Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other.

Participation of the people is essential for a democracy's vitality and survival. In this study we focus on the individual as an active participant in the traditional political arena and beyond its sphere into the society as a whole. The first part of the study has a normative aim. Firstly we examine why political participation is essential for democracy, and especially the ideal of Representative democracy and the restricted passive participation of its citizens in comparison to the ideal of participatory democracy and its ideal of an active participant in all aspects of society. An ideal participant is drawn up to set the course for the empirical part of the study.

This study was a survey of how it is possible to create conditions for good elite environments in cities with elite universities. The purpose of the study was to create an understanding of how sports associations and National elit sportuniversities in Sweden can co-operate to create a good elite environments for people with dual careers. The study analyzed the current situation and what increased co-operation would do for the elitesports environments. To answer the purpose of the study interviews where conducted with leaders from sports associations and with a Representative from the national sports university in Umeå. The result showed that in the current situation were was no cooperation to a significant degree.

The aim of this study was to describe and scrutinise the position of the Swedish government on whether children should participate directly or through a Representative in judicial proceedings.The main questions for this study were to find out (1) what position the Swedish government has on the subject, (2) how the position is justified, and (3) what view on children the position reflects.A qualitative design was used in the study and in order to describe the position a descriptive method was used. In the second part of the study a critical approach was used to examine and analyse the position.The main conclusions were that the position is ambiguous but that it mainly reflects, with a few exceptions, that it is better for children to be represented than to participate directly in judicial proceedings. The arguments that are given as basis for the position are short and lack both the objective and subjective grounds needed to decide the best interest of the child. The analysis of the position showed that it mainly reflects a view on children as objects and when the statement reflects a view on children as subjects, it relates to age and maturity in the child..

This study is about youths, democracy and school. It seeks to describe and problemize the school's role in the democratic society. Firstly, using Social Representations Theory, 44 upper secondary shool pupils? representations, or conceptions, of democracy are described and discussed. These representations are then analyzed in relation to the school's role in the democratic society, as it is described by different researchers.The results show that many of the youths have a rather simplistic and abstract view of democracy, describing it only in terms of general principles and the main features of the Representative democracy, such as voting in national elections.

In this thesis we have examined if some young people's identity is influenced by television programs. We chose to illustrate this from a gender perspective and have made use of social construction theory. We did group interviews with 13 youngsters, in three groups, to find out how much insight they had in what they watch, if they believe that they are affected and how they believe that gender roles in television programs often look. Our questions are: Does young people's identity take influence of the TV program? How? Creates a social construction of gender in the television programs that young people are watching? Is there awareness among young people on what they watch and how is this in this case out? Important to emphasize is that our results are not necessarily Representative of youngsters in general when we only had the opportunity to interview a few.

This essay is about personal assistance for persons with considerable intellectual disabilities.The purpose with the study is: to examine personal assistance for individuals, who can`t speakfor themselves, to examine how the individuals can determine and get influence into theirassistance and how they can get help with it, to examine the role of an Representative inrelation to the serviceuser´s assistance and examine if there are factors of gender in theinterviews.The chosen method is qualitative interviews.The interviews has been analysed through earlier research about personal assistance andtheoretical perspectives like: influence, integration and citizenship and discussed throughperspectives of social psychology.The main conclusions are: the influence the serviceusers can have is through persons whoknow them very well, the role of the Representatives are indistinct, the serviceusers can´tdetermine their assistance themselves and need help with it from relatives, Representatives,personal assistants and managers, the persons who know the serviceuser intimately are best totransform the needs to assistance. The factors of gender, are that there are more men aspersonal assistants than in the care of elderly, and the Representatives are mostly men. Thepersonal assistants appreciates the time they have for the serviceuser, the work can be lonelyand demanding..

