This thesis discusses the 2007 elections in Kenya, and its aftermath. The aim is to examine whether or not ethnicity played a major role in the outbreak of violence that followed the referendum. As well as different theories and discussions on ethnicity, I will also try to explain the course of events by using theories of increased civil violence during a democratic transition, and the fact that weak political institutions can cause violence. My conclusion is that ethnicity has played a part in the violence, but is too simple to blame the events following the election on just that. A number of different factors all contributed to the outbreak, but all to a different extent.

In this Bachelor thesis I am going to look at attitudes towards Political violence in a small town in Sweden in the 1920s. The town I have picked for this study is Kalmar situated on the east coast of Sweden. This study is a micro historic case study. The specific case is a strike at the city?s water and gas plants for higher salary.

The purpose of this essay was to examine teenager's views on violence among young people.Our main questions were: What kind of views on violence among young people do teenager's have? What do teenager's think about what causes violence among young people? In what way does scientific knowledge confirm young people's views about what causes violence among young people?To answer these questions we designed a questionnaire which we distributed in three 8th grade classes. We also interviewed five teenagers about violence among young people, to get a deeper knowledge about their views.The results of this study show that the teenagers think that violence among young people has increased and that the violence mostly appears between different groups of young people. The teenagers also think violence among young people as a phenomena due to different kind of reasons..

Studies have shown that politicians are significantly more likely to become victims of violent crime than other citizens in Sweden. In fact increasing political rank and engagement are directly proportionate to increased risk for violence. Threat towards politicians is not only dangerous to the individuals involved but also to the democratic system as a whole.Political scientists the world over have done a lot of research on democracy, but I have been unable to find a single method or theory that examines how violence, threat and harassment affect political leaders and democratic systems.The aim of this study is to expand the existing model made by Tommy Möller, professor in political science. In his model he presents 11 factors that affect political leaders ability to act. My aim is to develop his model by adding a 12 th factor ?violence, threat and harassment?.

The concept of domestic violence pertains to different definitions of violence, one of which is the concept of honour related violence and oppression. This paper looks at honour related violence and oppression, as defined in policy documents at a central political level, and how various discourses stand in relation to social categories and power relations. Consequently, the theoretical and methodological premise of the paper has been based on discourse analysis and an intersectional perspective has been applied to gain further depth and breadth in the analysis of the material. The intersectional perspective houses various approaches to the understanding of specific phenomena based on factors of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and class. The analysis concludes that the concept of honour related violence and oppression is a concept without a single scientific definition. There is, however, a general consensus in the political context that honour related violence and oppression is a collective force that can be directed at both sexes.

Our aim was to explore employees' experiences of exposure to violence, threats of violence as well as their experiences of encountering victims of violence and to relate their experiences to Sense of coherence (SOC) and Maslach's burnout inventory (MBI).We sent out a questionnaire to employees at three different workplaces. Our questionnaire included previously validated SOC and MBI questionnaires as well as six additional questions regarding violence. We sought to explore the relationships between experience of exposure to violence and encounters of victims of violence and SOC and MBI. We found that employees with a higher level of SOC exposed to violence or threats felt a higher level of security. In encountering victims of violence we found that employees with a lower level of SOC more frequently experienced indifference, fear and anger.

Using Varshney's theory about intra- and interethnic networks, this thesis examines how civil society in southern Thailand is built up.During 2004 the violence between Muslims and Buddhists rose in southern Thailand. The government tried to fight the insurgency using violent police and military forces, resulting in hundreds of deaths and part of reason why Thailand is loosing rank in Freedom House's democracy index. Varshney means that a civil society built up on intraethnic networks works favourable to violence between different ethnic groups. Sorting out and defining what is meant by ?ethnic? and ?civil society?, this thesis shows why to look at the insurgency in southern Thailand as an ethnic conflict surviving partly because of an intraethnic civil society.

