Following essay discusses the possibilities of using a gender perspective when studying local governance within a Swedish context. Governance is an international concept used to describe a more lose, informal and network based way of doing politics The main purpose for conducting this essay is that traditional theoretical frameworks used in the study of local politics are not enough to fully conceptualize the complexity of our changing political environment.After a broad summing up of what had been done in the recent decades within Swedish political science on the topic of local politics and gender I came to the conclusion that so far nothing had been written on governance. The next step was therefore to conduct a pilot study to cover the subject matter of governance and gender. The study was based upon interviews with five female politicians in Malmoe city.Results showed that governance, in terms of informal networks did exist, and had influence over the local politics. Some of the networks were male dominated.

Japan's foreign and security policy has seen some substantial changes as a result of events like the first Gulf war and 9/11th. This has been taken as proof, by some, that Japan is abandoning its antimilitaristic stance and pursuing a more traditional hard power role through military means. This essay aims to explore if these shifts have coincided with any substantial shifts away from antimilitarism, which has had a strong influence on the country's security policy since the end of WW2.To do this I use constructivist theory, specifically regarding the impact of norms and identities on states security policy and briefly look into the problem of actor designation. The thematic focus is on security policy, from a narrow perspective, and thus I examine areas like the input and output to the Japanese military and the actual applications of this force. State identity is used to explore the prevalence of nationalistic sentiments and support for anti militarism in the public opinion and the political elite.The result of this study points to the further relevance of constructivist theory and especially the application of norms and identity.

Following changes in society and other influences, the ideology of political parties can evolveover time. For example, theories exist claiming that all parties in Sweden strive towards the"middle".A good example of a political party in Sweden which recently has gained entry toparliament is the Swedish Green Party (Miljöpartiet, MP).MP was initially influenced by a green ideology (ecologism) which started as a globalmovement stating that no other ideologies shared their concerns about the environment. Thegoal of the ideology was to, via an increased influence within the political system and throughsmall-scale production, increases both natural values and people's well being. By becomingelected into parliament it is plausible that the ideology of MP could have changed due to theinfluence of for example, the realities that parliamentary every day represent.The aim with this essay was to study the changes in MP's party program from the yearof 1994 and the most recent, to see if any changes have occurred related to MP's officialideology. The study was conducted using a comparative text analysis.

AbstractParticiapation from the citizens in a democratic society is one of the ground pilars for the function of the democratic society. The goal for the Swedish contemporary democracy is to complement the representative democracy with different kinds of participatory activities for the citizens. But is it working? The purpose of this essay is to exame the problems that might occur when the citizens participate in a wider extent than just voting. The focus is problems connected to the democratic value political equality.

A group of scientist, called the council of democracy in Sweden made a predictionabout members of political parties, in 2013 members should not exist. In this essaythat statement going to be questioned. It shows that most of the political parties losesmembers in Sweden. The only differences from year 2000 and now is that in 14 yearsthe parties has lost 65000 members, between 1991-1999 it was about 220000members. Something has changed.

The concept of the dynamic region has become a more prospering thought in the era of globalisation. This concerns in particular, cross border regions ? well-integrated territorial regions crossing more than one nation. In this paper I examine the development from a critical perspective and I map the democratic pitfalls of new territorial political constructions across national borders. The empirical analysis is a case report taken from the Öresund region, a cross border region between Sweden and Denmark.

A group of scientist, called the council of democracy in Sweden made a predictionabout members of political parties, in 2013 members should not exist. In this essaythat statement going to be questioned. It shows that most of the political parties losesmembers in Sweden. The only differences from year 2000 and now is that in 14 yearsthe parties has lost 65000 members, between 1991-1999 it was about 220000members. Something has changed.

Our paper is a study about youth and their self-images. During our practical training period we found that the problems young people had always were connected with their self-image. We therefore wanted to find out what youth believe influence their self-image. The purpose of our study was to examine young people and their self-images in a perspective of the ecological systems model. Essential issues have been what self-images young people have, what they consider influence their self-image most, how they think they can resist influence from the environment and how they would like to be influenced by the environment if they could decide themselves.

Allocation of funds to public libraries is uneven and this study will try to explain the reasons and clarify why the allocations of funds are distributed like they are and what calculations influenced the financial apportionment. This master thesis accounts for allocation in seven public libraries in Uppsala. The study shows that one reason for uneven allocations is demographic. Another reason is that the library has come into a good or bad circle. There are no models for allocation of funds to public libraries in Uppsala, thats why their allocations are given after a percentage increase of earlier years allocations, and that leads to a good or bad circle.

The purpose of this study is to describe the motivations of women to participate in politics and to examine whether women feel that they are held back by something in their political participation. The questions of this study are:How do women motivate their participation in different fields in politics?Are there any obstacles that are holding women back in their political participation? Interviews have been used as the method to gather the empirical data. When applying the theoretical framework on the empirical material the main conclusion is that women tend to participate more frequently in political activities that are less time consuming and more sporadic in comparison to more traditional forms of political participation. Women are also more inclined to participate in political activities on a lower level that makes up part of their everyday life, one example of this is women?s increasing participating in political consumerism. Keywords: Politiskt deltagande, kvinnor, motivation, politik, politisk jämlikhet, politiska sfärer.

This study is case study of political participation among the Kani tribe from Kuttichal grama panchayat in the Thiruvananthapuram district in Kerala, India. The study is based on the collected data of 117 people of the Kani tribe living in four different settlements: Pankavu, Mangode-Valippara, Chonampara and Kaithode. The aim of the study is to examine the impact on political participation by different factors, which is done by the use of the quantitative method of cross tables. The study confirms previous studies in its conclusion that high status individuals, defined in terms of education and economic standard, are the group of the highest political participation, when this is defined as being involved in political work and holding a party membership. On the local political scene however, where political participation consists of participation in local assemblies and voluntary work, the impact of the examined variables are very limited.

This study explores the different effects on attitude and behaviour three frequently used advertising techniques have. The techniques compared are social influence and egoistic and altruistic benefit-appeals. The results showed that ads featuring social influence had statistically significant higher mean values regarding attitude towards the ad compared to both the other ads, and significantly higher mean values regarding brand attitude compared to the ad appealing to egoistic motivations. Though, all advertising effectiveness measures used in this study - that is, attitude and intention variables - indicated that social influence was more effective than the other advertising messages. Thus, in accord with earlier studies, it can be stated with confidence that social influence is an effective tool to use in marketing communications..

This paper investigates whether there is a right not to suffer from poverty. The investigation is being conducted from the theoretical standpoint/view that only civil and political rights constitute justiciable rights and rights proper from a moral stance, whereas economic and social rights constitute mere political agendas or less.In the search of an answer to this question the content of economic and social rights, and thereafter civil and political rights will be outlined, followed by an inquiry of what should really be considered as rights. Finally, the arguments against economic and social rights as real rights is presented and scrutinized.This paper will conclude that the stated difference between the above-mentioned sets of rights is illusory and that the right not to suffer from poverty ought to have the same status as civil and political rights..

The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

The development aid from Sweden to developing countries is a activity thatinvolves a great deal of monetary founds as well as an opportunity to influence the environmental situation in a partner country. It´s also an opportunity to promote Sweden's values in a field like the environment, setting a good example is important. This thesis aims to evaluate Sida´s environmental policy and find out if there in fact is a Environmental Policy Integration Policy (EPI) taking place. EPI is a policyimplementation theory that emphasise the importance of the total integration of the environmental in the organisation as a whole. To identify this I will use a theoretical framework of indicators invented by William M.