The aim of this master’s thesis in history of ideas is to investigate the idea circulation in the Swedish Green Party’s meetings with mass media 1980–1982. The study is based upon a series of theoretical premises. It is presumed that cultural expressions, such as speech, media use and visual representation, can be understood through studying how people think about society’s history, contemporary development and conceivable futures. Since ideas about society’s ongoing development also are presumed to be intertwined with social and cultural positions and practices, and may be expressed differently given different social and cultural circumstances, it is relevant to investigate on the one hand the Green Party’s political vision, and on the other hand how the formulation and reception of ideas took place between them and journalists.     The Green Party’s communication to the Swedish public is studied through on the one hand their own media channels, and on the other hand a selection of events where they were covered in mass media, communicating to the public via journalists. The study shows that the Green Party expected society’s ongoing development to lead to an environmental and human disaster, if not their vision of a democratic society, built on small-scale production, came true. These two conceivable futures were used to motivate political action in their present time. History, on the other hand, was used to criticize the present society built on economical growth and hierarchies. In the Green Party’s visionary society, mankind would embrace a natural lifestyle and thereby reunite with her, in growth society, lost democratic, accountable and creative nature. These ideas were related to societal processes, events and circulating ideas at the time. To get their messages across to the broad Swedish public, the Green Party arranged a press conference. Partly adapting to journalistic working methods for covering politics, the Green Party staged their alternative, small-scale ideology materially, musically and visually. The Green Party’s mass media appearance, along with their growth in membership numbers, made mass media coverage about them increase. In a parliamentary uncertain and politically hostile time, the party’s presented parliamentary strategies and political proposals awoke journalistic speculation. However, journalists’ news telling about the Green Party’s politics circulated, in different ways, around their parliamentary goal, prospects and future obligations. Thereby conceivable futures, as formulated by journalists, gave meaning to the Green Party’s formation, development and politics. These ideas were expressed in journalistic media use and interview praxis. Since around two decades, journalists were reporting more independently and confrontational on politics than previously.  Covering the Green Party, photographers, camera men and writers created meanings by using mediums, which sometimes were transferred between media forms, to support news narratives. Consequently, a political party trying to change a political lifestyle and exercise reached the Swedish public through mass media as a party mainly competing for parliamentary representation. These results contribute to ongoing research on how, and on what premises, political voices have reached the public through mass media throughout modern history.

Participating in peace support operations has been and remains a significant part of the Swedish defense and security politics. Since the end of the Cold War, the Swedish national defence has been more and more dismantled, in favor of international peace support operations which have become an increasingly important task for the Swedish defence. Why then, is Sweden so engaged in conflicts so far from home? Using two classic theories of international politics, realism and liberalism, this study aims to shed light on arguments from the Swedish parliament on why it is important for Sweden to participate in international peace support operations. After analyzing arguments of the Social Democrat Party, the Moderate Party, the Green Party and the Liberal Party concerning three different peace support operations which Sweden has participated in, the result shows that although both realism and liberalism are influencing the parties’ argumentation, liberalism is the theory which is used more often. Thus, the answer to why Sweden participates in peace support operations is to be found in arguments that clearly express views of liberalism, rather than views of realism.

Since the breakthrough of digitization, the political parties have moved from running a physical to an increasingly digital operation. Today, parties use digital platforms as a megaphone to listen and dialogue with their members. Digital capabilities have influenced who can participate in internal party activities in the digital era. At the same time, members face different conditions for using digital platforms based on socioeconomic background and age. This study examines whether there is a digital exclusion among the older members of the Swedish Green Party and the Christian Democrats, two parties that face different conditions in their use of digital technology. The study finds empirical evidence of digital exclusion within both parties. The cultural exclusion the study identifies prevents members from participating in the internal party debate. Members who find it difficult to communicate via the parties' digital platforms are particularly vulnerable. The study supports the theory that the individual must master the purely technical aspects of digital platforms and manage the ideas that come with digital technology to be actively engaged in party politics in the digital era.

