Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union a lot of hope has been put on civil society to help develop Russia into a more democratic society. This study explores the constructive elements in the relationship between civil society and the state in Russia, and how this enables the work toward political development. By using Julie Fishers theory about political development and organisational autonomy I discuss the varying and often complex ways in which civil society and the state interacts. These are often not mentioned in the liberal tradition, which believes that civil society's most important democratic function is to act as a watchdog for the state.There is very limited political space for NGO's in authoritative Russia. The existing oppositional NGO's are important for the political development, but they are few and their impacts on society are limited.

The purpose of this study is to present populism as a political phenomenon and to impose focus on the rightwing populist parties that are active in Scandinavia. This essay begins with a presentation of the three rightwing political parties in Scandinavia. The rightwing populist parties have successfully developed their rhetoric and effectively influenced the political establishment in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The parties that the essay focuses on are theSwedish democrats (SD), the Norwegian Progress party (FRP) and the Danish People`s party (DF). These parties are interesting in the sense that they share many opinions and are active in comparable political atmospheres, but also that they use approximately the same rightwing populist rhetoric as a way of exerting leverage on political policy.The theoretical segment is constructed on a descriptive historical background of populisms three different phases.

The aim of this thesis is to study the cause of Egypt´s failed development of the transition to democracy and vice versa, the reason why Turkey succeeded in democratic transition. Thesis methodology is a comparative analysis between design units Egypt and Turkey. Thus, the most similar design used in the investigation.European Commission began in 1998 to review Turkey´s political and economic reforms to fulfil the Copenhagen criteria. 2005 began negotiations on a Turkish- EU membership. U.S and Egypt have enjoyed close economic, security and democratic cooperation since 1975.

The so called democratic deficit and the lack of legitimacy have been at the core of the EU-debate in the last decades. Low turnouts in the elections for the European parliament and disapproval in the ratification processes of the latest changes of the treaties are examples of the citizens lack of confidence for the EU and continuous integration. In Nice 2000 the heads of the member states governments agreed to try to improve the democratic legitimacy in the EU and initiated a public debate aiming at proposals for changes in the decision making processes in the EU. In July 2001 the commission published a white paper with their view. A fundamental presumption in discourse theory is that language and language usage not just is a way to deliver information about ideas and behaviours.

This thesis examines the democracy theories that can be found in the internet websites of Region Skåne and Stockholm county council. Within the framework of deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and electoral democracy, the author tries to distinguish democratic aspects by empirically studying these websites and their communicative effect on the internet users.This research shows that Region Skåne is slightly better in implementing democratic aspects at their home page, which is probably due to an active work with these issues carried out by the politicians and the report on the democratic development from 2004. However, a great deal of work regarding democracy and the possibility of civic participation in the decision- making process is still to be done.The problems and challenges in using internet as a democratic tool shows that citizens run a risk of being neglected, due to their uneven participation in using internet in daily life. The conclusion of this thesis is that the politicians have to make an active choice in deciding to what extent the internet is allowed to be used when it comes to developing democracy. This work has to be done in cooperation with political scientists and IT experts, in order to assure a correct democratic model..

The aim of this essay is to examine whether democracy in St Petersburg isconsolidated or not. Since studies of democratic transition have been rarelyconducted on post-communist cities, this study seems fruitful. Using the Linz andStepan theory, where democracy is considered consolidated when it has become?the only game in town? and Orttung's three criteria legitimacy, politicalpolarisation and policy effectiveness; this essay analyzes people's attitudes,political behaviour, the rule of law and civil society in St Petersburg. Theory isused to interpret the material mainly consisting of two interviews and newspaperarticles.

This essay examines two communist parties in Sweden; The Communist Party (Kommunistiska partiet [KP]) and Sweden's Communist party (Sveriges kommunistiska parti [SKP]). Furthermore, this essay is a comparative study where the two parties' political agendas are compared. The method with which the study was conducted is a quantitative content analysis, where the frequencies of usage pertaining to certain words and expressions have been measured. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx has also been compared to these two parties' political agendas concerning words and expressions. This was done in order to determine which of the examined parties stands closer to the aforementioned original document from an ideological perspective.

