This essay examines the recent electoral success of the Sweden Democrats (SD) in the Swedish municipal election in 2006 and 2010. By using statistical methods it aims to explain which of three contradicting theoretical frameworks best can explain how a populist radical right party could penetrate one of the most stable party systems in the world. The theoretical approaches tested in this essay are: a demand-side, an external supply-side and an internal supply-side approach. By using theoretically anchored proxies to determine the effect of the contradicting theoretical approaches this essay concludes that the internal supply-side explanation measuring the local party organizational ability of the SD had the most substantial effect when it comes to explaining their recent electoral success in the Swedish municipalities, as opposed to a more commonly believed demand-side driven explanation..

Why participate? Many studies focus on explaning non-participation in politics. The political parties are loosing members and the particiaption of young people are given extra attention. This thesis is about young people who do participate in party politics. The question is how they experience their participation and how they feel that they can have a politcal influence by being a member of the youth section of a political party.

AbstractParticiapation from the citizens in a democratic society is one of the ground pilars for the function of the democratic society. The goal for the Swedish contemporary democracy is to complement the representative democracy with different kinds of participatory activities for the citizens. But is it working? The purpose of this essay is to exame the problems that might occur when the citizens participate in a wider extent than just voting. The focus is problems connected to the democratic value political equality.

?Liberal Democracy? is a common term in political theory, and it is used as if it had a commonly accepted referent, with both normative and descriptive content. This is certainly the case in democratic theory, where it on the one hand seems to refer to a normative democratic model; on the other hand it is used descriptively, to refer to real-life democracies. The deliberative democratic sub-field is not an exception; on the contrary, the term is frequently used albeit rarely defined; yet the concept it refers to is supposedly developed enough to allow detailed propositions about its citizens?s political behaviour.This essay is an attempt to analyze how Liberal Democracy is used by three deliberative democrats (Jürgen Habermas, John Dryzek and Stephen Elstub), in order to understand the democratic model (or models), whether normative or descriptive, they refer to.

A controversial party?s entry into parliament - a review of Expressen?s depiction of the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna)The purpose of this essay was to study how Expressen presents the Sweden Democrats, as well as reasoning about the effects this depiction could have on the citizens? opinion. Using a quantitative method I studied 122 articles, and through a qualitative method four of these could be further analyzed to reach a deeper result. The theoretical perspective that was applied in this study was primary agenda-setting and framing theory, to illuminate the power of media. The result showed that a prominent theme was to present Sweden Democrats as racists.

The main objective of the essay is to define the meaning of the termgovernance network on the basis of democratic values ? both normative andimperial - with the aim to analyse the prospects to develop an effective anddemocratic governance. Democratic values as well as civil participation,enlightenment, responsibility and approachability are discussed, but also moreeffectivness orientated values.It is clear from the presentation how normative and democracy models putdifferent values in focus, with the consequence that other values are played downor pushed aside. Compared to imperial research in partnership ? by definition atype of network arrangement - and with a starting point in democracy andefficiency, the networks are discussed as political formation.In what sense can the actual existing network arrangements meet and fulfil thedefined political values? As no straight forward answer exists, there is an ongoingconflict between the political demand for slowness and the effectiveness demandfor flexibility and mobility..

The main purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the democratic situation and developement in Malung and Nyköping, through a perspective of participatory and deliberative democratic theories. The questions I?ve examined are On what priorities the actions of developing democracy are built? Which positive effects have been reached and what problems have arisen? What are the solutions they have found to the problems? How does one experience the results of the experiments and actions taken? What are the similarities and differences between the two cases? and What is their relationship to the theories mentioned above?The questions are answered through interviews with four central actors in each case and examined in relation to participatory and deliberative democratic theories and in comparison of the two cases.The results have been that even if none of the cases respond to one theoretical ideal, they have touches of both theories as well as representative theory. It shows, however, that in Malung the representative democracy theory is the strongest represented in actions and politics, while in Nyköping the participatory democratic theory is stronger. In short, the most positive and negative effects respond well to the theories..

ABSTRACTEssay in political science, C-level by Cecilia HolmbergSpring semester 2006, Tutor: Arne Larsson- Ideological similarities between the Swedish Socialdemocratic and the Swedish conservative party- An idealanalysis of different political issuesThe purpose of this essay is to examine wheater the political ideologies have lost their importance in the Swedish political system. The study will focus on the ideological similarities or differences between the two largest parties in Sweden, the socialdemocratic and the conservative party. Therefore, the main research question is:? Are there any ideological similarities or differences between the socialdemocratic and the conservative party?To be able to answer this question, I have used Herbert Tingsten?s idealanalysis. This type of analysis examines how someone, in this case a political party, describes reality.

