This essay examines wether the prevailing opinion of Machiavelli as a prominent figure in political realism is correct or if the author is misinterpreted and can be said to represent something more. Thus, the puropse of this essay is to revise the description of Machiavelli given in widely used Swedish textbooks. This is done on the basis of a thesis saying that Machiavelli, judged not by his renowned book ?The Prince? (Fursten), but in the light of his extensive work ?Discourses? (Republiken), does not advocate a sovereign power but rather promote a pluralistic society. The method used in this essay is a qualitative textanalysis, which is done on the two books in purpose to examine three central themes in Machiavelli?s writing; the morality, the view on humanity and the state and citizen.

This essay aims to examine Martha Nussbaum's proposal for a classical defense of reform in liberal education and her critique of utility thinking in higher education. I want to explore how Nussbaum uses history to create an ethical alternative that cultivates both moral and intellectual virtues, which she considers to be crucial for the survival of democracy. In examining Nussbaum's use of Aristotle, I focus on her work as a proposal for institutional implementation of an Aristotelian epistemology and the cultivation of the individual as an ethical political subject. This study highlights the epistemological, educational and political ideas that form the basis of Nussbaum's ideals. I intend, however, to go beyond a contextualizing reading and thus establish a dialogue with a radical intersubjectivity to respond to Nussbaum's ambitions to recognize human vulnerabilities as assets for reason.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the ways in which culture and cultural policy are being articulated in the process of Lund's application to become Sweden's European Cultural Capital of 2014.I have used Dorte Skot-Hansen's three cultural political rationalities: the humanistic-, the sociological- and the instrumental rationality, as well as and Jenny Johannisson's extension of those into three cultural-political discourses, as sensitizing concepts in my analysis. The questions raised are: How are the three rationalities/discourses articulated in the chosen central documents and in the process surrounding them? Which themes and arguments dominate the chosen documents?The main objects of my study have been four texts that have been produced in the applicationprocess: a Prestudy, a Plan of action, a Broschure and a Cultural policy. Along with them local political protocols, newspaper articles and other related material have been used. The research method applied was a qualitative eclectical textual analysis with emphasis on the content and on tracing the way the rationalities were expressed in the material.The rationalities were all found to be articulated in the four texts.

This thesis studies three kinds of debate formats. Those are DN Debatt, SVT Debatt and Ring P1. The focus lies in the interrelations between these forums and how they interact with theri audience. Since debate is an essential tool for political and democratic practice, it is vital to study the movements and the realtions between these media formats. Some of the questions in this study are: What happens with a debate topic when it moves between the formats? In which way are the formats democratic and what does their communicative forms mean for political practice and citizen participation? The study shoes how the interpretation of a specific term can expand during a debate.

The aim of this paper is in part to distinguish the ideas raised in the Swedish political debate on the new discrimination law in relation to protection of groups. Is protection by law against discrimination needed for the individual or the group? If it is needed for members of groups, are these groups viewed on as static or variable. Are there any conflicts present between group interests? We link these ideas to three different theoretical perspectives: multiculturalism, feminism and intersectionality and further examine the differences and contradictions between the perspectives represented by members of parliament.

The purpose of this study is to show what melancholy and irony in my poems express and what techniques that are used to accomplish these effects. Many theorists, among them Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva, characterize melancholy as an experience of loss, and therefore one of my questions is what kind of losses appear in my poetry. In search for an answer I analyze the texts from both a psychoanalytic and a sociological point of view. In the latter perspective I discuss the postmodern society using concepts from contemporary thinkers like Zygmunt Bauman, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Finally, I also examine if melancholy has an influence on the form of the poems.

AbstractCities are once again becoming the locus of economic, social and political processes. The effect of these processes on the city is two-fold: one one hand they threaten to fragment and dislocate the city and the actors within them, on the other hand they give actors within cities new opportunities to react and mobilize resources towards different strategies of integration. The latter gives rise to what Patrick Le Galès calls the collective actor-city. The aim of this thesis is to explore the notion of the city as a collective actor in a swedish context by utilizing Le Galès theory of european cities as collective actors in an abductive case study on the city of Malmoe. By utilizing Le Galès five dimensions that make up a collective actor I analyze interviews conducted with city officals aswell as documents produced from the city wide plan of action Welfare for everybody.

