Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur den politiska gestaltningen i de svenska dagstidningarna Dagens Nyheter och Svenska Dagbladet skiljer sig åt under olika tidsperioder och därmed vid de olika valen; Europaparlamentsvalet samt Svenskt Riksdagsval. Uppsatsen utgår från teorier om andrahandsval och vad det innebär samt teorier om mediegestaltning av politik och vilken roll det kan ha. Uppsatsen jämför Europaparlamentsvalet 2014 med Svenska Riksdagsvalet 2014 för att belysa skillnaderna mellan de två valen samt hur de gestaltas i nämnda dagstidningar. Vidare belyses läsaren om hur Europaparlamentsvalet har förändrats över tid genom en undersökning av perioden år 2003-2004 i syftet att uppmärksamma hur Europaparlamentsvalet som ägde rum år 2004 gestaltades och tolkades av samma svenska dagstidningar då som vid senare tidsperiod. Uppsatsen avslutar i att diskutera resultatet och gör försök att förklara Europaparlamentsvalet position idag samt i framtiden utifrån den empiri och de teorier om andrahandsval som uppsatsen utgick från.

This diploma thesis is a sociolinguistic analysis of speeches rendered in English by members of the European Parliament. The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyze the stylistic patterns in speeches of members of the European Parliament based on gender, as a sociolinguistic factor. This thesis is based on three main linguistic disciplines: grammar, stylistics and sociolinguistics. The practical part is based on a research of 100 randomly chosen members of the European Parliament, 50 men and 50 women, whose speeches rendered in English, were transcribed and analyzed by the quantitative method used for a comparison of linguistic features. This thesis predominantly focuses on grammatical analysis of parts of speech and syntax. It also deals with hyper- sentential links: cohesion and coherence. This thesis also includes profiles of MEP which, together with other sociolinguistic researches, help to interpret the results of a grammatical analysis. The practical part is concluded by profiles of hypothetic MEPs who are likely to render their speech in English.

This dissertation explores political representation and its manifestation within the European Union (EU). The main purpose is to examine the representative roles of Members of the European Parliament (MEP) in the context of cross–pressure between the national level and the EU level. This involves an analysis of how the MEPs under-stand their roles, how they organize their work, and how they have voted in the European Parliament (EP) in 1999-2002. It also includes a study of how national party organizations adapt to the EU environment and how this influences the MEPs link to the national arena. The study is based on various sources, such as interviews, formal documents and voting data. The most under-researched part of the cross-pressure has been the national link and the empirical focus of the thesis is on that link. It is a comparative study of parties in Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden. In each country, three parties were selected (social democratic, right-wing and green parties). By using a focused comparative method, and by controlling for certain independent variables, the ambition is to go beyond description and identify explanations for why MEPs adopt certain roles. The overall picture that emerges is of a relatively weak link between MEPs and the national level. To a certain extent, MEPs express frustration over their limited role in the national arena and over the lack of input from the national arena in their work at the European level. Most of the parties struggle to include MEPs in their organizational set-up, and the MEPs experience a growing hostility within the parties toward them. In general, the lack of interest and knowledge in the national arena, concerning the EU in general and specifically the work of the MEPs, obscures the role of the MEPs. They become EU ambassadors at the national level, rather than elected representatives at the EU level. The dissertation also tests variables that are thought to influence MEPs’ roles: the type of electoral system, popular opinion on EU issues, whether their party is in government, the party’s ideological heritage, and if the party organizes more advanced coordination mechanisms. The main result is that the working assumption that MEPs are influenced by characteristics in the national arena is shown to be largely correct. That is, some of the identified aspects of the national political context do influence how the MEPs understand their roles. For example, the character of the electoral system influences attitudes among the MEPs. However, that relationship is not as simple and straightforward as much of the literature suggests. Rather, the results in this study suggest that the most important aspect of the relationship between the national level and the MEPs is whether parties or others (such as national parliamentarians) actively engage in the work of the MEPs. It matters how parties design the relationship between the levels, especially for how and where MEPs direct their main attention, but also in terms of how MEPs vote in the EP. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of further research into how parties facilitate the link between the national and the EU level.