This essay speaks about the medial coverage made by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The periods examined are the two weeks before the election day (5 September ? 19 September 2010). The purpose of our study is to find out if the newspaper was neutral and did not write in favour of any political party or political block in the newssection. After the elections in Sweden 2010 there have been discussions about the medias in the country being biased, and claims have been made that the news have been written in favour of a certain political party or a bloc.

This thesis examines and evaluates user boards in Swedish public schools from a democratic perspective. In order to evaluate whether the democratic values are fulfilled five different democratic ideals are selected to serve as a theoretical fundament. These ideals derive from the Swedish Government Official Reports that preceded the reform of user boards in schools, and are identified as the following: participation, dialogue, trust, democratic schooling and influence. The study is based on cases and involves two schools with user boards and two comparative schools with informal parental influence, so called school advisory boards. The study concludes that the main difference between the two types of parental influence is the level of formality.

The purpose of this paper is to study the subject Islam and Democracy and see whatcommonalities exist between the two ideas and traditions of thoughts. The subject is topicaland often highlighted by the media in the West. The Islamic voices that we hear today iscertainly not democratic, given the violence and hatred carried out by Islamic extremistsagainst the West. The investigation of this paper have shown a different direction when thereare other voices such as those investigated reformist thinkers who argue that Islam has manydemocratic elements, and even that Islam is more suitable than democracy. According to thereformists ismodel of an Islamic state is democratic and legitimate.

The aim of this two years master´s thesis is to examine discourses about electronic books in relation to libraries that occur in the Swedish library journal Biblioteksbladet by using critical discourse analysis (CDA). The thesis also aims to discuss changes in the discourse practice, and discuss the relationship between discourse practice and social practice in the field of library and information science (LIS). A main point of CDA is that language is a form of social practice that helps shape social reality. Furthermore the concept of ideology, as understood with-in CDA, brings understanding to the way discursive events help reproduce and transform social relations of pow-er. The text samples span from 2005 up to and including 2011 and were examined by using Norman Fairclough´s three-dimensional conception of discourse, which allows for interpretation of text on a linguistic, discursive and social level.The result of the analysis showed that there are several different discourses about electronic books and li-braries, none of which can be said to be particularly representative.

The main purpose of this study is to examine if variations in voter turnout for the European Parliament elections in each member state is affected by the rate of national party polarization on the EU-dimension of party politics. The theoretical background assumes that a high level of polarization generates higher voter turnout since more alternatives are presented to the electorate. This makes it easier for the electorate to find a party that represents their preferences. This will, in turn, increase the likelihood that they will participate in the election.This study uses a research design based on a quantitative analysis with data from each member state, except those with compulsory voting, in the European Parliament elections of 2004 and 2009. The results of the analysis indicate a relationship between high levels of party polarization and lower turnout in the European Parliament election.

ABSTRACTEssay in political science, C-level by Cecilia HolmbergSpring semester 2006, Tutor: Arne Larsson- Ideological similarities between the Swedish Socialdemocratic and the Swedish conservative party- An idealanalysis of different political issuesThe purpose of this essay is to examine wheater the political ideologies have lost their importance in the Swedish political system. The study will focus on the ideological similarities or differences between the two largest parties in Sweden, the socialdemocratic and the conservative party. Therefore, the main research question is:? Are there any ideological similarities or differences between the socialdemocratic and the conservative party?To be able to answer this question, I have used Herbert Tingsten?s idealanalysis. This type of analysis examines how someone, in this case a political party, describes reality.

Several previous studies have in different ways tried to explain how new social movements are affected by the different sets of political and social contexts within different states and societies. This essay asks the question how much the institutional aspects within the theory of Political Opportunity Structures (POS) have determined how the rather successful animal rights movements in the Netherlands and Great Britain have mobilized and acted to gain progress. Since the Netherlands and Great Britain contains different kinds of political and institutional contexts, these two states are found to be suitable for a comparative analysis of the theory's durability. A qualitative portrayal of both state's institutional political opportunity structures are presented. Then the mobilization, progress, and actions of the political party ?Party for the Animals? in the Netherlands, and a wide group of animal rights organisations in Great Britain are determined.