This thesis study political participation in Sweden. More specifically political participationthrough three indicators on political participation. These three indicators are “voter turnout”,“accountability” and “community engagement”. This studies purpose is to analyze if Swedenhas high or low political participation. The inspiration to make this study comes from a desireto validate or question the assumptions made by The Economist Intelligence Unit in theirdemocracy index from 2020 about Swedens political participation. In their democracy indexthey ranked Sweden low in the democracy category “Political participation” compared toother high ranked democracies. Results from this study shows that Sweden doesn’t have lowpolitical participation, at least according to the indicators that’s been used in this study. Thisalso indicates that the assumptions made by the EIU about Sweden’s low politicalparticipation can be highly questioned. To come to these results this study uses Dahls fivecriteria’s for evaluating a democratic process, and then operationalizing the theory to threedifferent indicators on political participation. The method is then by a case study aboutSweden’s political participation. The material used is from different government fundedorganizations that conducts statistical surveys on voter turnout, accountability, andcommunity engagement.

This paper empirically explores how well the established resource theory can explainwhy individuals in European countries participate or not participate through e-participation.Focusing on key resources, the essay also examines the difference in degree of explanationbetween resources on an individual level and country contextual resources. Through logisticregression analysis using variables and nearly 40 000 cases from ESS and the UN E-governmentSurvey, the study finds the resource theory explaining a majority of the results, while at the sametime it fails to contribute satisfying explanations in some areas. Furthermore, our analysisconclude that individual resources has greater impact on individual participation than countrycontextual resources. The best model for understanding individual e-participation from aresource theory perspective still needs to include country contextual resources.

Migration has been an extensive topic in Sweden as it has been debated and discussed through various perspectives such as through the political and social participation. Within this scope of research education is one of many important factors that enhance political and social participation within migrant women (Atger, 2009). This research aims to analyze the role of educating migrant women in empowering them to acknowledge their political and social development through the tool of empowerment theory of Naila Kabeer; resources, agency, and achievements (1999). Resources have been examined as economic, human and social ones by the tool of content analysis. Agency refers to the ability of individuals to recognize and act upon choices available to them; decision-making process (Ibid). Achievements include women participation in different organizations, political parties and in the labor market. This paper analyses education that empowers migrant women through resources, agency and achievements to become a socially and politically active agent in Sweden.

This study aimed to analyze the factors that encourage or discourage the political participation of Iraqi immigrants in their host country - Sweden. The study was conducted in Malmö city and data were gathered through ‘focus group interview’ that involved 12 Iraqi immigrants who are living in Malmö (residents non-citizens and naturalized). The participants represented a diverse sample since they belonged to multi-ethnic and religious minorities within the Iraqi community. Data were analyzed using qualitative method whereas the concepts of political integration, political participation, and belonging were applied as the theoretical framework. The participants of the study assigned diverse meanings to political participation. According to the findings the factors that encourage or discourage Iraqi immigrants in political participation in Malmö, Sweden have various shapes. The results revealed that women are less likely to vote than men, and political participation decreases with the increase in income level, age, and education. On the other hand, the culmination of social and economic disadvantages can lead immigrants to have less desire to engage in both institutionalized and non-institutionalized forms of political activities in Sweden. Although Sweden has provided its immigrants with various political rights following the Treaty of Amsterdam (Council Tampere 1999) most of the participants criticized the Swedish government for not having a formal mechanism to educate them on their rights before and after the naturalization. In sum, the findings of the current study imply that there is a negative impact on the political participation of immigrants by their past political experiences in non-democratic countries. All Iraqi participants of this study might have been affected by their previous political experiences in Iraq. It may have caused a trauma, which in turn has discouraged them in political participation even after moving to a democratic country such as Sweden.

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This paper is a non-experimental descriptive comparative study of factors that affectwomen's representation in politics at the national level and also covers four countries: Kenya,Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda. The study's primary purpose was to examine andunderstand factors within each case that affect women's political participation at the nationallevel based on why in some countries, women's political participation is seen as the leader inadvocating for gender equality. In contrast, others continue to lag, despite adopting somemeasures for women's greater participation in politics. It uses deductive logic by framingfactors contributing to women's under-representation in politics and capitalizes on thefeminist social role. Leadership categorization theory explains factors that promote underreorientation. Since the study entailed finding information from archive data, such as theconstitutions of the four case study countries, it utilized a diagnostic and prognostic analyticalframework of problem identification and providing viable solutions. In all four countries, the study found that gender equality is guaranteed in theirconstitutions. Those cases have many pieces of legislation and policies adopted to improvegender equality at the national level. However, challenges remain in the implementationcoupled with the influence of socio-cultural, political, and economic factors and existingcustomary laws. Admittedly, those cases have actively fostered women's involvement inpolitics. However, there are still many challenges to be addressed to achieve the quality ofwomen's participation in Parliament. Even though the number of women in Parliament hasreached, it doesn't mean that all women in a country have reached equality. As such, there is aneed to concentrate on the effectiveness of women in political positions and promotingwomen's influence over decision-making processes at all levels, especially in investing andfixing transformational change in the system of governance concerning institutional normsand values.The purpose of the central focus was to identify the factors and strategies that havebeen successful in some countries in enhancing women's political participation at the nationallevel and evaluate whether or not these policy changes and achievements could be replicatedin others. Using the case studies, the overall objective was to examine how some countrieshave achieved higher rates of female representation in parliaments than others. All casestudies have the same constitutional commitments to gender equality and have ratified thesame instruments relevant to women's Empowerment. The structured, focused comparisonand process tracing approaches have been selected and used to assess and analyze the cases.The use of process tracing helped to test and refines the hypothesized causal mechanisms.The structured, focused comparison was utilized to explain and perform the comparative casestudies adequately. This study has used a deductive orientation to reach a logical conclusion.Therefore, five different variables and hypotheses were formulated based on the literaturereview to apply stated choice methods. Furthermore, the analysis of this work was based onthe results of tested hypotheses against empirical cases to comprehend the meaning of theresults, especially by identifying the similarities and differences among cases. In a word, theanalysis was made primarily due to interpreting and understanding the hypothesis testoutcomes.In the end, data triangulation was also utilized to improve the validity of the research.The research shows that where joint efforts from these bodies were made, huge strides weremade and women's representation in higher political offices increased. It may encourageyoung women's zeal to pursue political careers and more active political participation becauseof seeing their fellow big sisters' efforts in politics and public office.

Many scholars have discussed the role and opportunities of social media in protests and uprisings. Often these studies highlight the potential of social media as an outlet for making your voice heard, calling for action and for reaching out to the outside world about ongoing events. Few investigate the less expressive, latent, forms of political participation and the dynamics with more active, manifest, participation. With the aim of increasing our understanding of the dynamics between latent online and manifest offline political participation, this paper examines possible shifts from the latent online to manifest offline participation, focusing on the October 2019 uprising in Lebanon. In this thesis I theorize that people are somewhat aware and interested in politics. Along with information flows and social network ties, latent online participation is expected to shift into manifest offline participation. It uses original survey data with a sample of 176 Lebanese students, which is analyzed through a series of regression models. The results show some support for the theorized correlation, with varied effects among the indicators for latent online engagement. This study does not allow us to make a definitive statement about this relationship; nevertheless, it does suggest that latent online engagement can shift into manifest offline political participation for at least one of the latent categories, to various extent. Furthermore, this thesis contributes to the field of political participation, social media studies as well as contributing to broadening the discussion on the conditions for democratization in the age of social networking.

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