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There have not been many studies of political branding of parties on Facebook yet. The case of political branding on Facebook in the Swedish general elections of 2018 were studied in this thesis, and all eight parties in parliament were included. The aim was to discover more about how parties work differently with Facebook and what they choose to emphasise in their communication towards potential voters. The chosen perspective of branding was the brand identity; the image a party wants to convey to the electorate. Four aspects of branding were in focus for the study; party leader profiling, positioning, negativity in branding and issue ownership. A total of 13 hypotheses were created based on the theories and the Swedish setting and then tested quantitatively on a dataset. All posts made by the eight parliament parties between the 1st of August and the 9th of September, the election campaign period, were included in the study. The results indicate that profiling of statesman qualities could be associated with prime minister candidates, but that personalisation was not mainly carried out by parties with prime minister aspirations. Larger parties were more likely to discuss other parties’ agendas to position themselves than smaller parties. Challenger parties used negative branding more than parties in government, and negative branding could be combined with the party leader in posts. However, negative campaigning was most often used in posts without the party leader. The different handling of negative branding and negative campaigning would suggest that the costs of negative campaigning are perceived as higher. It was mostly smaller parties that choose to profile themselves by focusing on fewer political issues. It was also found that parties dedicated more posts to political issues that they could be described as owning in opinions of the voters.

Master essay in Politics and International studies:   Democracy and Ethnonationalism, A comparative analysis of managing of the Basque question in Spain and France by Salam Kadirzada Supervisor: Anna Jarstad   The aim of this thesis is to explain why the Basque issue in Spain became violent, wile in France peaceful. The importance of this question is more acknowledged when we know that the Basques from both countries are the same people and a democratic political system rules in both countries.       In search for the answer, this thesis is carried out in two steps. The first one is a theoretical investigation about the relationship between autonomy and ethno national relations in order to find a theoretical explanation. Furthermore, in the theoretical part a short presentation of Consociational democracy model and the Integrative democracy model has been done, in order to find a more detailed explanation of the relationship.       The second step of the thesis is an empirical comparative analysis of Spanish and French Basque issues. This part is divided in two case studies, namely Spain and France, and each part follows a comparative investigation between the theoretical part and the political systems of these countries. The comparison is a way to find possible similarity between these democracy and the political systems in Spain and France. Furthermore, the final conclusions about Basque issues in both countries are drawn basically of the connection between the political systems and these democracy models.   Keywords: Autonomy, Basques, Consociational Democracy, ETA, Euskadi, Euskera, Federalism, France, Integrative Democracy, Iparralde, PNV, Spain.

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Studies have repeatedly reported that states with higher levels of gender equality are more peaceful. Similarly, research has shown that individuals who hold feminist attitudes also hold more peaceful attitudes. This paper argues that there is a lack of studies on the relationship between gender equality and peaceful attitudes on the individual level. Building upon studies suggesting that gender equality is key in working towards peace, this paper investigates whether female political leaders can affect attitudes to gender equality and to violence. By integrating experimental components in a comparative case study, this study gathered survey-evidence from two villages in Kerala, India. The findings suggest that continuous exposure to female political leaders lead to more approving attitudes of gender equality but does not find enough support suggesting that attitudes towards violence are affected.

The role and responsibility of street-level bureaucrats in crime preventive work – a study on small municipalities in northern Sweden This paper in the form of a qualitative research study set out to explore crime preventive work in rural municipalities in northern Sweden, through the eyes of street-level bureaucrats working in the specific context. Research suggest that top-down national crime prevention policies traditionally have focused on big-city problems while at the same time neglecting the special circumstances under which sparsely populated and rural municipalities operates under. In small municipalities the tasks of managing and coordinating crime preventive work is often delegated to a variety of different functions such as social workers, security coordinators and middle managers. How do they carry out crime preventive work, and what role do these municipal coordinators play in implementing the new, national policy on crime prevention in Sweden? While functioning as coordinators on crime preventive work among their day-to-day duties imposes a certain set of challenges, it also creates possibilities as rural areas often are associated with strong social links and networks. By adding a political science dimension using a theoretical framework on implementation of collaborative governance, network theory and Lipskys (2010) street- level bureaucrats, this study aims to shed light on these coordinators and their various conditions to carry out a structured and long-term crime preventive work.

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Since the end of the cold war there has been a transformation in the European armies towards a smaller, transnational, and more professional force. Between the years 2009 and 2015, however, there was a notable change in the discussion regarding the Swedish armed forces moving towards a more traditional and territorial force. The aim of this study is to examine the policy process before the abrupt change the defense bill constituted in 2015. The research question seeks to explain this change by applying the theory of multiple streams. By using process tracing as the methodology, the study traces different events and changes in opinions in effort to lay an empirical puzzle and through that explain the process behind the decision. The result of the study shows that a window of opportunity for change opened up in both the problem stream and politics stream which were made possible by the Russian annexing of the Crimea and the change of government. With the help from powerful policy entrepreneurs the bill got accepted by the majority of parties in the government. Further research suggests studies in how the change in the Swedish defense policy have affected their transnational relationships regarding security. Sweden have, for example, spent a great deal of time building a defense cooperation with other members of the European Union through joint operations and close teamwork. It would therefore be interesting and vital to future defense strategies to examine the consequences of the defense bill from 2015.