This essay focus on the European Union and its democracy both from a national perspec­tive and from an international perspective. Furthermore, the essay center on the con­cept of democratic deficit, this in order to study the European Union´s status regarding the democratic legitimacy. This study intends to nuance the problems that previous research and previous researchers have de­fined as democratic deficits in the European Union and ends up in conducting a textual anal­ysis of the latest European Union treaty, the Lisbon Treaty.The aim is that by using previous research on the democratic deficit in the European Union examine whether the Lisbon Treaty has enhanced the EU's position regarding democratic legitimacy. In other words, my study aims to identify what the deficit is and if it exists.The results show that the Lisbon Treaty has been trying to improve the democratic legitimacy and that some practical adjustments have been made, but it also show that there is much that still can be improved before citizens have full democratic rights..

The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate if the views of Sayyid Qutb and Tariq Ramadan regarding social structure and religion are possible to unite with western liberal democracy. The basis of the study is the problematizing approaches written by Qutb and Ramadan regarding the possible unity between Islam and democracy. These problematizing approaches are then tested on the political philosophy of liberalism to see if a unity is possible.The result showed that Qutb's view did not meet the criteria of democracy, which wasn't surprising due to his negative views on the system. However, Ramadan's reformist view on Muslim identity did unite with the views of liberal democracy, though questions regarding the possibility of creating and preserving a European Muslim identity in the secular society were immediately brought to attention.The importance in Qutb's view is social equality, unity and submission to God and the importance of Ramadan's view is to create and preserve a European Muslim identity and adapt to the society where you live and participate as a citizen. Qutb's view will not tolerate diversity and one is to keep or convert to the Muslim faith.

This thesis examines the USA?s response to the military coup in Myanmar 2021 through a comparative analysis of the two dominant international relations theories: realism and liberalism. The study uses a qualitative text analysis of the US Burma act of 2021 to test the explanatory power of the theories in the formulation of US policy. The results shows that liberal theory has the greater explanatory power, as the US response was systematically motivated by a normative desire to restore democracy in Myanmar. However, some realist tendencies could be observed, especially through exception clauses preserving US national security interest and the mention of China?s support for the military junta in Myanmar.

New technology makes it possible to remotely measure all consumers in a power network onan hourly basis and store the values in a database.This thesis work describes the conversion process between automatic meter reading systemMActor and calculation software Xpower.Then the possible differences between calculations of power networks using load curves incombination with a yearly estimate of consumption and calculations using hourly measuredvalues is examined.The result of the comparison shows that, for the power network under inspection, nosignificant difference could be noticed. This does not mean that calculations using hourlymeasured values would be unnecessary. I believe that in a near future calculations using hourmeasurements will be the primary choice for many power companies to whom technology isavailable.Also some basic calculations of fundamental power network parameters, such as power factorand loses, are presented using hourly measured distribution transformers in combinations withits hourly measured loads.The report is written in Swedish.

Partly as a reaction to a perceived crisis in contemporary democracy, the nineties witnessed an upsurge in different forms of citizens? fora, dedicated to the promotion of increased participation by the citizen in the political process. Youth councils are a special point in case as they entail the general characteristics of a deliberative forum, with an emphasis on political learning. This study aims to undertake an evaluation of a regional youth council in the region of Skåne in the south of Sweden. Through qualitative analysis, the study aims to portray the origin, purposes and consequences of such a forum.

