European identity is a topic constantly debated around Europe. There are many takes on whether there is a European identity and what the European identity consists of. In the European Union the Commission has worked towards developing a common European identity since the middle of the 1970?s. The development of a European identity is an important part in the commission?s quest to tie the union and its people closer together.

This essay revolves around two questions: what is the nature of politics, and what kind of political order ensures a high rate of citizen participation? By using Cantal Mouffes theory on the political this essay shows how different understandings of the nature of politics can lead to diverging views on what forms democracy should take. Two such understandings are identified; one that sees the nature of politics as characterized by conflict and power, one that sees it as a space for cooperation in search for the common good. I trace these different ideas about the political in the parliamentary debate concerning Swedish constitutional reform. I conclude that the left-of-centre parties hold a view of the political closer to the conflict-perspective, while the green party together with the liberals/conservatives lean closer to the opposite view..

Swedish students' knowledge of mathematics has deteriorated in recent years. Teaching of mathematics is therefore starting point in an ongoing discussion among researchers, school leaders, politicians, teachers and others, who all thinks they know best about how teaching should be designed to the greatest extent possible to raise students' proficiency levels in the subject. Teachers' practices have long been the focus of discussions and views on these differ. The purpose of this paper is therefore to study students 'conceptions of mathematics and mathematics teaching, with teachers' methods and tools of focus, in relation to previous research on the subject. The method used was a survey of students in secondary school and a textual analysis of previous studies on the subject.As revealed by the survey was that the textbook has a big advantage in mathematics education in Sweden today.Many students are not accustomed to working in a different way and thereforedoes not know either what the alternative approach entails.

The philosopher Heraclitus has been renowned for a great amount of time. Despite that fact the remaining fragments of his work have just recently been assembled to the composed form they have today. Among these fragments there are a couple of terms that stands out amongst others; one of them is the term logos. The main focus of this thesis is devoted to the mystery and usage of the term logos, which comes into a great display in fragment number 50.The ambition of the thesis is to evaluate and compare three interpreters? readings of Heraclitus while having a close focus on his usage of the word logos in fragment 50.

The main purpose of this study has been to examine and analyze what kind of discussions that takes place in the commentary fields of swedish online newspapers. We started by collecting nearly 2000 commentaries from three newspapers and then used a quantitative content analysis to interpret the material.We divided the comments into different categories like arguing, media criticism and opinion on other comments in order to see which categories were most common. The results of the analysis shows that there is a discussion in the commentary fields where most of the commentaries stick to the subject, where media criticism is unusual and where arguing is quite common. The discussion however is usually negative. The results can be connected to the theories of deliberative democracy, flaming and earlier research on commentary fields.

The aim of this essay is to see how the IOGT, local politicians and the local newspaper acted in the city of Hedemora in Sweden in connection with the referendum held in 1922 whether or not to ban the use of alcoholic beverages. To accomplish this I have examined protocols from local IOGT-groups, the town council and the local newspaper Södra Dalarnes tidning. I find that the local IOGT not only worked with the issue of alcohol but served as an institution that deepened democracy and education in the local community through discussions, study circles and applying pressure on local politicians. The locally elected bodies in turn were generally in favour of the good work the IOGT did, although not always overwhelmingly so. Many of the local politicians that handled the issues of alcohol were themselves active members in organisations promoting absolutism.

Background: In scientific literature there are various treatment programs for people with alcohol dependence described, however, are psychosocial factors that promote recovery process described to a limited extent.Purpose: To describe the psychosocial factors that promotes recovery from alcohol dependence.Method: Literature study of ten scientific articles, published between 1999-2011 with both qualitative and quantitative design.Results: According to the literature, the recovery process can be considered to begin when a person with alcohol dependence reached his personal rock bottom. The longer the recovery progresses, the greater are the overall level of performance. Social support is described as an important factor to prevent relapse and reduce the need for professional help. Self-belief and support of self-help groups are described as important to maintaining sobriety. Social support and influence from family members was related to increased ability to analyze and assess their situation during the recovery.

The focus of this thesis is the group as a pedagogical tool. It investigates whether and how what is known of group size can help further schools in fulfilling knowledge and democracy goals and moreover how such knowledge can influence the principals? management. The mission of school education is to provide the basis for each pupil?s individual development and in the end it is pupils? individual performances which are graded.