Following the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) integrated catchment management plans must be prepared for all river basins, in order to achieve 'good ecological status' (GES) in all EU waters. This concept is a broader measure of water quality than the chemical and biological measures, which were previously dominant in EU water policy. The Directive also calls for a consideration of the economic costs and benefits of improvements to ecological status in catchment management plans, along with the introduction of full social cost pricing for water use. In this thesis, the primary focus is on the use of the Choice Experiment (CE) method. The CE method is reviewed and then used to estimate the value of improvements in a number of components of ecological status on two Irish waterways (the Boyne and the Suir). Apart from CE method another stated preference approach to environmental valuation is also considered; the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). This thesis determines what value the targeted population of the two catchments place on the nonmarket economic benefits of moves towards GES by employing both approaches and various model specifications, while the applicability of Benefit Transfer (BT) method is also assessed under different tests. In addition, the design of the questionnaire used in the survey stage of the research, offered the possibility of investigating issues related to the effect of cognitive ability and psychometric factors on choice. Respondents with discontinuous preferences are identified and analysis is conducted to investigate the implications of not accounting for these preferences. Finally, due to experiencing protesting behaviour by a proportion of the sampling population an attempt is made to investigate the parameters that contributed to this inclination.

Le Parlement européen (PE) n’a occupé en 1957 qu’une place secondaire, ce qui entraînait une grande déception auprès des parlementaires, mettant en cause ses pouvoirs consultatifs qui ne portait qu’un sens symbolique. En valorisant la démocratie et la séparation des pouvoirs, le PE pourrait sortir de l’impasse à travers l’exploitation maximale de la procédure consultative. Jusqu’à l’Acte unique européen, le champ d’application de la consultation ne cesse de s’élargir. Idem pour l’augmentation des revendications du respect de son droit d’information et de consultation envers le Conseil. Le manque de moyens juridiques de contraindre le Conseil à accepter les avis du PE, qui se voient systématiquement refusés, nécessite le changement de position parlementaire dans les années 70 dans les relations entre les deux institutions. Les nouvelles procédures à effets juridiques, telles que la reconsultation, le droit d’approbation sur les accords internationaux et la codécision, ont été revendiquées, pourtant de manière irrégulière. Les mesures pour le renforcement des pouvoirs budgétaires se voient s’adopter, de sorte qu’elles favorisent non seulement le contrôle parlementaire en la matière, mais aussi le renforcement des pouvoirs dans les questions non-budgétaires : les pouvoirs législatifs. Le droit d’information et le pouvoir de consultation sur les activités budgétaires, ainsi que le contrôle effectif sur les budgets et leurs dépenses, font eux aussi l’objet de revendications parlementaires. Le Conseil européen et la Cour des comptes étaient également invoquées comme destinataires de ces revendications afin de persuader le Conseil et la Commission. Cette présente analyse démontre que le PE, tel qu’il est aujourd’hui, est un résultat de la collaboration dans les premières décennies avec les autres institutions et les grandes figures des États membres, lesquels jouent un rôle important pour orienter la discussion dans les Communautés. / The nature of the secondary place reserved for the European Parliament (EP) in 1957 brought about a big disappointment of the European representatives and critics of its consultative powers only of, then, symbolic significance. Putting emphasis on the principles of democracy and separation of powers, the EP attempted to come out of impasse by using at maximum the consultative procedures. Until the Single European Act, the demands of the EP on respect for information and consultation obligation by the Council continue to increase. Also was asserted an extended application of consultative procedure to the issues, for which the EP had not been obligatorily consulted by the Council. Lack of legal means to make the Council accept the opinions and demands of the EP, which had scarcely been adopted by the Council, can explain the position change of the EP during the 70s vis-à-vis the Council and the Commission. The new procedures with legal effects, such as re-consultation, the power of approbation regarding of international agreements and co-decision, have been insisted, but not consistently.Reinforcement of the EP’s budgetary powers aimed not only at enhancement of parliamentary control in the budgetary activities of the European Communities, but also at reinforcement of non-budgetary powers: legislative powers. The parliamentary demands for the respect by the Council of information and consultation obligations and for effective control over budgets and expenditures were part of the EP’s struggles to be justly recognized in the map of European political institutions. When the European Council and the Court of Auditors were also addressed the sort of demands, the EP aimed to persuade thereby the Council and the Commission.This present analysis shows that the EP, as is today, is a result of the collaboration with other institutions and important figures of the Member States, which played an important role to guide the discussion in the Communities.

