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Abstract “Political participation by the citizen” - Citizen proposals in Karlstad municipality Essay in Political Science, C-level Author: Tobias Gustafsson Tutor: Michele Micheletti In Sweden the political parties are losing more and more of their members. That in combination with a tendency that the participation in the elections is getting lower is a problem for the representative and parliamentary political system in Sweden. In order to strengthen the democracy in Sweden and to make the gap between the citizens and the elected smaller there has been some democracy-projects. The purpose of these democracy-projects is to make the political participation by the citizens, between the elections, higher. One of them is “citizen proposals to the municipality”. The purpose of this essay is to examine this democracy-project in order to see what influences it might have on the local democracy. The local democracy is defined as “the big democracy” within Karlstad municipality. The study is mainly conducted as a survey. In order to determine the purpose three specified research questions has been constructed: 1. How is “citizen proposals to the municipality” dealt with? 2. Who are the citizens which utilize the right to “citizen proposals to the municipality”? 3. How effective is “citizen proposals to the municipality”? The answer to the first question is: There is a developed formal way of dealing with the proposals at Karlstad municipality. The dealing with the “citizen proposals to the municipality” is a procedure that is time-consuming and there is a lack of information of the right to give “citizen proposals to the municipality”. The answer to the second question is: those citizens most likely to be political active are a man with high education, in his middle ages with an average income. He has an occupation and is political active in the local elections, but he is not a member of a political party. Observe though that there is a broad spectrum of those who propose suggestions in the examine group. The answer to the third question is that it is possible to get your proposal sanctioned. However the citizens feel’s that there is a problem with how the municipality handles the proposal after it has been sanctioned. Most of the citizens are not happy with how their proposal has been handled after it has been sanctioned. They feel that there pass to much time between the sanction and that the proposal is accomplished.

ABSTRACT This C-essay in political science is written by Ingrid Karlsson, autumn 06. Advisers: Gregg Bucken-Knapp and Susan Marton. “ The identity of Tornedalen, a study about identities and its affect on the view of the Swedish state.” The purpose of this essay is to investigate the identification amongst the population in Tornedalen and if their identity affects the view of the Swedish state. I am going to look into how people from that region looks upon their identity. Do they consider themselves as Swedish, Tornedaling or Finnish? I have two research questions on this topic: 1) What does a person from Tornedalen consider their identity? 2) If the way the Swedish state treated Tornedalen, from around the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, has affected the way people from this region looks upon their own culture, and if the treatment has affected peoples view of the Swedish state. The methods I am using for this essay is case studies and to my help to collect data I am having a focus group in Pajala. My reason to use a focus group instead of surveys is because I find focus groups to be a much more interesting way of finding out what people really think. My conclusion on the question about identity is that the people in Tornedalen have different ideas on how they see themselves. Some consider themselves as both Tornedaling and Swedish, and others see themselves as Finnish and Swedish. One thing that I found out through the focus group is that a mutual thing amongst the participators is that they see themselves as Swedish. On my second question, my conclusion is that the way the Swedish state treated this region had a great impact on how they look upon themselves and their view of the Swedish state.

Varför har Elfenbenskusten och inte Ghana skrivit på ett interimsavtal med EU mellan 2008 och 2013? Utifrån ovanställda frågeställning utreder föreliggande uppsats paradoxen om två förhållandevis lika länder som har agerat olika i förhandlingar med EU om ekonomiska partnerskapsavtal (EPA). Frågan besvaras med hjälp av förhandlingsteoretiska förklaringar som belyser varför avtal sluts eller ej. För uppsatsen ändmål sammanfattas dessa som inrikespolitiska, miljömässiga och strukturella aspekter. Resultatet visar att inrikespolitiska förändringar i Ghana föranledde landets beslut att avstå från att underteckna interimsavtal med EU. För Elfenbenskustens del förelåg miljömässiga aspekter som kunde förklara varför landet beslöt sig för att underteckna ett interimsavtal med EU.

The threat of nuclear weapons is depicted by the EU as the potentially greatest threat to security. How then does the EU counter this threat, i.e. what kind of actor is the EU in this area? To answer that question, this paper sets out to discover if the EU is an actor in the non-proliferation area, and if that is positively confirmed, what kind of an actor the EU depicts itself to be. Using the actorship framework, developed by Hettne, Söderbaum and Stålgren, it looks into the regionness, presence and actorness of the EU on this issue, to capture both internal and external aspects. The paper concludes that the EU can be defined as an actor on non-proliferation, and that it depicts itself as having a high level of regionness and presence, and gets a mixed result in the area of actorness. The paper also contributes to the theoretical framework by pointing out three aspects that the framework fails to take into consideration.