AbstractSince democracy was developed in the ancient Greece it has come to be used within a small city state, within the national state and as today used within a bigger perspective. After the end of the second world war political leaders wanted to make sure that there would never be a war between European countries again. Now, about 60 years later this type of cooperation now involves 27 of the European countries and goes under the name of the Euroapean Union. This means that democracy is no longer used just within the nation state, but within a big organisation that is responsible for almost 500 million Europeans lives. This also means that the European Union need to make some institutional reforms to be able to handle all the future challenges.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify power structures and instruments of power within the Jehovah?s witnesses and investigate how they affect the baptized youths baptized within the organization. The material consists of qualitative in-depth interviews and is analyzed with Foucault's theories of power. The results show that the participants have a very strict relationship to the rules of the congregation and also that they take great care in observing these rules carefully. It becomes evident that young members are exposed to disciplinary measures from the organization.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the conceptualisation of the social relations of class and gender within the Social Democratic Women?s Association during the period 1972 ? 1993, on the basis of their programmes for action. The analysis of the concepts is based on an ideology critical study focusing on the manifest ideology.The study is based upon the theoretical concepts of class and gender,  The class analysis is based upon the broadened concepts of class by Erik Olin Wright and Ira Katznelson. The gender analysis is mainly based upon a Marxist understanding and a critical point of view of Marxism and feminism in the context of patriarchy and capitalism.The period of the study is where the social democracy is challenged, both by radical socialism and feminist ideology and the economic crisis during the 1980?s, as well as the possible threat of an organised women?s party in Sweden.

Most of the portable electronic devices use a battery as a primary power source. Nowadays, when the applications are becoming smaller and smaller and more power efficient, the designer needs to concentrate more on reducing power consumption, using secondary power sources and introducing power storage devices. Multiple power source availability and a power storage device on the board will make the applications much more useful and efficient in everyday use. This thesis proposes a power supply unit (PSU) for wireless sensor platforms which is capable of supplying a sensor node with energy from multiple sources, as well as status information from the PSU. Present power storage devices, like electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) and batteries, have become more and more common as their characteristics have developed.

The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.

The purpose of this essay is to present, from a theoretical framwork about regional democracy, possible methods to handle the regional democratic problems in Östergötland in Sweden and to investigate the opinion of the political parties regarding this issue. Both the national and the local/regional level are investigated. The contents of the essay is based on literature studies and interviews of politicians in Östergötland. Regional democratic problems that is discussed are the political responsibility and the power distribution between the political actors on the regional level. A solution of the problem could be to organize the regional society structure in accordance with one of the following organization models"Statligt regionalt ansvar","Kommuner i samverkan"or"Regionalt folkstyre".

The main purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent municipalities in Sweden use democratic innovations to include citizens in the decision making process. Along there are three research questions:? What different forms of democracy innovations are Swedish municipalities applying in order to increase the civic participation between elections and what forms are dominant?? What potential influence in decision-making are citizens getting through these democratic innovations based on the results?? Based on the results ? in what ways is the democracy innovations used in municipalities challenging representative democracy? The method used to fulfill the purpose and answer the research questions is a web survey including 287 of 290 (in total) municipal websites. The theoretic framework includes a model which is called ?Smith?s ladder of participation? and is influenced by the research of Graham Smith and Sherry Arnstein.

The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate if the views of Sayyid Qutb and Tariq Ramadan regarding social structure and religion are possible to unite with western liberal democracy. The basis of the study is the problematizing approaches written by Qutb and Ramadan regarding the possible unity between Islam and democracy. These problematizing approaches are then tested on the political philosophy of liberalism to see if a unity is possible.The result showed that Qutb's view did not meet the criteria of democracy, which wasn't surprising due to his negative views on the system. However, Ramadan's reformist view on Muslim identity did unite with the views of liberal democracy, though questions regarding the possibility of creating and preserving a European Muslim identity in the secular society were immediately brought to attention.The importance in Qutb's view is social equality, unity and submission to God and the importance of Ramadan's view is to create and preserve a European Muslim identity and adapt to the society where you live and participate as a citizen. Qutb's view will not tolerate diversity and one is to keep or convert to the Muslim faith.

The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

C-essay in political science by Anna Höjenberg and Maria Stenberg, spring of 2006?The Grey Zone ? An essay on the characteristics of a hybrid regime and a case study of Russia?. Supervisors: Joakim Ekman and Jonas LindeThis essay deals with the concept of hybrid regimes. The purpose is to describe the structure and the content of such a regime-type and try to create a model which can help us to analyse different countries. The essay is divided into two sections.