Political disenchantment and detachment is proven to be growing in well established democracies. This development brings along concerning behavior regarding general political participation. Fewer citizens participate in elections, parties are losing members, and the trust in politicians is steadily decreasing. IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has been registering voter turnout worldwide for the last 60 years and their publications show a decline in voter participation since the 1980s.During the same period of time another development has caught attention, namely the fast progress of the medium Internet. The new generation of Internet functions is called Web 2.0 and allows users not only to create content, but also to interact with each other.This dissertation aims to explore the possibilities emerging when integrating Web 2.0 in political processes.

The title of this study came about from the title of Robert Putnams book Bowling Alone, where Putnam mentions that less people are bowling in teams than before. Bowling is still a large leisure activity in the USA but people tend to bowl more and more in small groups and less in organized teams. This study deals with social capital and leisure time. Its aim is to find out if some Swedish people create social capital on their leisure time and also how do they spend their leisure time. Robert Putnams book Bowling Alone serves as main background material along with the work by Bo Rothstein.

Dr. Robert A. Pape publicerar 1996 boken Bombing to Win. Kvantitativa studier av 33 konflikter där luftstridskrafter använts har genomförts. Detta för att söka ett samband mellan lyckade respektive misslyckade slutresultat.

This thesis falls within the realm of social studies, specifically social studies in literature, and attempts to establish whether the sub-genre of fantasy literature known as sword and sorcery contains elements which resemble the tenets of fascism. Robert E. Howard is considered the progenitor of the sub-genre and his stories have an influence on the nature of sword and sorcery literature today, 70 years after his death. Howards creation of the sub-genre coincides with the spread of fascist ideologies around the world in the 1930s and the study attempts a societal mirroring analysis of Howards texts. With the help of an analytical model based on fascism expert Robert O.

A part of the Swedish TV-show Levande livet that aired between 1983 and 1984 was devoted to wine. This was the first time a wine tasting was being broadcasted in Sweden. Terms as ?sweaty horse? and ?moulded pile of leaves? ? that the wine connoisseurs Carl Jan Granqvist and Knut-Christian Gröntoft used to describe the wines ? became objects of both appreciation and ridicule. Their way of talking about wine reminds of Robert Parker?s wine language, which grew of importance from the 1970s and onwards.                      The purpose of this thesis is to try to write a history of taste.

The purpose of this study is to explain if the existence of ethnic groups in Rwanda has complicated its democratization and explain what opportunities Rwanda has to be democratized. To fulfill the purpose of the study, I intend to answer two questions: 1) Does the existence of ethnic groups obstructed democratization in Rwanda? and 2) What opportunities has Rwanda to be democratized? To answer the first research question Dahl's theory of subcultures and democratization is used and to answer the second research question van de Walle's theory of democratization is used in the region of sub-Saharan Africa. Literature used in the study are Dahl's Polyarchy and van de Walle Africa?s range of regimes and Freedom House annual reports.

The purpose of this study is to examine the actual political conditions that exist for the Iranian women. What is the political reality of the Iranian women and how can they exert political influence within the political system that exists in Iran today. This is done to see how the Iranian women's potential political influence affects Iran's democratic status. This will be answered through the overall research question: What opportunities do the Iranian women have to influence policy? This overall question is then split into three smaller research questions:1) What formal possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?2) What real possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?3) How have women in Iran tried to exert political influence outside the institutional framework?This will be done through a qualitative text analysis where texts concerning the Iranian women?s political influence are examined.

- Totalförbjud Bisfenol A helt, enligt miljöbalkens lag omförsiktighetsprincipen, säger Ulrika Dahl på Naturskyddsföreningen. På andra sidan står Europeiska myndigheten för livsmedelssäkerhet, EFSA, och pekar på tester som visar att Bisfenol A inte är skadligt förmänniskan i de mängder vi får i oss. Tester som inte är gjorda för kemikalier som Bisfenol A. Så vad ska vi tro på?.

This is an essay about the political development of Iraq after the overthrow of the Baath regime by the coalition forces in 2003. Almost seven years later, the political scene is still characterised by chaos, even though the country entered a new phase with the adoption of democratic thinking and a new openness to the world. The unstable political situation is a product of inter-ethnic conflict and the interference by neighbouring countries. Iraq is up against two formidable tasks ? building democracy and building a nation.

Denna avhandling är ett examinationsarbete vid yrkesofficersprogrammet och har sin bakgrund i författarens intresse för Robert R. Leonhards teoribildning om tid som presenteras i boken Fighting by Minutes: Time and the art of war. Författarens avsikt är att undersöka hur denna teoribildning relaterar till svensk doktrin. Avhandlingen syftar till att skapa djupare förståelse för doktrinen genom att ställa den mot en annan teoribildning och skapa underlag för förändring eller bekräfta det som doktrinen säger. Dessutom syftar den till att introducera Leonhards teorier för den obekante.

The first aim of this study is to discuss and try to understand the relationship between the holy andethics, and more specifically how it can be understood, which is the critical question that I haveformulated, in Giorgio Agamben?s and Emmanuel Levinas? philosophies. The second, moreconstructive aim is to discuss whether the holy can be understood as something good or problematicin relation to the society.Rooted in philosophy of religion and ethics, I have first tried to discuss how the holy has beenunderstood in the philosophy of phenomenology and in the texts of Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade andEspen Dahl. The holy has in the history been understood as something central in religions, and hasalso not been connected to the idea of ethics. Recently it has also been critized ? by Dahl ? for notbeing so pure as first thought of.In Levinas texts the holy has been understood as something differentiated through his distiction,in the Talmudic reading ?Desacralization and Disenchantment?, between the holy, which can beseen as something pure, and the sacred which can been seen as something impure and a form ofdegenerated holiness.

No-fly Zones have been used in three recent conflicts. For every intervention the time taken to achieve the end-state has decreased. It took twelve years in Iraq, three years in Bosnia and only nine months in Libya. NATO was part of the intervention in both Bosnia and Libya, facing almost the same size of opponent, but it took them four times longer to achieve the end-state in Bosnia compared to Libya. The purpose of this essay is to analyze this difference in the time taken to achieve the end-state with a structured focused comparison of Bosnia and Libya based on Robert Pape´s theory of coercion with a focus on No-fly Zones. The results show that the mandate can explain the difference. In Libya NATO had the opportunity, due to the mandate, to use pre-emptive strikes, which they did not have in Bosnia.

Denna uppsats är en komparativ studie där fem patografier, självbiografiska sjukdomsskildringar jämförs. Detta görs för att belysa hur relationerna kan se ut mellan olika karaktärer inom sjukvården, i synnerhet förhållandet mellan patient och läkare, patient och sjusköterskor, men också förhållandet mellan sjukvårdspersonalen och patientens anhöriga..

The aim of this paper is to apply Robert N. Bellahs theory of civil religion, within a Swedish societal context. Bellahs theory was designed in, and influenced by American culture. Therefore, the ?translation? of Bellahs theory does not come without problems.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not there has been a change in the use of democratic values in textbooks in social science for classes 4-6. The focus lies on democratic values from two different theoretical perspectives, Dahl?s theory of democracy and Habermas deliberative democracy. The method used is a text analysis based on a model made by Lennart Hellspong. The material we?ve analysed consists of four textbooks in social science from different decades, with a range from 1981 until today.