The aim of this study is to investigate wether the participatory democracy is a threat or a complement to the representative democracy. To achieve my purpose I will focus on two different lokal councils, the civil council in Hovsjö and the youth council in Västra Skogås, which have been objects of the urban policy in 1998. The theoretical framework on which this study is based consists of the participation democratic theory, representative democratic theory and implementation theory. By problemizing these theoretical frameworks in comparison with eachother I will mapp how these two lokal councils were implemented. The research question is: In what way was the civil council and the youth council a complement or threat to the representative democracy? In which way was it difficult to implement them?The method used for this purpose is a qualitative comparative case study.

In this undergraduate thesis you will venture on a journey through the land of democratic values and urban planning. My research question is stated as: whether or not urban planning can show effects on democratic values and whether or not the municipalities in Sweden takes these possible effects into account when planning their city centres. You will in my theory part of this thesis be able to read about different views on urban planning and on democracy. Famous authors like Robert D. Putnam and Richard Florida will be examined as well as other theorists on democracy and urban planning.

The aim of this essay is to explore the lived citizenship and its ideal. First, the form and expression of citizenship practice and ideal is explored through a qualitative interwiev study of ten citizens in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. The perception and expectations of the nature of citizenship, presented by the informants, is then compared to their citizen ideal, as well as to the ideal presented and promoted by the Swedish government. The point of departure is theory of democracy. The essay calls attention to an observed lack of empirical studies in the field of deliberative theory of democracy as well as studies that more broadly bring the theory down to empirical earth.

English title: Parents? expectations of municipal school of music and of arts.Thesis in Music Education by Jonathan Lilliedahl. Part of the work for the master´s degree. Studies from School of Music, University of Örebro, 2007. Available from School of Music, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden.

The purpose with this paper is to examine if tertiary education and democracy have an impact on economic growth. In order to decide how democratic the examined countries are the democracy index constructed by The Economist is used. Besides the two central theories the purpose is also to explain why these variables could affect growth and to examine direct and indirect effects. Indirect effects mean that one variable affects another variable which thereafter has an impact on economic growth.34 OECD countries are compared in order to investigate whether education and democracy are strongly correlated with BNP per capita. Therefore a statistical design is used as method.The empirical results suggest that there is significant correlation between democracy and economic growth.

This thesis deals with non-wanted political parties e.g. right wing populism. How should a democracy handle these opinions? So far these parties have been neglected and not even considered as real parties. By excluding them from the debate and the political arena, media and more established parties have seen them merely as a threat than as democratic parties.

The aim of this essay is to examine if the attitudes and the experiences of Ability Grouping are the same on different levels of the school organisation.I have chosen to answer the following two questions:· Have the teachers, the students and the headmaster the same idea concerning the educational model at the school, that is, the pros and cons of Ability Grouping?· Does the intentions of the curriculum agree with this educational model?I knew what I thought about the educational model at the school that is the object of this essay, after spending ten weeks at it as a trainee, but I felt that I would be interesting to know what the people who are part of that system everyday think about it.In order to be able to answer my questions, I used both the qualitative and the quantitative method. I interviewed the headmaster and five teachers to find out what they thought about Ability Grouping. I also distributed inquiries to 70 students from 6th to 9th grade to get their point of view. In the theoretical discussion I explain the meaning of different conceptions that I use throughout this essay.

The state of Israel is known as the only democracy in the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to examine if there is aspects in the Israelis society that can be questioned in terms of liberal democracy.Areas of concerns in the study are the Israeli official policy's concerning inclusion and exclusion of their citizens in areas of property owning, personal status and the duty of military service.The results show that the Israeli society distinguishes their citizens in these areas by their ethnic origin, in favour for the Jewish population. The law prohibits changes in the states Jewish character. One clear example how this is presented is that a Jew is prohibited to marry a non-Jew. The results show also that this official policy by the Israeli state violates important principles of liberal democracy.