The present paper attempts to explain the absence of a Green Party in America by means of comparison with the country that gave birth to the most successful Green Party so far: West Germany. In the first section it will be shown, that neither the electoral system nor other legal barriers prevent new parties from emerging in the United States. Then, the two countries will be examined from two different perspectives. First, through comparison of the politics of environmental protection it will be shown how a dialogue between the state and interest groups could be established in America, while it could not in Germany. The conclusion will be drawn that different opportunity structures define different incentives to founding a Green Party. From this finding the hypothesis will be developed that the conflictual environmental politics in Germany caused environmental concern to merge with other New Politics concerns and visions of a new state. It is from this ideology that the Green Party drew its electoral success. Due to aggregation of the environmental issue in institutional politics, this potential Green electorate did not emerge in the United States. The hypothesis will be tested empirically using survey data. Three operationalizations of the Green ideology will be employed: postmaterialism, the New Environmental Paradigm, and support for protest movements. The results deliver strong support for the hypothesis. The electoral resources for an American Green Party are weak. / Master of Arts

Solidaritet med djur är en av hörnstenarna i Miljöpartiets gröna ideologi och partiet uppfattas ofta som mer djurvänligt än andra riksdagspartier. Den här uppsatsen analyserar hur partiets djursyn artikuleras utifrån tre diskurser: djurskydd, ekologism och djurrätt. Uppsatsen har också ett kritiskt djurrättsligt perspektiv och intresserar sig för vilka möjligheter och hinder för djurens frigörelse som finns i partiets djurpolitik. Slutsatsen är att djurskyddsdiskursen är dominerande i Miljöpartiet men att partiet problematiserar dagens djurskyddslagstiftning och vill se ett ”verkligt djurskydd”. Det finns också en tendens till att djurskyddsdiskursen i kombination med den ekologiska diskursen håller tillbaka djurrättsdiskursen som är i det närmaste osynlig. I en avslutande reflektion föreslås att djurrättsrörelsen ska bli tydligare i sin kritik mot Miljöpartiets och samtidens intresse för närproducerat, kravmärkt och ekologiskt kött, samt att ekologismens djursyn behöver utmanas i högre grad. / Animal solidarity constitutes one of the cornerstones of the Green Party's ideology, and the party is often perceived as more animal friendly than other parties in the Swedish parliament. This thesis analyzes how the Green Party's perspective on animals are articulated through three discourses: animal welfare, ecology, and animal rights. Furthermore, the thesis utilizes a critical perspective and tries to discern opportunities and obstacles for animal liberation within the party's animal politics. The conclusion is that the animal welfare discourse is the dominating perspective within the Green Party, but also that the party problematizes the current animal welfare in their strive for "real animal welfare". There is also a tendency for the animal welfare discourse, combined with the ecology discourse, to obscure the animal rights discourse, the latter being more or less invisible. In a final reflection it is suggested that the animal rights movement should be more explicit regarding its criticism against the Green Party's and the contemporary's interest in local produce, KRAV-labeling, and organic meat, as well as the need to challenge the animal views of ecology to a greater extent.

During much of the 20th century, the national party systems of Western Europe remained largely unchanged. However, beginning in the 1970s, these frozen party systems slowly started to melt. As the number of parties has increased, the question of what explains new party entrance has also attracted more scholarly interest. Despite this increased attention, the study of new political parties still suffers from a structuralist bias. The implication is that the fates of new parties are decided almost exclusively by external factors. Some scholars focus on the institutional environment; others emphasize sociological explanations, such as the formation of new cleavages in society. Yet such non-actor-centred perspectives risk being excessively deterministic. They also struggle to explain why some parties succeed in gaining entrance to legislatures while others, seemingly under the same external circumstances, fail. In this thesis, therefore, a new way to study parties and their path to parliament is proposed. Starting with the notion that external conditions alone cannot explain new party entrance, the thesis takes an agency-based perspective. Three sets of strategies are identified as being important means for a party to influence its chances of getting into parliament. They concern the party's resources, its political project and its external relations. In what ways can supply and management of resources, policies and relations with other parties affect the potential for becoming a parliamentary party? Through four in-depth case studies of new entrants into the Swedish national parliament, the Riksdag, the thesis concludes that there are some important commonalities in their paths to parliament. Especially with regard to their resources and their political project, the empirical evidence supports the initial premise: new party entrance is unthinkable without successful strategic behaviour.