This thesis analyzes the media debates generated by the election of Omar Mustafa to the board of the Social Democratic Party, and the appointment of the conservative Minister of Labour, Elisabeth Svantesson. More specifically, the aim is to analyze newspaper material through a discourse analyze, to see if and how religious affiliation effects the possibilities to act as a political representative. Theories of othering and intersectionality serve as theoretical points of departure. Further, chains of equivalence from Laclau and Mouffe?s discourse theory are used to study how categories as ?us? and ?the other? are constructed in the material, and how these processes of categorization relate to the intersection of religion, gender and ethnicity.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Sweden and how the design may contribute to realize central democratic goods. The study records the different PB experiences in Sweden and focuses on one particular case, which is the only case that successfully qualifies as a genuine PB-process according to international standards and definitions. To examine this, the following questions are asked: which municipalities in Sweden have implemented Participatory Budgeting? How can the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting be described and to what extent does it enable the realization of central democratic goods? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the democratic goods inclusion, popular control, considered judgment and transparency? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the institutional goods of efficiency and transferability?The study is based on an institutional theory of democracy. The method used is a mixed method ideal type analysis that combines document analysis, surveys and interviews.

The European Union is seen as democratic, and one of the criteria for a democratic decision process is that it must be fully transparent for the citizens. That is the only way for them to make their own decisions about political issues, and it is only possible as long as the citizens have access to relevant and reliable information. However, this is not always the case within the European Union, since it is often difficult to get a hold of different documents of the institutions, and since the civil servants to a great extent are forbidden to give away any information..

In this research paper I have interpreted and analysed how it is possible for a Radical Right Populist Party such as FPÖ (The Freedom Party) to obtain electoral success in the end of the last millennium. In 1999 they were elected into the national legislative parliament with 26.9% of the votes and participated in the Shüssel government from February 2000. I believe this is an extreme case study and my method is the so called Disciplined-configurative case study. I?ve conducted this study by using earlier published research and than dividing these old theories into to three analytical categories.

National identity, multiculturalism and invisible norms are three conceptions focused on in this essay. They are discussed and analysed with the purpose of deepening deepen the understanding of their meaning. Further on they become instruments in a study of the Liberal Party's proposal for new politics of integration. My ambition is to distinguish signs of a Swedish national identity in this proposal and to interpret the party's relation to multiculturalism.The method of this essay comprises partly a literature study and partly a qualitative analysis of text.My discussion and analysis ended in an understanding of national identity and multiculturalism as complex and interrelated conceptions. I found parts of a Swedish national identity in the value of working, in the fear of the cultural unknown and of eventual anti Swedish culture, in the idea of Sweden as the best country in the world considering gender equality and in the strong defence for the Swedish language.

This paper examines the amount of influence that upper secondary school pupils of the Swedish voluntary school system. The curriculum clearly states that democratic values are to be instilled with the pupils at an early age, and that the pupils are to have a degree of democratic influence over their tutelage. This paper is based upon a survey, which involves one hundred and fourteen pupils at the Malmö Latin gymnasium. The hypothesis argues that upper secondary school pupils in Sweden have very little knowledge in this area and it contradicts much of the previous research done in this field. The pupils´ ages vary from fifteen to eighteen years of age.The survey shows that the pupils of this school have little or no knowledge of their democratic rights within the school boundaries.

The purpose of this thesis is, through both a quantitative and qualitative study, to map out how the interaction appears between the established parties and the radical right-wing party, the Sweden Democrat?s (SD) and their core issue ? immigration in the Swedish parliament. By applying analytical dimensions on the parliamentary protocols regarding the immigration issue between the years of 2010-2012 this study will get an insight on how the argumentation concerning immigration has developed since their entrance into the Swedish parliament in 2010. The result shows that SD, through the rejection treatment of the established parties, fulfilled the three conditions which accordingly to the study's theoretical framework are crucial for the party's future success. In the established parties? reception of SD regarding immigration, SD is, to a large extent, left unchallenged as the established parties rather focus on integration instead of challenge SD in the immigration issue.

The main purpose of the examination research project is to analyze and describe how democracy and globalization is understood when they are integrated in the developing country of Kenya. This has been reflected by interviewing Kenyan teachers in history and government, to receive their view on globalization and its affects on democracy. Another purpose is to discuss this in didactic terms as a way to see how it can be practically used for upper-secondary schoolteachers in the subjects of civics and social studies. The procedure of the project and the method of use are interviews that have been analyzed in all with theoretical perspectives. My queries to be answered for the research are:1.