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 purpose of this thesis is to describe and understand the existing factors behind the selection of foreign newspapers in Swedish public libraries. We wanted to study this subject because the political situation in many countries is reflected in the newspapers and can cause difficulties in the selection process. Examples of this can be how to avoid newspapers with political propaganda and with censored content. Another reason for our interest in this subject is based on our prejudice that newspapers from other countries are important for people with foreign background. To answer the question we have conducted qualitative interviews with five persons who are responsible for the purchase of foreign newspapers at four libraries.

In 1513 the Florentine humanists Niccolò Machiavelli composed one of the most famous, but also ambiguously interpret, work in the history of politics, Il Principe. Machiavelli´s book The Prince revealed the true nature of politics in Italy in the beginning of the sixteenth century and gives very straightforward advice on how to act to become a successful and powerful political being. Machiavelli´s creation and insights in the reality of politics have be much discredited and condemned in its lack of moral consideration and violent nature. Still it has been read under the centuries with a fascination and eager to understand the structure of power and how to master it. My purpose with this study is to apply this Machiavellian idea of the capable prince on to the earlier research of the Swedish duke Karl, later on King Karl IX.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..

The legal conception of contra legem derives from Roman law and is translated into "against the law". A decision contra legem arises when the text of law and the legislators purpose of law are disregarded. A paradoxal consequence is that there will always be a decision contra legem, when the text of lawand the legislators purpose of law are contradictory. It is therefore important that decisions contra legem are based on legitimate motives to ensure law and order. In fraudem legis is another legal conception from Roman law and is translated into "evasion of law".

erspective [80][upps-01.gif] This is a thesis on the Swedish Public Lending Right PLR, from a historical perspective. Some of the questions which are investigated in this thesis are: why did the State decide to introduce a PLR and why did it take about 20 years to make the decision? The question why the PLR was not introduced on a copyright basis is also discussed. The focus of this study is during the period of 1934-1956 and it is a literature-study. Mainly there are four reports made by different committees that have been examined.

The Swedish society has trough decades developed into a multicultural society. Minority groups such as Sami have been a part of the country for a long time. By being separated from the majority through culture, language etc. minorities demand the right to become independent and have the ability to practice their culture. History show that minorities all over the world have been discriminated and abused by the majorities. Democratic procedures are often advantages for the majority.

This thesis concerns the policy process of a proposed bill. The specific bill constitute a new penal law which is supposed to replace the old penal law from 1974.The questions asked considers what in the foregoing policy process that has proceeded, affected and also characterizes the proposed bill. In order to be able to produce a deep and reliable analysis to this question I use two different theories.The first theory being used consists of John W. Kingdons theory of ?multiple streams? which I use to answer the specific question ?what can be recognized to have proceeded and characterize the policy process that the penal law bill involve??.The second theory consists of Peter Santesson-Wilsons development of symbolic policy theories which is given a concrete form in the ?taxonomy of symbolic policy? which he presents.

Central in this paper is Olof Johansson, Swedish minister for the environment, there the focus lye on his resignation from this duty which occurred in 1994. This essay is a case study there I?m trying to identify which ethical reasons which lye behind his resignation. The relationship between politics and ethics is an interesting aspect to investigate and my ambition with this paper is to analyze that relationship in this specific case.The analysis has its focus built on the occurrence of role conflicts and the making of ethical decisions. Aspects like personal ethics versus organisational ethics, objective responsibility versus subjective responsibility etc.

The concept of national security has been a matter for debate during recent years, especially in academic fields. Criticism has surfaced since the end of the cold war, directed towards the traditional perspective's dogmatic focus on armed threats and interstate war. Questions concerning an oncoming paradigm shift have been raised, regarding a widening of the security agenda among national states to also include alternative threats, such as environmental hazards. In this thesis, the focus lies on the effects that climate changes have caused in the Swedish national security agenda during the last 15 years. Swedish policy documents show that there have been some major changes, not only the widening of the security agenda but the entire security domain seems to have changed.

The most important conclusion of this study is that the negotiations between the parties ends when conflicts arise from property owners, and with this the time will be extended and be more costly. During the study it has been shown that good communication is the key to an effective and successful negotiation between the parties.The purpose of this study is to investigate how the practical procedure under expropriation is in relation to the legal text, in other words, describe and analyze the procedure for expropriation under current rules but also to explain how it operated in practice. This is to get a picture of how the process works and what effects it receives.Three methods were used for the study. A literature review for understanding how expropriation relates according to the law. A case study from an ongoing expropriation in Sundsvall municipality, and an interview with seven affected interested parties from the expropriation.Reviewed literature describes how the application of the Expropriation Act must go to as well as other research on the topic.

The subject this thesis will investigate concerns the matter of how political ideologies exist within public libraries with a focus on the democratic ideal. Public libraries are part of the political system and we want to show how political ideologies take their shape in public libraries and the possible consequences of this. With the help of three major political ideologies, liberalism, conservatism and socialism we investigate how the democratic ideals of these ideologies are expressed in documents that describes activities the libraries will and have performed. In order to identify these ideologies we use discourses in cultural policy as a bridge between the investigated documents and the political ideologies. As an analytical tool we have developed a model that describes the relation between text, discourse and ideology which we use in our analysis.

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..

In this essay my aim is to examine how the term utanförskap is constructed and defined as a social problem in the public arena of the Swedish Parliament. The term utanförskap was widely used in the election-campaign prior to the Swedish Parliament election in the year 2006. The term, mainly articulated by the Right-wing Alliance, was used to describe indi-viduals and groups that were depicted as being outside the Swedish society. In the political debate, work and benefit dependency were constructed as binary opposites, with the latter describing the individuals in utanförskap. Translated to English the term utanförskap would be something like ?the state of being outside? or ?outsidership?.

This case study examines how individuals involved in the Swedish peace movement have navigated their peace activism due to the intensified security debate which followed Russia?s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. By conducting semi-structured interviews with peace activists involved in the Swedish peace organization Svenska freds- och Skiljedomsf?reningen, the study aims to provide insight into how peace activists, and the peace movement as a whole, can be affected when the security debate intensifies. By applying a theoretical framework consisting of Political Process Theory (PPT) and Discursive Opportunity Structure (DOS), as well as previous studies and literature on social movement organizations and peace movements, the study?s objective is also to apply context to the observations made by the peace activists in the study.