In the process of globalization, identity has become one of the central factors.An understanding of the difference that makes up our society has made thequestion of weather is it possible to envision a society where difference is thecommon ground, one that has been up for contest. To answer this we need to seeif this kind of democracy is possible at all. For this I?m turning to the socialmovments who while they are working close to the reality also can give us somereal answers. Therefore I have looked at how social movements adress identity,difference and conflict and concluded that three things are crucial in organizing ongrounds of difference.

Tolfterna was a popular education organization that existed between 1896 and1964 and that arranged social evenings and set up a library for working women. This thesis purpose is to investigate Tolfternas's activities in 1902-1907 and hereby place Tolfterna in the education- and library history. The thesis examines the library catalog and the protocols from the social evenings and analyses them by means of the popular education ideologies of the early 1900's: Patriarchal education, civic education, self-education and the domestic/housewife ideal.The analysis shows that the organizers of Tolfterna as well as the working women who visited the social evenings had political and social interests. This places Tolfterna in a civic education context.The social evenings contained a mix of politically orientated discussions, traditional lectures and entertainment as music and reading. The library had self-education orientation, it contained mostly fiction and was run by the working women.

This is a study about the transition process and the consolidation of power in Belarus. In this paper the concept of "authoritarian state building and the sources of regime competitiveness in the fourth wave" is the major theory used. After giving a description of the theory?s concepts a short historical background of Belarus follows. Chapters four describes and explain the political situation in Belarus during five periods.

Abstract Youths and adolescents have for a long period of time, and at a high degree, beenabsent from the party political stage. The causes for this have been discussed inthis essay through a quantitative survey made in an upper secondary school class,consisting of some 19 subjects in the municipality of Kalmar. Tied together withrelevant literature and discourse on the subject, the essay has dealt with thepossible societal-, system- and individual barriers for political interest andinvolvement. Central questions for this essay has been for instance; age, gender,social background, geographical domicile, as well as the decline of ideology, theforms of current party politics, political interest, political engagement and soforth. The concluding remarks contain not only a mix of these barriers existing,not exclusively, for young and adolescents but different ground for them as well.On the one hand, there exist barriers which exclude youth from the conventionalpolitical life, but on the other, the more individualised youth of today, prefer to agreater extent not to participate under the conventional circumstances that partypolitics has to offer.

In this study we have examined how men and women are heard on Sveriges Televisions program Debatt. Debatt broadcast on Sveriges Televison which is a public service broadcaster. Through the use of a quantitative content analysis and a dialogical approach, we have documented how many men and women who speak, how they speak, how long they have the word and the subjects they will be heard in, in the program Debatt. We have investigated the ten last broadcast programs from the fallseason 2011. Every program is 45 minutes long and contains from two to three discussiontopics each time. By categorizing our survey and enter the result in four different tables, we found that the majority, 63%, of those that are heard are men.

Since the 9/11-attacks several nations have been confronted with a new international threat, its nature traces back to the political- and religious- radical movements of the 20th century Cold War. Ever since, various states have been under threat by terrorist organizations around the world due to mainly participating in worldwide counter-terrorist interventions created by western alliances. In Sweden, amongst other countries, the state took security-precautions that would imply total control of information throughout the territorial borders. The assigned proposition was accepted by the Swedish parliament in June 18th 2008, after this date wild spread criticism was still in effect ever since the Swedish government first publicly announced the proposition in May 8th 2007. This study emphasizes on understanding why the Swedish government chose to present this proposition to parliament, in order to complete this task the study will present the motives and the alleged threats that were the core of the proposition and its value-maximizing goal of creating a new surface for Swedish homeland security.

Internet är fullt av udda företeelser som ingen skulle känna till om det inte vore för att Internets tekniska uppbyggnad skapade en ?lika för alla?-miljö. 1998 fick svenska väljare möjlighet att kryssmarkera bredvid en kandidat om väljaren ansåg att partiet hade placerat denne för långt ner på partilistan. Detta i kombination med Internets potential för aktörer att göra sig hörda utan att det kostar några större summor skapar nya utrymmen i den svenska demokratin.I detta arbete tittas närmare på de politiker som blev invalda i riksdagen enbart tack vare personkryss i valet 2002. Jag har koncentrerat mig på deras webbnärvaro och utreder huruvida denna uppfyller demokratiska kriterier eller ej..