This thesis studies the subject on how disabilities are written about in Swedish politics, the programs of the seven parties in the parliament are studied. The thesis is divided into two parts; where the first part is a content analysis to see how often disability are mention in each programme. It differs between one (the Left Party) and 33 times (the Christian Democrates). This first part also works as a backround to the second part of the study. This part of the thesis is built upon a discourse analysis.

This paper is a Master thesis for the Master?s program in International and European Relations in the Department of Management and Economics at Linköping University. As the title indicates, the aim of this thesis is to make a comparative analysis of the conflict resolution initiatives that were employed in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian conflicts. The research questions are: ? What were the root causes and trajectories of the Sierra Leonean and Liberian conflicts? ? What were the conflict resolution initiatives employed in resolving both conflicts? ? Why did the Lome Peace Accord succeed in the case of Sierra Leone whilst the Abuja Peace Accord failed in bringing peace to Liberia? In order to answer the afore-mentioned questions and fulfil the aim of this paper, a qualitative research method has been chosen.

According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

Through qualitative interviews with six teachers at a school an understanding of teachers´ conceptions of, and conditions for their work on pupil democracy and student participation are sought.Formulation of questions were as follow:What does pupil democracy and pupil influence mean for selected teachers?How do selected teachers´ work with pupil democracy and pupil influence?What opportunities and complicatedness?s do selected teachers see with this work?Through this the selected teachers views on children and their thoughts on their role as a leader also are investigated.According to the curriculum the Swedish school should aim to transmit primary democratic values and pursue the education through democratic work models. Further the pupil should acquire influence of their education. The theory exposes several approaches on democracy and influence. These approaches are further on applied on the school.The result of the study evinces that selected teachers´ practice both pupil democracy and pupil influence.

The study aims to investigate student participation as a tool for democratic development in secondary school from a student perspective. Furthermore, students' perceptions of the school's work with student participation in formal and informal contexts are also investigated, with basis in the teaching structure. The results are based on interviews conducted with students who all attend the same class in their last year of high school. Subsequently, an analysis is made based mainly on three different theories: democracy, curricula and sociocultural theory. The result shows that students feel that they are able to practice student participation but the amount of influence they get differs between individuals depending on devotion and commitment.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how peace journalism was expressed in Swedish newspapers´ reporting on the war in Georgia 2008. We did this by analyzing whether the reporting was elite- or people-orientated depending on how suffering was expressed and how the war players were described.The method we used was Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It was applied on news articles from four Swedish newspapers that covered three different happenings in the war in Georgia.We found out that the reporting was mainly elite-orientated, both when it comes to how suffering was expressed, as well as how the war players were described. The newspapers tended to focus on only one party?s suffering and one party as evil-doer, which is elite-orientated reporting and also an indication of war journalism rather than peace journalism..

The purpose of the thesis is to examine the relation between art, politics and ideology in contemporary art, focusing on the drawings depicting Mohammed the prophet as a dog, made by the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. His work is contextual in accordance with current art practice, thus letting everything related to the artwork become part of it, a circumstance the thesis tries to grasp in the widest respect possible. The drawings were published and spread throughout Swedish media, where they were later defended and criticized by a number of writers. Many debaters argued that the art work represents Western freedom of speech, and that to criticize them is to criticize fundamental democratic rights. This discourse tended to disqualify all arguments that questioned why such force was put into defending and spreading offensive pictures.

The globalization and the realization of a European common insurance market have increased the importance of cross border insurance contracts. Despite that, a gathered set of rules regulating cross border insurance contracts does not exist. The sets of rules within Private International Law which arises today when determining the applicable law regarding cross border insurance contracts are the law of 1993 on applicable law to certain insurance contracts (the law of 1993) and the law of 1998 on applicable law to contractual obligations (Rome Convention). Since the Rome Convention is the only Community instrument which still is in the form of a treaty, work has been done in order to convert it into a regulation, called the Rome-I-regulation. Therefore, the future Rome I-regulation is of importance for the thesis as well since it most likely will replace the Rome Convention.Swedish law is based on the principle of party autonomy, which means that the contracting parties have the right to freely agree on the content of the contract, including the choice of law.

