Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union a lot of hope has been put on civil society to help develop Russia into a more democratic society. This study explores the constructive elements in the relationship between civil society and the state in Russia, and how this enables the work toward Political development. By using Julie Fishers theory about Political development and organisational autonomy I discuss the varying and often complex ways in which civil society and the state interacts. These are often not mentioned in the liberal tradition, which believes that civil society's most important democratic function is to act as a watchdog for the state.There is very limited political space for NGO's in authoritative Russia. The existing oppositional NGO's are important for the Political development, but they are few and their impacts on society are limited.

This essay deals with development in Latin America. We have picked out some factors that the theories in development theory emphasize on. The first section of the study consists of a statistical analysis, were the main purposes are to study the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent and to choose which two countries we should focus on in the next section. The countries we decided to study were Costa Rica and Nicaragua, because these countries have shown very different levels of development. From this study we have concluded that political stability, economical investements and human investments are the most important factors when creating development..

Since the end of the Cold War, foreign aid donors have been using political conditionality to promote human rights, democracy and good governance in recipient countries. This phenomenon has been analyzed and criticized, but mainly from a strictly empirical point of view. In this paper, the legitimacy of political conditionality is analyzed through a normative perspective based on the extrinsic value of efficiency. If the political conditions don?t result in a democratic development, including respect of human rights and good governance, they can not be justified.With at theoretical focus on the donors, based on the unequal relationship between donor and recipient, I am examining the donors? possibility and supposed will to use political conditions in development cooperation.

The focus of this essay is Swedish bilateral development aid. With the help of organization theory I analyse the development aid strategies and policies of the 1990s, in order to examine how and why they were introduced. I investigate three different types of aid organization, namely structural adjustment programmes, political conditionality tied to aid co-operation, and equality policy as part of development co-operation. I analyze the introduction and subsequent use of these three co-operation forms to see whether they were applied and adopted into Swedish development aid because more efficient measures were required or because they were the most recent and modern ways of dealing with development co-operation.Organization theory presents these two ways of analyzing organization. They are occasionally competing and sometimes complementing each other in explaining organization.

The aim of this thesis is to study discursive change in the Swedish environmental political discourse between 1987-2005. The text of three Swedish budget propositions are analysed for this purpose.The results from the analysis are related to a few relevant theoretical perspectives that hold partly different views on what constitutes ?sustainable development? and ?ecological modernization?. Through these theories the thesis continues the discussion around the two central but somewhat blurry terms sustainable development and ecological modernization. The aim of this discussion is to conclude whether the discursive change in Swedish environmental politics can be said to go more in the direction of sustainable development or ecological modernization, or if elements of both perspectives can be found.The analysis shows that the Swedish environmental discourse has come to include more and more political fields such as general welfare politics, during the period.

                                                  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.

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

Bachelor essay in political science by Marie Åberg, autumn 2011. ?Harm or benefit? A critical view of the theoretical grounds of the international development aid?. Supervisor: Professor Mats Lindberg. The first of the dual purpose of this essay is to present international aid policy ideas and the theoretical grounds of international development aid.

Political disenchantment and detachment is proven to be growing in well established democracies. This development brings along concerning behavior regarding general political participation. Fewer citizens participate in elections, parties are losing members, and the trust in politicians is steadily decreasing. IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has been registering voter turnout worldwide for the last 60 years and their publications show a decline in voter participation since the 1980s.During the same period of time another development has caught attention, namely the fast progress of the medium Internet. The new generation of Internet functions is called Web 2.0 and allows users not only to create content, but also to interact with each other.This dissertation aims to explore the possibilities emerging when integrating Web 2.0 in political processes.

Political realism is a general theory within political science focusing on the principle interest defined as power. The theory?s mutual standpoint is that states are inspired by power politics meaning that military and economic power or security stands in the centre while moral and ethics are placed in the periphery. This essay?s purpose is to analyze realism which helps to understand the development and change of the perspective.

During the last years social media have developed and become a place where all kind of people can meet and interact with each other without any kind of physical contact to one another. We belive that this development also has made it easier for political parties and organisations to spread their propaganda to the people that uses social media without them knew from whom the information is coming. With this in mind we decided to do a study about the social media Facebook and how the users of Facebook think they are being influenced by political propaganda from organisations and private persons. In our study we decided that we wanted to know why our respondents are using Facebook, if they have payed attention to two political questions, one international question and one national question, that have been noticed recently and if they feel that they are being influenced of political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have concluded that our respondents, depending on how old they are, do feel that they are being influenced by political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have also noticed that the younger part of our respondents feel that they are using Facebook because their friends do it and that they have noticed the international political question more than the national political question. In the older category of respondents the reason of why they are using Facebook was to maintain a conection with their friends and they had noticed the national political question more than the international political question. .

This paper examines if European integration has had an impact on national political parties by looking at the stances of the Swedish Green Party and the Left Party on the issue of the European Community and the European Union over time. With the development of the European Community and the European Union, national political parties face the challenge of an emerging political arena. European integration research has recently become more involved with what is called europeanization and political integration within the member states them self, this paper aims to provide further leverage to the thesis that national political actors undergo some degree of europeanization and are politically integrated in the EU, by examining manifestos of two historically eurosceptic Swedish political parties. The theoretical framework provided by neo-functional integration theory as well as europeanization is used to examine the empirical material in order to see if the political parties at the focal point of this study can be said to have undergone a change in political policy regarding the EC and EU, both in quantity and content. The analysis show that indeed both parties has undergone a change and what might be considered a europeanization, considering that the presence of the EU as a political issue seem to have risen in prominence and importance in the examined manifestos.

What role does the state play in economic development? This thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between a strong state and economic development. To define the concept of a strong state I focus on the relationship between the scope of state functions and the efficiency of which these functions are implemented. The concept of a strong state is in this thesis defined as the efficiency of the state functions. By using a database constructed by three economists; David Kaufman, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi as a measurement of a strong state I test the relationship with economic development empirically.

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

The concept of the dynamic region has become a more prospering thought in the era of globalisation. This concerns in particular, cross border regions ? well-integrated territorial regions crossing more than one nation. In this paper I examine the development from a critical perspective and I map the democratic pitfalls of new territorial political constructions across national borders. The empirical analysis is a case report taken from the Öresund region, a cross border region between Sweden and Denmark.