By studying a place or a phenomena research contributes to the creation of the image of the thing that he or she studies. Also, planning is seen as a democratic tool, a way to ?make? democracy. In order to see what Democratic ideals that is being express it becomes important to study the research about democracy in Botkyrka. It is from this thinking this study about democracy and research has been formed.

This thesis examines and evaluates user boards in Swedish public schools from a democratic perspective. In order to evaluate whether the democratic values are fulfilled five different Democratic ideals are selected to serve as a theoretical fundament. These ideals derive from the Swedish Government Official Reports that preceded the reform of user boards in schools, and are identified as the following: participation, dialogue, trust, democratic schooling and influence. The study is based on cases and involves two schools with user boards and two comparative schools with informal parental influence, so called school advisory boards. The study concludes that the main difference between the two types of parental influence is the level of formality.

By studying a place or a phenomena research contributes to the creation of the image of the thing that he or she studies. Also, planning is seen as a democratic tool, a way to ?make? democracy. In order to see what Democratic ideals that is being express it becomes important to study the research about democracy in Botkyrka. It is from this thinking this study about democracy and research has been formed.

Local politicians are key actors in the democratic system and their ideas concerning democracy plays a central role in local democratic politics. The study's point of departure is the notion that local politicians are dependent of coherence between practice and theory concerning democracy and in the study of their ideas we acquire knowledge about the democratic practice.This study examines the local politicians? view of Swedish democracy and explores the logic of the discourse that makes statements concerning democracy possible. Twenty local politicians have been interviewed and from the material a discourse have been established through the use of formulation of problems and cause, nodal points and chains of analogy which is compared with Democratic ideals.The study comes to the conclusion that a hegemonic discourse exists, in which central nodal points are representative and listening. The idea of the representative system is hegemonic and is based in the liberal democratic ideal although the view of the citizens rather can be traced to the radical, communitarian and deliberative ideal.

According to the core contents in the curriculum for the compulsory school 2011 for the subject Physical Education grades 7-9, teachers of the subjects shall give their students knowledge about body ideals within sports, and the society as a whole. The purpose of this study was to examine and analyze the attitude toward body ideals of the students soon to leave secondary school. The study was based on a quantitative survey with 70 participating students from three different schools. The results show that the schools, according to the students, do not inform the students about body ideals. However, the result shows that the students consider body ideals as an important topic that needs to be dealt with in school, since they consider the adolescences of today are living with a pressure telling them what to look like.

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.

Lately information- and communication technology (ICT) has been seen as an important tool to vitalize democracy. What kind of democracy it generates is however debateable. The objective with this thesis is therefore to examine what democratic ideal that dominates the use of ICT in Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen and what kind of citizenship it brings. The two case studies were chosen because the Swedish regional level is facing a reorganization with democratic ambitions which in relation to ICT is fairly unexplored. To fulfil the objective there are two perspectives; e-democracy and e-administration, which are defined and integrated with democratic theory including Premfors´ "Fast, Strong and Thin" Democratic ideals and Marshall´s three citizenship rights.

In this master thesis, I investigate four Public Librarys´ program activities. The purpose is to explore what the library program activities contribute to as a part of a well functioning democracy. The theoretical points, I have brought from political science. I assume three different ideals of democracy; electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberative democracy. All have different views on what can be characterized by a well-functioning democracy.My empirical material consists of library program guides, the libraries´ target documents and interviews with staff at the libraries who work with or have overall responsibility for program activities in their respective libraries.

Partly as a reaction to a perceived crisis in contemporary democracy, the nineties witnessed an upsurge in different forms of citizens? fora, dedicated to the promotion of increased participation by the citizen in the political process. Youth councils are a special point in case as they entail the general characteristics of a deliberative forum, with an emphasis on political learning. This study aims to undertake an evaluation of a regional youth council in the region of Skåne in the south of Sweden. Through qualitative analysis, the study aims to portray the origin, purposes and consequences of such a forum.

The number of blogs, from weblogs, are increasing every day. Blogs are also becoming more visible in the public debate as well as the awareness of their existance is rising among politicians and citizens. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question what democratic potential blogs can have. This question will be answered by initially studying the research that exists today about weblogs and democracy. The second part of the analysis consists of a selection of texts from weblogs that touches this subject.

                                                  AbstractThe development of our society has in many ways changed the relationships between the political parties and the citizens. Fewer citizens are active in political parties, which has contributed to the fact that we see a form of catch-all effect and a development of parties that organizes more in forms of professional organisations. This paper has made a research of modells of Democratic ideals and values between leaders and party-members in political parties in the local area. The purpose has been to show how these ideals and values can reflect back on the political development. The result shows that the development has created a form of catch-all effect and a professionalism in the parties.

Health and fitness are two controversial and not easily defined topics that affect people in our modern society every day. We believe that we can find a link between individualism, globalization and the stress concerning weight and appearance ideals. Our bodies have turned into a popular subject for the media, and there is no indication that the interest will decline. As the world gets more artificial, "natural" ideals are getting more attention, such as the concept of a strong and healthy body. But there is also a downside, for example with health issues such as cardiovascular disease increasing following the birth of high-fat diets.

AbstractSince democracy was developed in the ancient Greece it has come to be used within a small city state, within the national state and as today used within a bigger perspective. After the end of the second world war political leaders wanted to make sure that there would never be a war between European countries again. Now, about 60 years later this type of cooperation now involves 27 of the European countries and goes under the name of the Euroapean Union. This means that democracy is no longer used just within the nation state, but within a big organisation that is responsible for almost 500 million Europeans lives. This also means that the European Union need to make some institutional reforms to be able to handle all the future challenges.

In 2003 the parties in Sweden were invited to debate reforms of the Constitution. The purpose of this essay is to study the debate concerning reforms of the Constitution and identify values expressed by the parties. Moreover the goal of the essay is to connect the identified values to the three Democratic ideals, which are; electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberation democracy. This analyze is based on the idea analyze.The conclusion is that all parties have argued that the Swedish Constitution should be based on the democratic ideal of electoral democracy. However, the right wing parties have also argued for inflection of participations democracy and deliberation democracy in the constitution.

The aim of this study is to illuminate and discuss a case of political steering, specifically Managment-By-Objectives (MBO) in Swedish municipalities, from a democratic perspective. The essay examines a discrepancy between MBO in the Swedish municipalities and democratic theory.To fulfil the aim of the study one leading politician and one leading civil servant from five municipalities have been interviewed on this matter. This material is discussed in the light of a democratic theory constructed specifically for this essay. The democratic theory consists of three main democratic values in the democratic process: debate, transparence and the ability to demand political accountability.The main conclusion is that there is a contradiction in the use of MBO and the democratic values of debate, transparence and the ability to demand political accountability. MBO has resulted in a lack of debate and transparency and furthermore, it has made it increasingly more difficult to demand political accountability..