The aim of this essay is to examine whether democracy in St Petersburg isconsolidated or not. Since studies of democratic transition have been rarelyconducted on post-communist cities, this study seems fruitful. Using the Linz andStepan theory, where democracy is considered consolidated when it has become?the only game in town? and Orttung's three criteria legitimacy, politicalpolarisation and policy effectiveness; this essay analyzes people's attitudes,political behaviour, the rule of law and civil society in St Petersburg. Theory isused to interpret the material mainly consisting of two interviews and newspaperarticles.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan?s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy.

The aim of this study is to explain and analyse political steering of public libraries in Swedish municipalities and the roles of politicians and administrators in this process. To fulfil this purpose five municipalities have been studied. It is argued that both politicians and administration have to be included in a study of steering and that the relation between politicians and administrators should be seen as an interplay. Planning and evaluation are discerned as the two main activities in the steering process. The material in this study consists mainly of information collected through interviews with library responsible politicians and library managers in all five municipalities.The results show that libraries are considered politically uncontroversial and that politicians see little need for political interference and steering.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka synen på kvinnors rätt till utbildning och kvinnans plats i samhället i samband med riksdagsdebatten om läroverksreformen 1927. Genom denna reform skulle det bli ytterliggare förbättringar, mer lika vilkor för båda könen i vår utbildningshistoria. Utvecklingen av denna reform ledde till att kvinnor skulle få tillträde till de statliga läroverken och därmed kunde avlägga en högre utbildningsexamen. Genom denna undersökning vill jag lyfta fram de olika åsikterna om kvinnors rätt till utbildning på politisk nivå under mellankrigstiden i Sverige, för att vi som blivande lärare ska få en förståelse för andra länders situation idag när det gäller utbildning för flickor och pojkar..

Before the general election 2006 all of the Swedish parties represented in the Parliament held their political party conference. At each political party conference, the leader for respectively party held their opening speech, a speech that was covered by the press. This essay deals with how the press covers these speeches. Analysing how the different speeches were covered by the press, some tendencies regarding how the press report could be visualised. In this comparison the ?quantitative content analysis? was used.

Marks do not only work as an acknowledge of the effort that has been made under a long period of time, but also as a receipt for eligibility to further studies. Within the political debate, marks have often caused a big discussion among the political parties. That is due to the obvious difference between the political parties on the left, and their counterparts on the right. However, there is one thing that they all have in common. Everyone of them have plans of measure within their political agenda, regarding the use of marks.The aim of this study has been to try to understand the way pupils think about marks.

The subject this thesis will investigate concerns the matter of how political ideologies exist within public libraries with a focus on the democratic ideal. Public libraries are part of the political system and we want to show how political ideologies take their shape in public libraries and the possible consequences of this. With the help of three major political ideologies, liberalism, conservatism and socialism we investigate how the democratic ideals of these ideologies are expressed in documents that describes activities the libraries will and have performed. In order to identify these ideologies we use discourses in cultural policy as a bridge between the investigated documents and the political ideologies. As an analytical tool we have developed a model that describes the relation between text, discourse and ideology which we use in our analysis.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Swedish society has gone through a great change. Firstly with the personal computer and then with the internet moving in to everyday life, a new arena for interaction with society evolved. Work, education, doing bank errands and reading or discussing the news, just to name a few, now all take place in the virtual world online. Not to mention social media sites such as twitter, instagram or facebook, the last of which has over half of the Swedish population represented as members.   Companies, corporations, interest groups, political parties and politicians must be aware of the massive impact that a post spread through social media can have.    This thesis will, with the text analyzing tool, argumentation analysis, and on the theoretical platform of political communications theory, analyze three of the most viral Swedish political posts spread over 120 000 times each, to see if there are any combined qualities that point to the fact that there is a formula for getting a post to become a viral success on social media.    The main result showed that of the three posts analyzed, all were built up around a factual thesis, argued for with foremost example arguments, not only appealing to the logical branch of argumentation but also to the ethical, and that they tended to be of high relevance and sustainability. The conclusion must therefore be that these are all qualities that tend to be of relevance for making a political post on social media into a viral success..

The Swedish election year of 2010 has just begun and the political actors are mobilizing their communication efforts to win the votes of the public. The political campaigns of 2010 have the potential to be the first where a new channel for political communication has the potential to make a difference ? the social media. This paper aims to describe in what ways a Member of Parliament, Nina Larsson (FP), together with the PR-agency Hello Clarice are using social media to conduct political campaigning on the web. It also aims to study if the professional consultants of Hello Clarice have any influence over Nina Larsson?s political communication.The theoretical framework which is the base for this study are theories of an extended public sphere in the age of mediation.

