Modern democracies rest on a foundation of values essential to their prosperity. Two of those values are freedom of speech and political equality. To many, these values appear to coexist effortlessly. However, what this thesis aims to expose are some of the problems that quickly arise when attempts to interpret the values fail.The thesis investigates a specific US Supreme Court ruling called Citizens United. The ruling enabled corporations and unions to use their own treasuries for unlimited independent political expenditures.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate why the two Swedish municipalities of Frykerud and Östmark were the only municipalities in Värmland that were forcibly merged by the state during the ?Municipality block reform? of 1971, and whether local identities played a role in the resistance against this reform.     The study is designed as a comparative case study and builds on both history and political science to analyze the topic from a broader perspective. Based on the research situation three theoretical theses have been formulated, the durability of which will be tested in the analysis part of the essay.    The study notes that Frykeruds resistance against the ?Municipality block reform? started when the reform prevented a planned retirement home construction in the municipality. In the analytical part of the essay, the author discusses how the discontent can be interpreted as symptomatic of bourgeois centralization resistance, as well as being due to the fact that traditional, local self-government as a political subject was perceived as threatened.

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.

The essay?s main focus has been to investigate and analyze the political actions behind the 2015?s grade compromise; an agreement to introduce grades from the fourth year in primary school. Through a game-theory analysis, mainly based in Leif Lewin?s and Jörgen Herman's research on rationality in politics, this study examined the grade debate  during a fifteen year period. The primary task has thereby been to explain the grade compromise through game-theory.

This master thesis is about one of the first female in the Swedish Parliament, Elisabeth Tamm (1880?1958), and her political articles in the magazine Tidevarvet. The aim of this study is to find similarities with Tamm?s political thoughts with the Ecofeministic theory. Due to women?s right to vote 1919 women citizenship was in a political debate.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the parties (USA, Great Britain, UN and the European Union) legitimize their intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina as seen from without the conceptions of sovereignty and intervention. USA and the UN have legitimized their intervention on security reasons. The American president, George W. Bush, claimed that democracies never engage in war with each other and that democracies were prosperous just because they were democracies. According to the president, that is why it is important to democratise the whole Balkan region to protect the international community from terrorism which grows in unstable and undemocratic states.

Despite the fact that the issue has been discussed for several decades, there are still no rules in Sweden mandating Political parties and candidates to disclose received donations. Because of this lack of transparency, Sweden is not fulfilling some of its international obligations and has fallen behind in the international trend to increase the transparency of election campaign finance. The lack of disclosure rules in Sweden has led to extensive criticism, most notably from the Council of Europe´s group of states against corruption, Greco, who criticized Sweden in light of the guidelines on the subject from the Council of Europe. At this writing, a new proposal for disclosure rules is being prepared at the Department of Justice, DoJ. The proposal is to be presented in spring 2013.

When it comes to political representation, all over the world women almost always make up a minority of representatives in the legislative bodies. The Scandinavian countries in general and Sweden in particular have though been exceptions to this rule with, when compared to other countries, a rather high percentage of women in elected positions. This development took off in the seventies: during that decade the unit percentage of women in the Swedish Riksdag rose by double!The aim for this thesis is to analyse what underlying ideas influenced this advance. The focus is on three different female party federations, who are believed to have had a great impact on this increase of women politicians through their influence in their own mother parties. The federations analysed are the ones connected to the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party and the Liberal party.

The aim of this thesis is to spread some light over the coming into being of the 2005 Pension Reform in Norway. The point of departure lies within an interest in Welfare State politics and the development in this field. Pensions constitute a cornerstone in the Welfare State. Making use of J. Kingdon´s Theory of the Agenda Setting Process, Discourse Theory and Institutional Theory the thesis seek to visualize the implications of structures, central actors and discourses on the reform processes.

The debate concerning face veiling has been brought in to view by several governments in Europe. Luca Mavelli studies the debate regarding the burqa using the concept of securitization and from that the objective of this study is to analyze the medial- and the political discourse in Sweden regarding the burqa. The formulated questions drawn from this is; who are the securitizing actors? According to the securitization actors, who can de defined as a referent object? Wherein is the threat according to the securitizing actors? Is it possible to recognize a difference between the medial and the political discourse?Furthermore the paper adopts the theoretical framework that is the concept of securitization, formulated by the Copenhagen School of security. The methodological foundation is based on a social constructivist approach and consequently uses Norman Faircloughs critical discourse analyzes as an analytical tool.

 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.

The Sweden Democrats uses a term to describe a situation where ?swedes? are being discriminated against by other ethnic groups and where the elite is promoting this. The term ?svenskfientlighet? can be translated as ?swedofobia? and in this thesis a speech by the party leader Jimmie Åkesson held during the election campaign that solely was dedicated to this term is being analyzed with the help of tools developed by the scholar Ruth Wodak. Ruth Wodak has previously analyzed the rhetoric by other European right-wing-populist parties like FPÖ in Austria and has asked for other researchers to analyze the speech used by right-wing-populist and extremist parties to get a better understanding for just how these parties construct their different enemies.

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

The purpose of this essay is to study causes for the lack of political trust in Europe and especially in Sweden. The essay starts with a presentation of two theories about the reasons for low political trust. Robert D. Putnam among others presents a theory that gives social capital an important role when viewing the low political trust. As Putnam sees it a person that participates in any kind of organization, political or not, develop trust for other human beings that in the long run affects political trust.

The aim of this essay is to show if and how group identities are being constructed in maindocuments from three Political parties in the Swedish parliament, focusing on class, genderand ethnic identities. The three parties who?s documents are being analyzed are theModerate Party, the Sweden Democrats and the Left Party. The conclusion of the essay isthat the Moderate Party is so focused on the individual that they are not promoting groupidentity based on class, gender or ethnicity. The Sweden Democrats are mostly discussing,and therefore creating a discourse of, cultural identity, where Swedish, Nordic, Europeanand Western culture are being created as the ?us?, and others are being created as ?them?.They are also promoting difference between men and women, therefore dividing the sexesin groups.