The aim of this study was to analyze how discourses about domestic violence emerges in policy and practice, and to investigate how those discourses may change from a structural, political level to a local, practical level. The research questions focused how the problem of domestic violence is formulated at national and local level, scrutinizing the different discourses framing and reproducing the causes and solutions of the problem, and also to deduce how different context affects formulations. The empirical material consists of policy plans and interviews with social workers. The findings indicates that the issue of domestic violence is articulated differently on different levels. In action plans on the national level, the domestic violence is formulated within a structural discourse, being a problem on a (gender-) political level, whereas professional social workers recognizes domestic violence as a personal problem within an individual oriented discourse.

In this thesis I discuss and analyse the use of violence of Basque radical nationalists after the 11th of September 2001 and the bombing of Madrid the 11th of March 2004. The field study is performed in the Basque country with interviews both on the French and Spanish side of the border with representatives from the Basque Nationalist Liberation Movement (BNLM).After the 11th of September the Spanish government continued its struggle against the countries own terror - ETA. But as the research will show the new political context after the 11/9 made it possible for the state to intensify the labelling of groups from the BNLM as terrorist organisations and thereby putting its members and leaders in prison for terrorism. My research shows that this social change may lead to a mobilisation of activists inside ETA, which in turn might create a continuity of the group's use of violence. The scenario is though challenged by an other setting in which the political situation after the 11/9 have made use of violence by militant groups like ETA illegitimate and irrational as a consequence of the mental trauma among the people of the western world.

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze IntimatePartner Violence (IPV). How does contemporary science illustrate men as victimsand women as perpetrators in these relationships? Ten articles were presentedand analyzed in a systematic literature study. The results show that men beingabused by their female intimate partner, do exist and that they in many ways doconform to abused women. There are many underlying causes to the violence inclose relationships.

This case-study examines the correlation between young men and democratic instability in group discussions with two analyzing methods in one. One part of the method used is deliberative democracy which aims to explain how democracy works within the frames of discussion in ordinary citizens groups. In this study the citizens is upper level secondary school students. The other part of the method used is the theory pulled by many scholars lately, the demographic impact on democracy. With these two combined in one this study compare the theory of young men as more active in Political violence and as a destabilising factor of democracy on country-level with the results of the study in deliberative democracy in small group discussions.

The aim of this thesis is to discuss and analyse the media debate about feminist self-defence, by pointing out the pros and the cons. The arguments in favour could be separated into three different parts: statistical arguments, psychological arguments and justice arguments. The counter arguments could also be separated into three parts: general arguments, violence-related arguments and gender-related arguments. In short, feminist self-defence is built on women's experiences of men's violence. It contains three different parts to help women avoid violence, threat of violence, insult and sexual harassment.

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze IntimatePartner Violence (IPV). How does contemporary science illustrate men as victimsand women as perpetrators in these relationships? Ten articles were presentedand analyzed in a systematic literature study. The results show that men beingabused by their female intimate partner, do exist and that they in many ways doconform to abused women. There are many underlying causes to the violence inclose relationships.

Violence is put in a specific context when the police are the perpetrator of violence rendering violence possibly legitimate through sovereignty. The possibility of legitimization of police violence raises important questions of how such violence is legitimized and how resistance is conceived of and defined. I have interviewed seven people in Sweden from different backgrounds, all of whom share the experience of having been subjugated to police violence, including threats, harassments and physical violence.This paper analyzes the performativity of police violence through the relations between police violence, power, sovereignty, subjectstatus and resistance, in order to understand how police violence is being legitimized and to understand its consequenses with respect to those subjugated to it. I?ve also analyzed if this violence is being politicized and, in that case, how politicization is made possible.

The aim of the thesis is to examine discourses about Political violence categorised as ?ethnic? in academic literature and the media. Employing the method of discourse analysis, the study analyses news coverage of the wars in former Yugoslavia 1991-1995. The theory applied is based on Michel Foucault?s theory of the relationship between power and discourse in the constitution of knowledge, and the main arguments are supported by the work of the political scientist V.