AbstractIn the paper, democracy's development and change are studied in Swedish textbooks related to social science. The study?s starting point is that the picture of democracy provided to students has changed over time. The study aims to see how the view on democracy has altered in Swedish textbooks in social science. In order to examine this, I have studied seven textbooks, from 1945 to 2006, in social science.

In recent years the liberal representative democracy has been subject of a substantial critique because of its inability to accommodate difference and createa genuinely democratic political process. One such critique comes from the theory of deliberative democracy. Supporters of deliberative democracy try to promote a model of democracy that take its vantage point in free and equal deliberationbetween all relevant actors in a political community. This model has with some success opposed the aggregative model of democracy, and in important ways turned the attention to the potential of deliberative processes.However, the deliberative model is still somewhat underdeveloped when it comes to issues of diversity and difference. This essay deals with such deficiencies by analysing deliberative democracy in the light of the critiquelaunched by difference- and radical democrats.

In 2003 the parties in Sweden were invited to debate reforms of the Constitution. The purpose of this essay is to study the debate concerning reforms of the Constitution and identify values expressed by the parties. Moreover the goal of the essay is to connect the identified values to the three democratic ideals, which are; electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberation democracy. This analyze is based on the idea analyze.The conclusion is that all parties have argued that the Swedish Constitution should be based on the democratic ideal of electoral democracy. However, the right wing parties have also argued for inflection of participations democracy and deliberation democracy in the constitution.

In the present case, the conception of policy hitchhiking gets evaluated in terms of its implications for democracy. This task is executed through the accomplishment of a case study of the use of social- and environmental clauses in the Swedish competitive tendering.A useful definition of policy hitchhiking, including different types of actors, is created.Through the defining of democracy and policy hitchhiking, the author comes to the conclusion that policy hitchhiking in some respects does meet democracy values.The thesis? result can in some sense be regarded as a contribution to the pursuit of knowledge of how power is distributed in the society and how the current distribution can be explained and understood..

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.

According to the Swedish curriculum the education should establish respect for human rights and democratic values (Skolverket, 2011, s.7). The purpose of this study is to investigate how five first grade teachers understand the democracy education and how they practice it in reality. I have, based on the purpose of this study issued following questions:What is the teachers interpretation of the democracy education? How does the teachers work with democracy in practice?What difficulties does the teachers see with the democracy education?This study is made through a qualitative method based on interviews with five teachers. The results show that the teachers at both schools, despite the different definitions of the concept of democracy, yet interprets democracy education relatively equal.

The purpose of the study is to explore how social media can be used as a forum to discuss politics and also how young people use critical reflection to evaluate the information available on social media. To achieve the purpose, a qualitative research is used. The empirical data is collected through semi-structured interviews with six high school students who voted in the Swedish parliamentary elections in/of 2014. The empirical data were then analyzed based on previous research on social media, and the school's mission to foster individuals who think critically. The analysis is also based on the theory of deliberative democracy model.

Bachelor essay in political science by Andreas Byfeldt, autumn 2007?The practice of deliberative democracy- limitations or enhancements of representative democracy??Supervisor: Erik AmnåThe purpose of this study is to find out what impact the practice of deliberative democracy might have on a representative democracy. What effects deliberative democracy could have in this context are scientifically as well as publically relevant seeing that participation in representative democracies as well as the forms of representation is altering.The essay contains both a theoretical segment and a case study. The information regarding the case is based on the results from a questioner, conversations by and observations from the author. In addition an analysis is performed in the case study.The conclusion of the essay is that there is too little empirical research on the subject of deliberative democracy to make a qualified conclusion about what effects the practice of deliberative democracy could have on a representative democracy.

Deliberative democracy theory holds that democracy is about active partaking on formal and informal arenas in the public sphere where fairly equal citizens can obtain knowledge, discuss, evaluate and affect the political agenda before decisions are made.In line with the deliberative vision of online deliberation social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Twingly offer such formal and informal arenas where people can obtain knowledge and interact with other people, and politicians.The Swedish EU-Presidency was the first EU-presidency to make use of social media and it was the first time the Swedish Government Offices used other social media than email and chat features.This thesis will examine the Swedish EU-Presidency?s ambitions of using social media as well as the actual use of social media on the Swedish EU-Presidency website in the light of deliberative democracy theory.The aim of this thesis is, through a case study, to analyze the Swedish EU-Presidency?s use of social media in the light of deliberative democracy theory..

In this essay we have examined how social workers experience their positions as a public authority person in a society of democracy. As a public officer you have to follow rules and obey the law, which can be difficult if they don't agree with your personal opinion and values. In social work you work with people in a vulnerable situation and it may become extremely demanding to stand between the directions of established public administration and your own opinions. We have interviewed ten social workers working in social childcare division and analysed how they experience their situation at work. Our starting point is the critical theory of professor Lennart Lundquist about how democracy works in Swedish administrations.

This essay tries to explain how Swedish donor organisations are working with democracy in foreign aid. Three case studies of Sida, LO-TCO Biståndsnämnd and Rädda Barnen aims to give an overview of Swedish donor organisations, their work with democracy aid, evaluation and the problems with foreign aid. With Carothers theory of democracy aiding I analyse the success of Swedish democracy promotion, how civil society contributes to democratizaion and how democracy is measured.I find that Swedish democracy aid overall is successful due to a wider perspective of the term democracy. When democracy involves human rights it gives the donor a possibility to work with democracy promotion in a more extensive area and especially in the civil society. The essay stresses the importance of being subjective when evaluating and that one have to focus on the definition of democracy in each specific case.

The right kind of democracy ? an ideology analysis of school literatures description of the term democracy.Writers: Fredrik Hedlund & Mattias AhlqvistDemocracy is today a word and a concept that in many ways is taken for granted and almost never is reflected on. The concept democracy is also considered as an essential issue in the swedish school system, both regarding the way the education should be managed and also as a part of the students democratic schooling ? all according to the comprehensive document Läroplanen för de frivilliga skolformerna (Lpf94).The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how swedish literature in political and social science talks about and looks upon democracy ? what do the books say it means?The materials we have chosen for this report are the books Zigma and Forum. As metod we are using a textual ideology analysis in which we have created three dimensions ? meaning/associations, criticism of democracy, and demos/citizenship.

With the increased significance of information technology (IT) in today?s society the term ?electronic democracy? (e-democracy) has gained much importance within the democracy theory. Naturally, there are several competing views on how the technology should be used for democratic purpose. One aspect of this is the somewhat revitalized claim for direct democracy in accordance with the hypothetical opportunity to finally realize it as a democratic system. The ideal of direct democracy combined with the almost total credence in the potential of technology constitute the idea of a ?push-button 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 present state of politics in contemporary Venezuela portrays a country of polarization, a chase for power and accusations of authoritarian and even undemocratic rule. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the democracy in Venezuela, in order to clarify the sometimes vauge perception of the political situation. By applying the theories of polyarchical democracy put forth by Robert Dahl, one of the most highly regarded theorists on the subject, accordingly the discussion will therefore follow a theoretical framework. Dahl requires seven nstitutions to be guaranteed in a democracy, amongst them the possibility to vote, run for public office and the practise of freedom of speech. Measuring Dahl's levels of institutions in Venezuela, it is made clear that the level of democracy vary in different areas.