The aim of this essay is to study the development of democracy in the Halland province, with focus on participating measures. First and foremost to test earlier research about the causes of the development of democracy, which says that the work takes place with obvious variation between the municipalities and that it is caused by economic resources and experienced problems in the democracy. The purpose is also to conduct a general discussion about the conditions and effects of the development. Thus the method can be characterised as theory consuming because I as far as possible assume the method that has been used in earlier research. Still, my study is limited to the six municipalities of the Halland province and is therefore a study of few cases. One person in each municipality has been interviewed in order to collect a list of all the measures that have been carried out. This material has been analyzed with a variety of variables. The results points out that neither economic resourses nor experienced problems in the democracy can be considered as satisfactory causes, at least not in these six cases. Instead, the results tell that the incidence of driving forces and real enthusiasts is a better explanation, which together with a well-functioning local government administration are the most important factors for achieving positive effects in the participating democracy.

Assignment( MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Diss. Örebro : Örebro universitet, 2007.

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Political Science, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 269-282).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2005. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 18, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

It is the purpose of this study to discover and define certain hindrances to the functioning of democracy in American society.

It is the intention of the author to arrive at a definition of democracy based upon governmental principles which are refutable by none, although further discussion in the light of this definition may not be accepted by all. In addition, it is the objective of the author to make a study of deviations from the Constitution, as shown by certain acts of the agents of government, as well as dangers to our democracy that exist due to certain attitudes and practices of the people.

The belief that society benefits from the adoption of democratic practices and a desire to improve schooling in South Africa, motivate this research. The social objective of the research is therefore to determine what are the causes of the persistent failure of the South African schooling system and to what extent community participation may serve to resolve them. The technological objective is to determine the feasibility of utilising social media for addressing social problems through enabling participative democracy. The potential for community participation in South African schools is therefore viewed through the lens of Internet enabled participative democracy. A design science-inspired research framework is devised in a qualitative study adopting a critical interpretevist epistemology. The study entails three phases applying a mixing of methods to perform critical research, context-based evaluation and critical interpretive evaluation. The first phase reveals the fundamental problems impacting the schooling education system in South Africa and determines that the underlying cause for their persistence lies in a systemic problem of conflicting legislation and policies caused by ideological differences within the ruling tripartite alliance. It further identifies through critical inference, specific practices by school communities which could improve the education system by participative, democratic action. The second phase evaluates the capacity for selected, popularly used social media artefacts to serve as communication and collaboration tools, in the schooling context, to enable community participation. These are found to be inadequate. The third phase is an evaluation of the technologies capable of facilitating activities required to achieve democratic participation of communities in schools and results in the description of an artefact that could enable a “networked social service media” system. The paper substantiates the notion that an appropriately designed, Internet enabled social media artefact, can promote the participation of communities in schools in South Africa.