The UN was established after the Second World War. The organization’s primary goal was to maintain peace among all nations. When the UN intervenes in other states affairs, it is violat-ing the principles it is set to defend, principles of non-intervention and respect for sover-eignty. The outcome from such interventions is very important, a result that can legitimize the action. It is important that interventions give birth to democratic processes and respect for human rights, values that constitute the organisation. Why some countries go to war and others don’t is hard to say but one thing can be said about war – democratic states don’t wage war against each other. Thus, democracy would be a guarantee for mutual peace among all nations. The purpose of this essay is to find out if the prospects for democracy, as result of UN-interventions, were fulfilled. Did the interventions created conditions for democracy in the future. • Did the interventions result in a democratic process? • Is there something special in comment for countries with a similar democratic develop-ment? • Can the current situation legitimize the actions? Cease studies, comparisons between intensions of democracy and the current situation, is one way to find an answer to the question mentioned above and will correspond to the purpose of this essay. In order to see the whole picture I will use different criteria to define democracy. Democracy and UN-interventions (Karlstad University Press 2002), a disputation by Andreas Andersson, will be my starting point. He states that democracy is an aspect of interventions that many countries consider as most relevant for commitment and legitimacy. Not one of the countries can be called a democracy today and the situation for the people has not improved much. The result of the intervention can not give legitimacy to the action. The UN-interventions has consolidated the situation more than creating the necessary conditions for democracy. I could not through my research find anything specific that does unite or separate some of the cases. The only thing the countries of my essay have in comment is the lack of success from the UN-interventions, from a democratic point of view. The countries are facing many problems that disturb the democratic transition. Discrimination is one obstacle, there can not be a democracy when half of the population is being excluded from the political arena. Illiteracy and restriction of press freedom is an other problem, the Opposition can not reach out to people by newspapers, an important channel for exchange of opinions. Democracy in all areas of the community is a way to secure peace and should be a priority even for already democratic states. The next question to be answered, an invitation to further research, is: What do democratic states do in order to deepen and consolidate democracy within their own society?

Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1995 and the power of the organisation to make decisions has increased over the years in a rate which hasn’t been followed by an equally increase in democratization. This is partly due to the lack of participation in the decision making process and at the national level the citizens don’t possess enough channels to compensate the loss of influence. To solve this democratic dilemma, more and more countries are turning to the referendum. My purpose with the study is to analyze under what circumstances the Swedish parliament initiate referendum and how this effect the opportunities for it to work as a corrective according to the popular will. I’ve compared the decision to join EMU, when the parliament decided to initiate, with the ratification of the EU-constitution when the parliament decided not to initiate and posed following questions: How did 1) Minority Weapon, 2)Division solving 3) Important question and 4) External Pressure impact the parties decision to initiate or not? I used statistics, parliamentary debates and home-pages to answer the questions. My conclusions are that the most important factors that promote an initiative are division solving and important question. External pressure seems to have little or no impact. This means that the parliament isn’t responsive to the opinion, has a big control over the initiation and combined with a critically bad representation it doesn’t provide much of an opportunity for the referendum to work as a corrective in the Swedish democracy.

Bachelor thesis in political science by Malin Bergkvist, autumn 12. Title:Political governance for increased digital inclusion. Subtitle: Aspects of "governance" and "government". Supervisor: Joachim Åström.   While digital inclusion is a hot topic in both academia and in policy circles, little research is done when it comes to governance issues. To help filling this gap, this essay asks which mode of governance is dominant in the field of digital inclusion. What aspects of governance "governance" or "government" is the dominant in the field of digital inclusion, and is it possible to see any difference in how the state governance is described by the government and perceived by other actors? To answer this overarching question, two sub queries are formulated and analyzed. First, what aspect of "governance" or "government" dominate when state governance of the area are examined based on how the government describes it? Second, what aspect of "governance" or "government” dominate when state governance are studied based on how the perceived by other actors and stakeholders active in the field. The government’s policy document "IT i människans tjänst - en digital agenda för Sverige" as well as a series of interviews are analyzed with help of ideal typical descriptions of governance and government. The delimitation of the relevant documents would be natural since it is the latest document in the field and a comprehensive approach is presented. Equally natural is not the selection of actors, but these are either prominent in the area or outside to a large extent. The results show that governance is dominant both in the official policy documents and statements, and in stakeholders perceptions of the field. However, there are interesting differences between the government and stakeholder views. Judging by the stakeholders views, authoritative and hierarchical processes within the state are more prominent than official statements might suggest. Possibility of further research is to study the EU's policy or regional digital agendas.