The question of direct citizen participation in politics and administration is a contestable one. Its proponents claim that it has positive consequences even for the more "traditional", representative democracy, since participation leads to an increased political knowledge and increased political interest, and thus creates a revitalised democracy. Critical voices have however been raised to the validity of this claim. Critics have also pointed out direct participation as problematic, because it leads to problems of political inequality: a difference of political influence between ? on the one hand, the citizens participating directly and those that restrict their political participation to voting, and ? on the one the other hand ? between the institutions, for example schools, that employ, and don?t employ this method of direct citizen influence.In this essay, these two points of criticisms are tested in the context of user-boards in elementary and secondary schools.

I en tid då allt fler röster höjs angående FN:s ineffektivitet har vi valt att undersöka hur organisationen behandlar medlingsuppdrag i mellanstatliga konflikter. Utifrån den pågående konflikten på Cypern och kriget mellan Iran och Irak på 1980-talet ser vi hur FN som tredje part har agerat dels utifrån ett systemperspektiv och dels på medlingsnivå. De valda konflikterna grundar sig i liknande frågor om nationell identitet, etnicitet och gränsdragning. För att täcka flera problemområden använder vi oss av realism, socialkonstruktivistisk organisationsteori samt erkända medlingsteorier.Efter att ha analyserat konflikterna har vi sett att FN är i behov av reformer som stärker möjligheterna att medla fram lösningar i konflikter, då rådande omständigheter gör FN beroende av stöd från andra aktörer och egna medlemsländer..

I vår uppsats ställer vi oss frågan varför Turkiet, trots över 50 år av demokratiska institutioner bryter mot mänskliga rättigheter samt yttrande- och pressfriheter. Vi har använt oss av en modell som identifierar tre kärnområden viktiga för demokratisering: staten, globaliseringen och civilsamhället.Vår slutsats är Turkiet har en politisk kultur som inte gynnar konsolidering. Detta beror på flera olika faktorer. Transitionen från diktatur till valdemokrati innebar att strukturer etablerades som favoriserade eliter. För det andra finns det en omfattande partikularism i statsförvaltningen jämte det demokratiska systemet.

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.

In Jaunuary 1995 Sweden became part of the European Union. Consequently Sweden agreed upon beeing part of a greater integration project with influences of federalism. However, many argue that the discourse that has been been dominant in Sweden is the discourse where we focus on the national state instead of the EU. In my essay I question whether the discourse about ?nationalstatslogiken? is found in the daily press in Sweden.

This thesis investigates how teachers in political science work with global issues in their teaching. It investigates the implementation within a specific area. Implementation is a problematic concept and in debate it is often accused of not working.This thesis finds out whether dissatisfaction exists among teachers when it comes to how municipal schools work with global issues.The investigation consists of three interviews made with teachers in political science, all from municipal upper secondary schools, in three different cities.The result shows that dissatisfaction exists among the teachers. Lack of time and lack of dialogue between the teachers and the principles are described as the main hindrances to reach the goals of the implementation. The implementation is however, in a broad outline, depicted positively..

This thesis analyses the rise and fall of social movements. Social movementsfunctions in the civil society, by contentious collective action they form identities,mobilize their forces and use repertoires of contentions to make new or previouslyunaccepted claims. They function in a limited timeframe, sooner or later they getinstitutionalized, marginalised or succumb into violence. The landless movementin Brazil is one of the most profound social movements in the world; their majorgoal is a land reform. Since the leftwing president Lula da Silva won the Brazilianelection in 2002 the president has been unable to live up to the expectations fromthe landless movement about implementing a land reform.

The purpose with our essay was to examine which clients/patients get treatment for alcohol problems from either health care units or social service units. We also wanted to find out how staff in these units considers the importance of social background in the assessment of treatment. The questions we have focused are: How do the clients/patients get in contact with the units? How does staff in these units consider the importance of social background in the assessment of treatment? How is the social background like for the present clients/patients? To fulfil the purpose with our investigation and to get answers to our questions, we performed an explorative examination and applied a qualitative method in the form of a semi-structured interview with six persons. The investigation showed that clients/patients get in contact with the units by looking for treatment by themselves or by relatives and other organisations.

AbstractThe political parties in Sweden are losing members. This is seen as a problem because the political parties are the base and the recruiting ground for members to decision-making bodies. Social movements are seen as a place where people with a modest background could express their opinions and also learn the political process. These movements have also lost members during the last decades and this could seriously affect the representation of lower social groups among the decision-makers. This essay emanates from Robert D.

The Swedish welfare organisation is built on the fact that the legislation gives the municipalities and social workers guidance and direction how to assess cases. Through out this the clients have right to be assessed both equally and individually. How is this done? The purpose of this paper was to examine the effect of the organisation referred to the social workers ability to discretion and the evaluation of the assessment in first time applications of social assistant cases. The purpose was also to look for variations in decisions and if these could be explained out of organisational and assessment effects.

The aim with this paper is to investigate how the Social Democratic Party (SAP) deals with the question of economic migrants, or more specifically how the problem is represented by the Social Democratic Party, and how this representation has developed over time. The SAP's theory became recently contested by a competing theory that was caused by the predicted future demographic development in Sweden, combined with the EU's eastern expansion. The first factor contributed to the re-write of the theory, to a theory that saw economic migrants as a solution instead of a problem, in direct contrast to SAP's theory. The second factor was a direct threat to SAP's labour immigration policy. This leads to my second question, how did SAP respond to this pressure?The answers to these questions are achieved by using discourse analysis by applying a problem oriented theory on empirical material, constituting propositions, articles in mass media and parliamentary debates.

Asperger´s syndrome is a state with certain difficulties in social relations, communication and perception. People with Asperger´s syndrome often have a special interest for a certain topic. The main purpose of this study was to describe how grown people with Asperger´s syndrome make sense of living with Asperger´s syndrome. The inquiry was based on semi-structured interviews with eight persons with Asperger´s syndrome. We reached those subjects trough interest organisations for people with Asperger´s syndrome.

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.

The overall purpose with this thesis has been to study the strategic development of the Swedish Green Party, Miljöpartiet de Gröna. From its first appearance in the Swedish parliament 1988 to its decision to cooperate with the Social Democrats and the Left Party in 1998, the Greens has gone from a radical antiparty to a pragmatic support party. The analysis has concentrated towards identifying the causal factors behind this strategic move made by the Greens, and to determine how this party change has affected the party's strategic goals. In order to do so, a qualitative case study has been conducted where an integrated theoretical approach has been used. By studying official statements and internal debates the thesis concludes that the strategic change made by the Greens was due to the evolvement of a new dominant coalition of within the party.

Uppsatsen behandlar beskattning av hybridinstrument som är sammansättningar av mer än en typ av finansiellt instrument. Beskattning av hybridinstrument gör det särskilt svårt att särskilja ränta från kapitalvinst..