This thesis aims at studying the development of the party cohesion in the Swedish national parliament, riksdagen, after the introduction of preference voting in the election of 1998. The party cohesion has been measured during parliamentary sessions before and after the reform. The result of the cohesion during each of the sessions has then been compared towards each other. The cohesion was measured between the members of parliament viewed as a whole, and within the party groups during the different sessions. The research method being used has been a quantified statistical voting analysis, making the comparisons of party cohesion during the different parliamentary sessions as easy as possible.

This Bachelor thesis deals with the act of the British Labour Party when they recalled a referendum promised by former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Tony Blair promised a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty, but his successor Gordon Brown later recalled it when the Lisbon Treaty succeeded the Constitutional Treaty as the legal foundation of the European Union.The main purpose of this thesis was to with help from various theorethical frameworks explain why the Labour Party decided to do this, even if this decision gave the main opposition party, the Conservative and Unionist Party (the Tories), the chance to heavily critisize the Labour Party, and picture them as traitors.The research questions were:? What are the reasons that the Labour Party went from being a Eurosceptical party, to become more pro-European?? Why did the Labour Party cancel the promised referendum on the new treaty of the European Union?Various answers were found for the first research question. Among the most important was that it was a part of the over all transition which led to the launch of New Labour.The second research question was answered with three explanatory models based on actions of the Labour Party on three arenas; the electoral arena (based on power, this model claims that the Labour Party act as they do because the know the Tories would not act differently if they were in office), the parliamentary arena (based on ideology, this model claims that Labour want the Lisbon Treaty because it has a stronger social dimension than earlier treaties) and the internal arena (based on the problem of identification, this model claims that the Labour Party identifies itself with the British government, and not just the voters, and are afraid of damaging Britain?s influence in the EU and international politics if Britain says ?no? to the Lisbon Treaty)..

This thesis aims to study the indirect effects of the Europeanization on national parties and the presence of an established national opposition towards the European Union (EU) and its effects in Sweden, as a result of the so-called conflict of Vaxholm. The questions asked were whether or not it existed an established national opposition towards the EU, and if so, what the opposition consists of substantially. The research method, which was used, is a quantified text analysis on the chamber debates of the Swedish Riksdag and the party congresses of Socialdemokraterna. The study shows that there is an ambivalent opposition towards the EU and its effects in the aftermath of the conflict of Vaxholm.  Socialdemokraterna presented resistance, but did not manage to present apparent alternatives, which left the party with a rather indistinctive opposition. In contrast to the right-wing party, the left-wing party had some profound difficulties in positioning itself in the new and globalized economy. I therefore suggest, that it might be more providing and exhaustive to introduce Azmanova?s ideal-type analysis, which instead of positing parties on a left-right continuum, posit parties after respective party?s opinions concerning the risks or opportunities which the EU and the internal market?s effects. .

In Sweden, a new feminist political party (?Feministiskt initiativ?) was founded in 2005. The main objective of this thesis is to study the reasons and driving forces behind the establishment of the party, as well as to explain the timing of its foundation in 2005. The theories that are used in the study are focused on the individual founders, and the empirical material comprise in essence of interviews with founders.The study reveals that several individuals, as well as political movements were involved in the process of the party establishment. Various interacting factors influenced the founders to choose the strategy of setting up a political party.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the democratic views in the two latest party platforms, belonging to the two Swedish political parties Vänsterpartiet and Sverigedemokraterna. This by applying Robert A. Dahl's democracy model, Polyarchy, and Carol Pateman's democratic Participatory model, on to the party platforms. By doing so, my hopes were to determine if the two political parties can classify themselves as democratic parties. The result shows that both Vänsterpartiet and Sverigedemokraterna meet the majority of the democratic demands created by Robert A.

When Deng Xiaoping introduced his reform program, he began China's transition from a plan economy to a socialist market economy. Liberal theorists often argue that there is an automatic link between ?free market? and ?democracy?, however this link is not evident in China. This contradiction constitutes the problem area of this thesis.With a theoretical framework containing ?totalitarism? and ?Tang Tsous culturalist approach? I have analysed the leadership of CCP (China's Communist Party) and its strategies to maintain the Chinese political system.

Liberal theorists typically argue that state action should not favor any particular conception of the good or meaningful life. On this view the defining characteristic of the liberal state is neutrality among rivaling ideas of the good. This thesis argues that state neutrality is impossible to maintain in practice. Two different versions of state neutrality; neutral justification and neutral aims, are used to analyze a wide range of political issues. It is concluded that far from being neutral, the liberal state favors individualistic and market oriented conceptions of the good life.

