"The US Presidential Nomination System and Its Evolution" Master's thesis focuses on political and historical aspects of presidential candidate selection system in the United States of America. Covering the past two and a half centuries of historical development in the first more historical part the final paper then continues with more political characters of the system. The first chapter is divided into four sections describing the evolution of the selection system since the very beginning of the US political history when the Constitution was adopted in 1780s over the establishment of national conventions and implementing primary elections around 1900 until the modern period of reform years in 1970s. The second chapter focuses on current selection system within the Democratic and the Republican Party while the last third chapter, being divided into three parts, describes three key primary elections of 20th and 21st century, respectively. The Democratic primaries of 1960 and a selection of J. F. Kennedy, the 1980 Republican primaries with Ronald Reagan as an unrivaled leader and the last Democratic primary elections of 2008 selecting Barack Obama a presidential candidate. In the conclusion the whole development is summarized and few ideas of future form of the system are provided.

This paper explores the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries through the lens of Marty Cohen's The Party Decides model. The model utilizes five key indicators in helping to predict who the party will decide as the nominee: widespread voter approval, key endorsements, fundraising, media coverage, and success in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. While the model has been an indicator for almost 50 years, two of the five recent primaries have shown that the candidates are the exception to the rule. This paper will either prove whether or not the exception becomes the rule, if the rule is no longer reliable, or if the model will hold true. In analyzing the top five candidates throughout the invisible primary and 10 key primaries and caucuses, this paper will determine the model's reliability.

This study aims to understand the Kenyan cross-party parliamentary women’s caucus success at representing women substantively despite ethnic division. The Kenyan case highlights a paradox: the cross-party parliamentary women’s caucus is successful in a country where politics is shaped by ethnic division, which contradicts existing theories suggesting that the many layers of identity politics would make it difficult for the members to cooperate on a common women’s agenda. The material was collected during ten weeks in Nairobi through interviews with women MPs within the caucus and through observation of meetings, events, and the daily work of the caucus. The findings suggest that women’s issues are perceived as non-political, and non-controversial, which makes it possible for the members to cooperate on a common women’s agenda. Kenya seems to be in an initial stage of gender mainstreaming where the caucus’s members cooperate on women’s fundamental rights, on which they can all agree. It is reasonable to believe that the political parties will develop ideological differences concerning women’s issues as Kenya achieves a certain level of gender equality. The cross-party parliamentary women’s caucus will, according to the findings, be essential to improve the substantive representation of women in the Parliament.