This thesis is concerned with political mobilization and the construction of a collective andsocial identity. The main purpose of the study is theoretical which emphasize their interaction.In order to do this I study the two phenomenons by seeing them as cases of each other. Wecannot understand one of the two phenomenons without taking into account the other as well.In addition, the secondary aim of my thesis is empirical. I use the political transformationduring the 70th and 80th on the eastern seaboard of Nicaragua to relate my theoretical analysisof political mobilization and the construction of identities. Nicaragua will provide mytheoretical analysis with new insights.

The Government announced a new school reform which aims to support teacher appraisal and professionalism within the Swedish education system. The once well renowned profession is hurting by the decreasing quality of the Swedish education system and the declining number of applicants to the university teacher program. The school reform introduced a new career path for especially skilled teachers to an occupation earlier characterized by a homogenous work force. The Government encourages principals to promote thriving teachers to first teachers, whom will receive an increase in the salary covered by state aid. By supporting these effective teachers, the Government wishes to increase the image perceived and status of the profession and improve the competitiveness of teaching's salary.

Abstract Essay in political science, C-level, by Patrik Larsson, autumn semester 2007.Tutor: Susan Marton The battle over the agenda-Can media be regarded as an individual political actor? The purpose of this essay is to study to what extent media can be regarded to function as an individual political actor. In other words, do the media have more power over the political agenda than the politicians and do the media influence how the politicians make their decisions. This research is a case study and to be able to complete the intention of this study I have used Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaws theory, the agenda-setting theory. From this theory I have used four aspects to analyse my material which has consisted of editorials from a Swedish newspaper, interpellations and debates that belong to the interpellations. The aspect I have worked with are, how the problem is defined, who is responsible for the problem, what values and which solutions are expressed.  I have used a qualitative text analysis as my methodological approach which means that the results of my study are my interpretation of the material. My conclusions are that the media in this case shouldn?t be regarded as an individual political actor because there is no tendency that shows that the media has influenced the government in their decisions concerning the real-estate tax.

This thesis examines the possibility of Bolivian indigenous women?s social movements? getting their demands of a gender equal society fulfilled in the new state which was initiated in 2005 when Evo Morales became the first president representing the indigenous people of the country. By using a qualitative method I have showed that although the Bolivian indigenous women?s social movements? historically has been significant political actors for social change in the country, with representation at both regional and national level, Bolivian women are still subordinated in the social and political sphere. By applying a feminist intersectional perspective which takes its point of departure in a understanding of power as multidimensional, where gender, ethnicity and class are constitutive principals, multiculturalism theories and a social movements theory framework, I have found that even if institutional changes, that opened the system increased the indigenous women?s social movements political participation in Bolivia, power structures based on gender limited their possibilities to influence both socially and politically.

AbstractThe purpose of this theses is to compare three different political groups, The IRA, The Baader-Meinhof group and the Al Qaida, who have all used terroristic methods to achieve their separate goals.By finding out about their history, goals, structures and methods I have made a comparison to see what joins them, what separates them, what originated the birth of their movements and how they can or could proceed with their violent actions to the point that they had actual impact on international politics.It has all been done through a litteraturebased study.My focuse has been on Al Qaida since it's is the only one of the three who is still active today and who, through its cellstructure, represents a new form of global terrorism that may have great influence on the structural patterns of other political groups and criminal organizations in the future.Key words:Al QaidaBaader-MeinhofIRATerrorismCellstructure.

In order to fully grasp the phenomena 'City' we must understand its political structure as an integrated part of its physical structure and vice versa. This thesis focuses on one crucial element of the City, the public space, and discusses it in relation to the public realm, or sphere, of the City. The aim is to see if it is possible to conceive public space as a spatial dimension of power, and if so, how to analyse this. With the help of the theoretical tool of two ideal types of the configuration of public space, "The city as civic public life" and "The city as authoritarian control" an empirical study is carried out on the case of Prishtina, capital of Kosovo.Conclusions made are that function and use of a city's public spaces can be understood in relation to changes in the political climate of the society. Furthermore, a void in the asset of concepts offered by the ideal types is found ? and therefore also need for new concepts to describe and understand a public space undergoing a dynamic transformation, as being a part of a city in political transition..