexander Hassan, autumn 2008, ?Effects of external factors on a nations democratisation process during the transition from authoritarian to electoral democratic rule ? A categorical analysis?Supervisor: Tomas SedeliusIn recent years globalization has become a hot topic in understanding the world we live in today. Globalization has indeed had a great impact on international relations and with it a great influence on the domestic conditions that determine a nation?s possibilities. It is therefore rational to hold true that this also would apply to a nation?s democratic process.

This paper discuss the possibilities to improve the Swedish political nomination system. It brings up some of the values and norms that can be used to change the existing system. Values as openness, the demand of responsibility and also if there is values from the American spoils system that can be used in the Swedish system. A minor purpose is to discuss the part of the parliament within the nomination process. To investigate this I have some theoretical starting points and a self constructed analysis tool.

In this study we have explored and investigated how journalist experience the relationship with politicians/press secretaries in the making of political news. The study examines how journalists see the balance of power between them and their political sources in the setting of the news agenda. To do this we have used a qualitative interview analysis. Our theoretical starting points have been based on the social exchange model. The social exchange model has a social psychological and sociological perspective that explains the interaction, social exchange and stability as a process of negotiation exchanges between parties and operators.

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.

This thesis is using the theory of participatory democracy to show how one can work to increase the participation in the society, between elections as well as during elections. For a couple of years now many traditional democratic countries have been struggling with low voting rates. Hence this, I find it interesting to study what has been done to cope with this problem. The government in Sweden had a project working on how to make more people involved in the democratic process, especially people that to a lesser extent participate in this process. In this thesis two projects will be studied, Möllevångsgruppen and Unga väljer Miljö i Malmö.

The number of blogs, from weblogs, are increasing every day. Blogs are also becoming more visible in the public debate as well as the awareness of their existance is rising among politicians and citizens. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question what democratic potential blogs can have. This question will be answered by initially studying the research that exists today about weblogs and democracy. The second part of the analysis consists of a selection of texts from weblogs that touches this subject.

The question of whether there is soft law in international law has been as much the subject of contemporary debate as whether or not there is private legal authority in the international society. The legal boundaries seem to be blurred by the process of globalisation and the recent shift in international law. The traditional definition of international law has been outdated as new forms of treaties has introduced new subject of law to the judicial arena. At the same time a supplementary map of law has been added to the cartography of international law, soft law. These correlating processes have comprehensive political and legal consequences at both the international and national levels.

This thesis evaluates the user board of the elememtary school in Veberöd, Sweden. In this process an evaluation model is developed. The model itself gets evaluated in a meta-evaluation to improve the model for future use.The starting point of the evaluation is the deliberative democracy theory. Although Sweden is a representative democracy an official desire exists to have a democracy with deliberative qualities. The evaluation model is constructed to fit this context and is therefore, not only, set out from classical goal-based evaluation but also from deliberative democratic evaluation.