During much of the 20th century, the national party systems of Western Europe remained largely unchanged. However, beginning in the 1970s, these frozen party systems slowly started to melt. As the number of parties has increased, the question of what explains new party entrance has also attracted more scholarly interest. Despite this increased attention, the study of new political parties still suffers from a structuralist bias. The implication is that the fates of new parties are decided almost exclusively by external factors. Some scholars focus on the institutional environment; others emphasize sociological explanations, such as the formation of new cleavages in society. Yet such non-actor-centred perspectives risk being excessively deterministic. They also struggle to explain why some parties succeed in gaining entrance to legislatures while others, seemingly under the same external circumstances, fail. In this thesis, therefore, a new way to study parties and their path to parliament is proposed. Starting with the notion that external conditions alone cannot explain new party entrance, the thesis takes an agency-based perspective. Three sets of strategies are identified as being important means for a party to influence its chances of getting into parliament. They concern the party's resources, its political project and its external relations. In what ways can supply and management of resources, policies and relations with other parties affect the potential for becoming a parliamentary party? Through four in-depth case studies of new entrants into the Swedish national parliament, the Riksdag, the thesis concludes that there are some important commonalities in their paths to parliament. Especially with regard to their resources and their political project, the empirical evidence supports the initial premise: new party entrance is unthinkable without successful strategic behaviour.

First chapters of the final thesis "are paid to brief introduction of the cleavages theory and the possibility of its use in partial system of Czech Republic. Following chapters analyze the origination and development of Green Parties in Western Europe, while greater attention is paid to history of Green Party in Czech Republic, its ideological and political alignment. The content analysis attempts to prove the cleavages theory of Czech Green Party after 2005 and compare it with cleavages of western European Green Parties. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Social media has changed political communication. Politicians social media posts, which are often prepared by their political marketers, fill content of traditional media. In this thesis the theoretical concepts of political communication on social media are presented. This thesis deals with how Strana zelených (Czech Greens) and Miljöpartiet de Gröna (Swedish Greens) communicate on social media, respectively it compares who and what is behind this communication on various political levels. It is demonstrated through thematic analysis, which is based on data from semi-structured interviews with administrators of selected social media profiles; through frequency analysis of types of posts on social media; and through quantitative analysis from the international project Online political communication strategies in 28 EU countries. The thesis describes the structures of the communication teams of both sides at different levels, and it describes the processes how the Facebook posts are created and who makes them. It also describes what communication strategies they use in interaction with Facebook users.

This thesis has analyzed the relationship between the punitive turn and the crime policies of the Green party (Miljöpartiet de Gröna) and the Sweden democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) to answer the research question; what influence the punitive turn has had on the parties policies. The choice of method has fallen on a quantitative content-analysis with a qualitative complementarity and qualitative facilitation. From an account of the punitive turn has a word-list with recording units been created, of those recording units has a computer-search been made of the two parties most recent official documents which accounts for the parties holistic politics; MP´s Partyprogramme from 2013, and SD´s Principleprogramme from 2011. The result of the qualitative complementarity shows; a greater frequency of recording units for MP than for SD. The analysis of the qualitative facilitation-result shows; a lesser direct influence of the punitive turn for MP than for SD. The result and analysis are discussed regarding whether the research question has been answered, and no such conclusion is considered to be made by the researcher, instead are the result and analysis open for interpretation of the reader.