This is a study of how democracy is affected by regionalization. The study focuses on values related to the democracy; these values are representative, transparency, participation, anchoring of decisions and accountability. The case study for this essay is the Regional Development Council of Värmland case study of Region Värmland.1997 a proposition was put forward the Swedish government about changes in responsibilities regarding four Swedish counties. It was decided that Kalmar, Gotland, Skåne and Västra Götaland County would be part of pilot project with extended regional autonomy.Region Värmland was formed at 2001 as a Region Development Council and was at 2007 transformed to a co-cooperative body. Region Värmland has an indirectly elected council, i.e.

This thesis intends to analyse conditions for a successful implementation of consociational democracy, as a democratic model in Afghanistan. The lack of critical reviews regarding the democratisation-process in Afghanistan initiated the purpose of this study.Lijpharts democracy model was used as the basis in the comparative study. Along with empirical evidence regarding how the complex process of democracy in Afghanistan is progressing, the study investigated whether the identified conditions occurred or not.The choice of which democracy model to use can be crucial for the democratic possibilities to even survive and become established in conflict-affected communities. The principle of consociational democracy is that it is an empirically based normative model that aims to organise the state in a way that works against the risks of majority domination and oppression against the minority.The empirical case study revealed that a majority of the conditions were not met, which then can counteract the possibilities for consociational democracy in Afghanistan. The study has critically examined the prospects for the success of consociational democracy in Afghanistan, and it can be assessed that there is a limited probability for a successful applying of this model..

The Sweden Democrats uses a term to describe a situation where ?swedes? are being discriminated against by other ethnic groups and where the elite is promoting this. The term ?svenskfientlighet? can be translated as ?swedofobia? and in this thesis a speech by the party leader Jimmie Åkesson held during the election campaign that solely was dedicated to this term is being analyzed with the help of tools developed by the scholar Ruth Wodak. Ruth Wodak has previously analyzed the rhetoric by other European right-wing-populist parties like FPÖ in Austria and has asked for other researchers to analyze the speech used by right-wing-populist and extremist parties to get a better understanding for just how these parties construct their different enemies.

In contemporary Sweden political participation among foreign-born Swedes is viewed as low and it is well known that foreign-born individuals do not use their voting rights to the same extent as the general population. At the same time there are numerous ethnic associations around the country who work with various activities involving political, democratic and integration issues. This study aims to study how four members of a Somali association regard, relate to and work with politics, democracy and integration. The study is based on these four people, but also on their relationship with authorities and other agencies in the community. The conclusion of this study shows in brief that the desire to participate politically is great, but that democracy and politics is accessible to all, depending on the level of language skills and what political knowledge the individual has.

From a democratic point of view the existing organisation with municipality sections in the city of Malmö, Sweden will be examined. The matter of how an alternative organisation should be structured will also be discussed. Two incompatible models of democracy theories will be arranged: libertarian democracy and participation democracy. The intentions with the reform were primary to increase the civic participation. By applying those values that are used to characterize participation democracy it will be shown whether the local participation has actually increased.

The aim of this Master´s thesis is to examine the debate in Swedish library press concerning outsourcing of public libraries. The two magazines studied are BBL (Biblioteksbladet) and bis (bibliotek i samhälle). The period of time covered by the selected articles is 2005 to 2011. Although there are still quite few cases of tendering arrangements in Sweden, the question has been raised in the last years by the decision of the Municipality of Nacka (Stockholm) to outsource their public libraries. Another important factor for bringing the question into focus has been the general elections of 2006, which brought an alliance of right-wing parties to power.     In this thesis the arguments of the participants are documented and analyzed.

This paper aims to present a theoretical understanding of the emergence of extreme right- wing populist parties (ERP), and more specifically the electoral breakthrough of the ERP party, Sverigedemokraterna in the municipality of Karlskrona. By doing so the study is constructed as a theoretical framework, where the empirical material and the theoretical aspects are interwoven. This means that the theoretical framework also functions as an analytical part. The paper shows how Sverigedemokraterna could be understood as an ERP party, based on e.g its populist anti-establishment critique, and its critique towards the ?immigrant issue?.