The aim of this essay is, with reference to a close study on the negotiation delegations of the Tenant Association, to examine the principals of democracy in relation to distribution of power and participation, efficiency and professionalism. This is done with the intention to understand the Tenant Association's view on its own commission as negotiator, according to democracy. The investigation is carried out on the Tenant Association in the Swedish cities of Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenborg.The data acquisition was obtained by using a questionnaire and through interviews with representatives from the Tenant Association negotiation delegation.A central conclusion from this investigation is that the representatives of the Tenant Association generally are satisfied with the democracy model used in the organisation, despite awareness of the fact that there are some failures with representation amongst younger people, women and immigrants. Also, they suggest that the model with representative democracy is by all means the most useful because of its arrangement and efficiency in decision making processes.The policies of the Tenant Association, considering distribution of power and participation between elected representatives and employees, are legitimated by the negotiation delegates. However, there is obvious discrepancy in the look upon their respective tasks between the delegates and the chief negotiators.One can recognise the development of democracy that is called New Public Management in this survey.

The three post-communist states - Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine ? have gone different ways in terms of freedom and democracy since the breakdown of the Soviet Union 1991. During these years, the state and the civil society have been fundamental actors in the struggle against, and even for, authoritarianism.A strong state with great capacity in Belarus has undermined the chances for the civil society to fulfil its task as a watchdog of the state and link between the citizens and the government.Failed authoritarianism in Moldova has led to a situation where both the state and the civil society are weak. The major problem is lack of organization and cohesion; both the state and the civil society have often been divided by ethnical differences and are therefore not strong enough to promote democracy.In Ukraine, the dominance of a strong state ended in 2004 when the Orange Revolution took place, sometimes called a ?peak of democracy? where popular mobilization and protests succeeded in it's opposition against the state.

What every theory of democracy has in common is a reference to ?a people? who are, in one way or another, collectively self-governing. Given that, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the so called boundary problem of democratic theory, or, in other words, the question of who should be included in the democratic community. Lately, the historically given boundaries have been questioned in favour of a cosmopolitan democracy. Still, little has been said about the boundary problem in general, especially from a theoretical point of view.

The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

Participation is central to the concept of democracy. The role of the civic participation varies with different types of democracy, but a fundamental requirement is that the participation is free and equal. In spite of this, there are significant differences between possibilities to democratic participation in Sweden today.This essay seeks to understand how disability, historically and still today, is constructed as a social deviation from normality, and is constructed to Otherness.One way to regard freedom and equality is to examine the personal autonomy, the legth to wich a person decides her/his roles and activities in abcence of external limitations. Personal autonomy is theoretically central in deliberative and strong democracy, but should reasonobly be a demand for the fundamental definition of democracy.The explanation to why the lack of personal autonomy is accepted, is that the construction of Otherness results in that the persons are categorized and are given simplified characteristics, and are thereby not accepted as equivalent people.In the inteviews conducted, seven politicians contribute both whiteness, pathological discourses regarding disability and ideas of normality through discussing democracy, participation and disability. Simultaniously, they express interest and an awareness on the majority's power and symbolic violence on the minority..

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine the current situation as regarding the political equality in Iran. The method of this reaserch is based on a single-case studie wich grounds in secondary sources. The analysis of this paper is based on fields that concern political equality which in this study will focus on the right to vote, candidacies in the parliament election 2004 and the presidential election 2005. A democracy theory by Jack Lively is used to analyze the political equality in Iran´s political system.The Iranian regim is strongly criticized by the goverments in the Western world and NGO´s for the situation of the democracy and the human rights in the country. Despite the criticism, Iran still continues in the same political direction, although the democracy has gained a stronger role in the political sphere.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what opinions parents have of the after school-centre, if they know that it has an objective and what that objective is. This will be examined by surveying parents with children in after school-centre. The questions posed in the study are as follows: Do parents know the objective of after school-centre? What is the general view of after school-centre among parents? The results show that 41 percent know that there is an objective while 39 percent don't. Only 6 percent can describe what the objective is.