Political scandals are constantly abound in the media, rulers face the global tribunal of the mass media and are forced to defend their actions and above all, their position in society. This essay concerns itself with that defence ? more specifi- cally with the defence of four Swedish politicians in high office during four different scandals. Gudrun Schymans? eva- sion, Laila Freivalds? dealing with the tsunami disaster in Thailand, Annie Lo?o?fs? tangle concerning representation notes and public documents and Tobias Billstro?ms? statements concerning undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers.

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, drawing from several empirical investigations, reaches the conclusion that there seems to be a positive correlation between the level of democracy and the level of state capacity in Latin American countries. This correlation is explained by a hypothesis derived from Rational Choice theory. With some important caveats, this conclusion is then applied to the discussion about democracy as a form of government. Within democracy, the thesis also offers an insight into different electoral systems and its possible implications, mostly on a theoretical level. The thesis only exists in swedish as of yet..

Social enterprises are increasingly gaining ground as an organisational form in Sweden, however the institutional structures for financing these types of organisations are yet to be established. With its usual origin within the civic society, social enterprises prioritise a higher goal than to maximise economic profit, which often causes these organisations to be dependent upon resources from external constituents within its institutional environment. The aim of this study was to examine how a social enterprise, which derives from the civic society, acts to mobilise resources from constituents in its institutional environment. This was executed through a case study of Jordbro Världsorkester (JVO) - a typical organisation in the civic society which takes the form of a social enterprise - by identifying how assets were used to gain resources in strategic responses to institutional processes and examining how institutional processes affects how JVO acts. Throughout the study, qualitative interviews were conducted with JVO and constituents in its institutional environment and a theoretical framework was developed which explains how capital is used to gain more capital in an emergent strategy of strategic responses as the organisation gets in contact with institutional processes from its institutional environment.

This paper deals with institutional and structural factors' influence on democratic transition in limited multiparty regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Comparing the cases Kenya and Tanzania, of which the former has made a transition to democracy and the latter has not, this paper reaches the conclusion that political traditions, the coalescing of the opposition, and the elites ability to learn from the electoral process is essential for a transition to democracy. In the specific cases, the harshness of the Moi regime and the Tanzanian vision of national unity may possibly carry some explanatory power, alongside the pressure from international actors.These results have been reached through the application of a comparative case study, where democratic transition constitutes the dependent variable. It should be noted that a harsh definition of the term transition has been applied, according to which the incumbents actual loss of an election is a necessary indicator for transition. However, the Freedom House and Polity scores have been brought up as complement of this definition.

The purpose of this study is to survey how the Sweden Democrats? success in the latest election to the Swedish parliament has changed teaching in social science. The main question is: in what way has the success of the Sweden Democrats influenced social science teaching? This leads to following sub-questions: 1) how do the social science teachers define the Sweden Democrats, 2) how do teachers relate to the Sweden Democrats in the classroom, 3) has there been a change in students? political opinions and 4) were there any discussions or proposals from the school administration which followed the parliamentary election of 2010? To answer these questions, interviews were made with four teachers. The main conclusion of this study is that the Sweden Democrats? success led to a simplification of teaching because phenomena and opinions that were previously taboo nowadays are normalized and thus have its place in the classroom.

This paper is a statistical examination about how the European Parliament views questions about equality between women and men. It focuses on how the members understand gender equality depending on ideological standpoint, nationality and gender. In other words, it focuses on whether the politicians have different point of views depending on which parliamentary political group they belong to, which member state they are coming from or which gender (man/woman) they have.Equality between women and men is a complex problem. This paper is concentrating on two questions; the problem about setting up a European gender institute and the problem about gender mainstreaming.The examination, which is a statistical examination about how politicians were voting in both questions, shows that all variables, ideological standpoint, nationality and gender, are determining factors for their voting behaviour in questions about gender equality. Ideological standpoint is the most important variable, second in place is gender and the least important factor is nationality..

This thesis analyzes the media debates generated by the election of Omar Mustafa to the board of the social democratic party, and the appointment of the conservative Minister of Labour, Elisabeth Svantesson. More specifically, the aim is to analyze newspaper material through a discourse analyze, to see if and how religious affiliation effects the possibilities to act as a political representative. Theories of othering and intersectionality serve as theoretical points of departure. Further, chains of equivalence from Laclau and Mouffe?s discourse theory are used to study how categories as ?us? and ?the other? are constructed in the material, and how these processes of categorization relate to the intersection of religion, gender and ethnicity.