Thesis title: Contemporary populism in Europe This thesis maps the development of populism across Europe and investigates its manifestations and core elements in its complexity, which is the groundwork for analysis of populist party, movement or individual. Populism is not considered solely as the relieving strategy meant to maximize the voter's votes by comprehensible, straightforward and hardly feasible promises. Without this attitude in mind, we would hardly be able to put some reason behind the populist boom, which we had chance to witness during the last decade. Therefore this thesis considers populism as the ideological construct, the way politicians present themselves, the rhetorics, the mastered political style or the structure, which provides the foundations of programme documents of political movements and parties. It would be a mistake to a priori consider it as some kind of purely negative phenomenon, but more of as the reflection of various and continuously changing demands of European electorates. Desperation, which mainstream parties evoke in their voters, is toxic and continues to spread across all society classes. This creates a space for various populists to dominate. Thus while tracking their activities, specific kind of critical thinking is necessary, because populists...

Members of the European Parliament are chosen according to 28 different election systems. The European Union determines only few basic rules, which are concretised by member states in their law systems. Diploma thesis "Election system of European Parliament" deals with similarities and differences between these regulations in order to show inequality of European elections. In the second part of this thesis the author compares a partial aspect of the election system, election threshold in Germany and in the Czech Republic. While the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany invalidated firstly the five-percent-threshold and then even the three-percent-threshold because of its contradiction to Basic Law, the Czech Constitutional Court confirmed it as constitutional afterwards. Both courts judicated that it is a violation of election equality but in the opinion of the Czech one fragmentation of the Parliament would hinder its work with such intensity that election threshold preventing from this fragmentation is justifiable. The judgements are compared and their argumentations analysed if reasonable. This thesis comes to the conclusion, that considered the current state and predictable development election threshold has its justification. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Representative democracy at the European level This thesis deals with representative democracy, as one of the fundamental principles underpinning the organisation of states or, as the case may be, interstate-type entities. At the European level, this principle is embodied by the European Parliament and the national parliaments of the Member States whose functions and competences complement each other. In the context of the role of the European Parliament the fundamental question concerns direct elections as an instrument of political legitimacy. This thesis offers a comparison of the findings of the Czech and the German Constitutional Courts, which took different views on the case of the electoral treshold in elections to the European Parliament. Arguments of these courts enable the reader to see European Union, position of the European Parliament in its institutional structure and its democratic legitimacy in wider context.

This diploma thesis has several objetcs. The main objective is to answer the research question and seven hypotheses including elections to the European Parliament and MEPs behaviour from individual europarties. Some hypotheses include the participation of the electorate of the member states in elections to the EP, while others relate to participation of MEPs in voting, cohesion and coalitions that are formed in the parliament. Data on voting are obtained thanks to a project created by the London School of Economics. These data are already clearly adjusted, because official data on voting the European Parliament show in a form that could not be analyzed without software support. After the introduction follow two chapters, in which there is described theoretical framework involving the search of relevant sources on the European Parliament, describing his position within key institutions of the EU, its function, history, and empowerment to the election of MEPs to the europarties. The results show some charasteristic patterns in the European Parliament. MEPs in most cases hold the party line rather than national. However, there are some cases, where individual nations across europarties vote uniformly, even though this behavior in some of them oppose to the attitude of a majority of the party. Large...

The purpose of this study is to describe and compare eurosceptic elements of the Swedish Left-Party and the Sweden Democrats leading up to the European Parliament elecetions of 2014 and 2019. Previous research has focused on many different aspects of eurocepticism; the definition and meaning of euroscepticism, eurosceptic voting among citizens and euroscepticism in democratic party-systems. Hence, this case-study aims at explaining euroscepticism in a Swedish context among the two clearly eurosceptic parties in the Swedish party-system. The two parties both have eurosceptic sentiments, although they have different ideological starting points and values. The Sweden Democrats consider themselves social conservatives with a nationalistic basic view. On the other hand, the Swedish Left-Party consider themselves as socialists and feminists with an ecological basic view. In order to find and compare these eurosceptic sentiments, a text analysis is combined with an analysis of arguments used in the two party’s election platforms leading up to the European Parliament elections. The empirical evidence is consequently interconnected with Taggart and Szczerbiak theory of soft and hard euroscepticism. This theory, or model of analysis, is used the catogorize parties based on their ”resistance” against different aspects of the European Union or the European process of integration as a whole. The study finds that the euroscepticism of the Swedish Left-Party and the Sweden Democrats have somewhat changed from the elections of 2014 and 2019. The resistance has mitigated to some degree leading up to the 2019 elections, in comparison to the elections of 2014. Although netither party could be categorized as soft or hard eurosceptics, they both lean more towards the features of soft euroscepticism.