This thesis evaluates the user board of the elememtary school in Veberöd, Sweden. In this process an evaluation model is developed. The model itself gets evaluated in a meta-evaluation to improve the model for future use.The starting point of the evaluation is the deliberative democracy theory. Although Sweden is a Representative democracy an official desire exists to have a democracy with deliberative qualities. The evaluation model is constructed to fit this context and is therefore, not only, set out from classical goal-based evaluation but also from deliberative democratic evaluation.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate the notions and use of non fiction literature of children 9-11 years old. Moreover, this study tries to dissect the underlying concepts that exert influence over the target groups notions and use of non fiction literature. The method and empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of eight children within the target group. We use a theory of reading exchange to highlight the different areas of usability of non fiction for children. To emphasize how children use non fiction as Representative for actual facts, or as non fiction with fictional content, we use a four-field correlation model.

Previous research has suggested that there is a strong and positive relationship between being an entrepreneur and possessing a high degree of subjective well-being as well as job satisfaction. The big five personality traits have also been argued to be significantly related to both subjective well-being and job satisfaction. Little is however known if personality affects entrepreneurs and regular employees differently. In this paper the impact of personality traits on the cognitive part of subjective well-being as well as job satisfaction are investigated separately among entrepreneurs and regular employees. This is done through OLS-regressions using a Swedish nationally Representative survey Employment, Material Resources, and Political Preferences (EMRAPP), where entrepreneurs were oversampled in order to be able to compare entrepreneurs (N = 2483) and regular employees (N = 2642).

The situation of officials of public and governmental organizations have been recognized as increasingly risky, in which the influences of both threats and violence have become an issue that administrators have to manage. Experiences of feeling threatened in their workplace or in their professional lives has been marked by an increased number of reported cases in the work environment authority. Common to the problems faced by many agencies and important associations that dealt with its often derive personal and sensitive issues. The purpose of this study is to highlight how veterinarians and animal welfare inspectors on the counties of Blekinge, Kronoberg and Kalmar experience the interaction of regulatory and prohibition cases. Länsstyrelsen is the one that can decide what is to happen to an animal that has been kept under bad conditions.

Information about vibration injuries as a preventive measure is beneficial to society as well as the individual. As early as after a few years work with machines that vibrate can cause young sensitive persons to develop vibration injuries.An evaluation has been done on a web page with focus on information about work related vibration injuries. As a part of the evaluation a user observation and interview study was performed with workers who worked in different occupations. The workers all used machine that vibrate as part of the work. A total of eleven workers participated in the study.

The situation of officials of public and governmental organizations have been recognized as increasingly risky, in which the influences of both threats and violence have become an issue that administrators have to manage. Experiences of feeling threatened in their workplace or in their professional lives has been marked by an increased number of reported cases in the work environment authority. Common to the problems faced by many agencies and important associations that dealt with its often derive personal and sensitive issues. The purpose of this study is to highlight how veterinarians and animal welfare inspectors on the counties of Blekinge, Kronoberg and Kalmar experience the interaction of regulatory and prohibition cases. Länsstyrelsen is the one that can decide what is to happen to an animal that has been kept under bad conditions.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what the work situation of children's librarians looks like in the year 2000, after the changes in society which took place since the 1980's. Did the tasks of children's librarians change during the nineties, and if so, in what way and why have they changed? Which new knowledge needs emerged for children's librarians during the nineties, and what was the cause of these new needs? Finally I want to know which needs for professional development arose, and how these needs are fulfilled. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with children's librarians, library managers, library consultants, one Representative of the Swedish school of Library and Information Studies and one member of SAB's children and youth committee. The study reveals that the identity of children's librarianship is strongly associated with the stimulation of language and reading.

This study examines how the Swedish newspaper G?teborgs-Posten presented Swedish identity in relation to the country?s referendum and EU-membership. By investigating the usage of the Swedish identity, related to EU-membership, the ambition is to conclude whether the newspaper was positive towards EU-membership. The empirical base consists of articles produced by G?teborgs-Posten from the first of October 1994 to the last day of January 1995.