AbstractC-level in Political Science by Christoffer Odén, vt-08?Traditionalism versus Modernism. The Ideology Debate in Left-Socialist Party Today?Instructor: Mats LindbergThe purpose with this essay is to describe the ideology debate in Left-Socialist Party between traditionalists and modernists. This essay have the following questions: 1 ) What are the differences between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? 2 ) What is similar between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? My method is to analyse the Left-Socialist Party programme from 2004 and analyse a programme from the modernist organisation Vagval Vanster.

The aim of this study is to describe the characteristics of right-wing populist parties in Europe. The three parties included in the study are the Swedish Democrats (SD), the British National Party (BNP) and the National Front (NF) in France. The study includes a definition of right-wing populism based on previous research and from that an ideal type of a right-wing populist party has been created. The material used in the study to verify how well the parties were consistent to the ideal type and what similarities and differences the parties in the study have are the parties? political programs and policies.

The European Union has faced lots of criticisms over the last couple of years when it comes to how refugees are treated in Europe. The Lisbon Treaty states in Article 2 that the European Union is founded on respect for human freedom, dignity and equality. Values such as democracy, rule of law, respect for human rights and that the rights of persons belonging to minorities should be respected are also something that the Union should be based on. How is it then that the Roma people, which are Europe's largest minority, are being persecuted all over Europe, that they get deported and have their camps destroyed? Why are refugees from North Africa being sent back before they even have a chance to seek asylum?  In this essay I have examined how the EU are treating refugees and tried to distinguish if there are any differences in how they treat internal and external refugees.

This paper examines how the Swedish nationalistic political party Sverigedemokraterna communicates regarding the crisis they experienced when the Swedish newspaper Expressen published a few video clips of three, in that time, highly important party members that got in an argument after a late night of drinking. Two of the party members were at the time of the publication the members of the Swedish parliament and all of them had important senior positions in the party. In the argument one of the party members used abusive, offensive, sexist and racist language while all acted threatening and even armed themselves with iron bars from a nearby construction site.The aim of this paper is to examine how the party Sverigedemokraterna conducts their crisis communication, if they apologies and the fashion of the apology. A press conference with the party leader and the most active user of abusive language and also an interview with the second member of parliament who is involved in the argument are studied. The rhetorical arena is used to describe and pinpoint the most important stakeholders in the crisis.

During the later parts of the 20th century there occurred several changes to the Swedish public sector. These changes aimed to effectivize and decentralize the governance model in the public sector. One of these changes was the municipalization of the school system, put forward and proposed by the social democratic government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This study aims to examine and compare that times different parliamentary parties' opinions on the municipalization of the school system. The source material consists of government bills, and in direct relation to the municipalization of the school system.

The aim of this essay is to show if and how group identities are being constructed in maindocuments from three political parties in the Swedish parliament, focusing on class, genderand ethnic identities. The three parties who?s documents are being analyzed are theModerate Party, the Sweden Democrats and the Left Party. The conclusion of the essay isthat the Moderate Party is so focused on the individual that they are not promoting groupidentity based on class, gender or ethnicity. The Sweden Democrats are mostly discussing,and therefore creating a discourse of, cultural identity, where Swedish, Nordic, Europeanand Western culture are being created as the ?us?, and others are being created as ?them?.They are also promoting difference between men and women, therefore dividing the sexesin groups.

During the last decades the Swedish local party systems have gone through some considerable changes. The number of parties present in local party systems have increased and in some cases even doubled. This makes coalition building between parties complex and parties will be forced to rethink their coalition strategies and adjust to the new circumstances. Theoretically, coalition building has often been considered and applied to national data and there have been just a few attempts to develop and theoretically explain coalitions on a local level. Thus the aim of this paper is to use different theoretical approaches to local data to test the significance of traditional coalition theories.

The Voices of ParliamentCongruence between party and personThe purpose of this study is to determine the congruence between the opinions of members of parliament and their respective party policies, in order to further determine the cause of poor voter-party congruence and whether or not the individualization of the parliament could affect the character of legislation. To do so, the study asks two primary research questions;- "Are the communicated party policies representative of the opinions of the members of parliament?"- "Is the discrepancy between party policies and the opinions of the members of parliament sufficient for the individualization of parliament to substantially affect the parliament's decisions?"The study answers these questions by comparing the average of self-described left-right stances of members of parliament with the average of voter-described left-right stances of party policies, using existing survey data and a constructed left-right dimension. The lower average is then subtracted from the higher average, creating a value of congruence that is then inserted into a constructed congruence dimension. The primary findings of the study suggest that there is substantial congruence between party policies and the opinions of the members of parliament, and that the discrepancy between them is unlikely to substantially affect the parliament's decisions..