Youth participation habits changes constantly. Efforts to keep up with new forms of political participation is seen in international organizations, national governments and the academic community. How do young people themselves regard their participation in these new forms? One alternative form of political participation is youth organizing. This study uses a multi-case research design by interviewing Kenyan and Swedish young people who have participated in one of two youth organizing programs, organized by the non-governmental organization Fryshuset. This study aimed to uncover what youth value with youth organizing as a participation form, what goals they have with their participation and how their self-organized initiatives reflect said goals, by applying theories on empowerment, delieration, agonistic pluralism and factors affecting political participation. What youth value with youth organizing is personal development, meeting new people and getting the opportunity to make a local impact. Furthermore the study found that the primary goal of their participation was to strengthen their local community. Finally the findings show how youth preferred deliberative means to achieve their goals.

Democracy Now! is an independently syndicated hour long daily audio and video program that is broadcast on 1179 radio, television, and internet stations throughout the world, as well as being freely available on their website under a Creative-Commons License. They are a global news organization based in New York City, with the stated goal of providing “rarely heard” perspectives in their coverage. Democracy Now! was one of the early independent news organizations to provide continuous coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York's Zuccotti park. Their early coverage of the movement is relevant to the extent that it helps to obviate the demographics of the OWS movement as well as highlight the potential for a “radically-democratic agonistic pluralism,” as conceptualized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Through the dual frames of discourse and intersectionality theories, this qualitiative study examines the coverage of Occupy Wall Street by Democracy Now!, in an attempt to understand the interplay of the movement's demographic heterogeneity and the manner in which its public antagonism is characterized by this independent media outlet. The sociopolitical and historical context provided by Democracy Now! is used to understand where the outlet exists with in the media as well as if this coverage can be part of “radical democratic possibilities.”

This essay has two aims. The first is to provide a better understanding of how youths in urban Mwanza envision a deepening of the democratic system in regard to the deliberative democracy theory by Jürgen Habermas and the agonistic pluralism by Chantal Mouffe. The second aim is to connect the empirical material – the democratic deepening visions of youths in urban Mwanza – to a theoretical discussion, transforming the democratic models into democratization chains. The theoretical contribution in this essay is to apply these theoretical models to an emerging democracy such as Tanzania, and to to transform the agonistic pluralism and deliberative models into democratization chains. The empirical material in this essay has further been gathered through semi-structured interviews with 19 youths in urban Mwanza. The results presented in the first analytical chapter shows that youths in urban Mwanza leans towards a vision of a deliberative model of democracy rather then an agonistic pluralism, but that a social class dimension could be seen as affecting the lean. Particularly less-educated females raised concerns that a deliberative approach would segment an unsatisfying political status quo. The theoretical discussion showed that the implications visions of a deepened democracy from youths in urban Mwanza theoretically could have on the democratization process changes if the theories are seen as models or chains.

The Jasmin Revolution in Tunisia began at the end of 2010. Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest against the corrupt police officials that had forced him to pay bribes in order to run his business. His protest became the symbol for the revolution that followed. A combination of political instabilities along with an economic downturn that lead to unemployment created dissatisfaction among the people in Tunisia. The Protest grew into a revolution that demanded action against the widespread unemployment, lack of democracy and human rights. A democratization process started after the revolution because of the protests. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how Tunisia developed a democratic system of governance, if the notion of human rights has changed since the democratization process started and to analyse the relationship between human rights and democracy within the case of Tunisia. Three democratization theories, are applied to this case on Tunisia in order to answer these questions. The theorists are Robert A. Dahl with a theory of constitutionalism and institutionalism, Chantal Mouffe with a theory of agonistic pluralism and Seyla Benhabib with a theory of deliberative democracy.  The three theorists have different opinions regarding democracy and democratization processes but they all agree that the modern notion of democracy is of liberal character and that inclusion and that equality is important for a democracy. This thesis shows that the democratization of Tunisia’s governance could arise because the process had a relatively liberal agenda, which is perceived through the theories as the modern concept of democracy. The three theories require inclusion and equality for a transition to be democratic. Tunisia has included the citizens in the work of establishing a better relationship between the state and citizens but also when drafting the new constitution after the revolution. The actions taken by Tunisia are compatible with the theories, and maybe an explanation to the democratization process. The relationship between democracy and human rights is important when discussing the democratization of Tunisia. The revolution demanded democracy and human rights, something that the state could not deny. In order to honour the revolution and its demands the government in Tunisia tried to incorporate human rights into the democratic work, linking the relationship between democracy and human rights. Therefore, it can be viewed as a liberal democratization process. This thesis proves that Tunisia is not a democracy, but the process after the revolution is still remarkable and one day I can only hope that the process will be complete.

In the last decade, anthropogenic climate change has caused strong impacts on natural and human systems worldwide. It is of particular importance to include youths in the international decision-making process centred on climate change as they represent the closest living relatives to future generations. Therefore they need to have a say in the decisions affecting their future. Different schools of thought defined characteristics for ideal communication in these political decision-making arenas. The most contradicting theories are on one hand deliberative democrats who favour dialogic and consensus-based proceedings and on the other hand proponents of agonistic pluralism who prefer the conflictual elements of force and disruption in communication processes. The aim of this study is to explore synergies and intersections between both in theory contradicting paths. The study follows a case study design of the international climate change negotiations COP22 in Marrakech 2016. The data collection process involved empirical observations and semi-structured interviews with 30 international youth participants as to their experiences of participating in proceedings, petitioning politicians, and protesting outside venues. The results of this study show that young people concurrently navigate between formal deliberative proceedings and informal agonistic approaches, taking advantage of their underacknowledged positive cumulative and complementing effects. The interplay between both paths stimulates meaningful involvement for youths at the conference and within the climate change social movement. Youths navigating simultaneously between both paths are shown to have both insider knowledge about the vulnerabilities of the system and outsider knowledge providing enough distance to criticise the proceedings. Thus, these youths have the best merits to meaningfully involve in the decision making and successfully introduce change. The process of enculturation to the norms and procedural rules of the conference contributes to the level of meaningful youth involvement and determines the participation path chosen. Moreover, the results outline that the influence of each path in the decision-making process and the definition of meaningful involvement varies with the arena in which it is executed. Whereas meaningful involvement for deliberative inclined youths can be best described through a shared power youth-adult participation, youths following the agonistic path seek meaningful involvement through emotion work and empowerment expressed in direct actions and protest.

The rapidly changing political environment in our Western liberal democracies poses a big challenge not only to elected representatives but also to scholars. In this dissertation thesis I describe and clarify the main principles and ideas of the three currently most dominant, debated and promising democratic theories, namely participatory democracy, deliberative democracy and Mouffe's agonistic pluralism. Their criticisms and the most important polemics are included as well. The first theory introduced in dissertation's theoretical part is participatory democracy, which is heavily neglected in the Slovak academia. It is presented especially through the prism of Carole Pateman's, C.B. Macpherson's and Benjamin Barber's writings. Their ideas on civic engagement in public life appear to be noteworthy again, especially in the light of the changing conditions of democratic citizenship - particularly in regards to the EU-wide decline in voter turnout, increasing income inequality, downgrade of social solidarity and cooperation, growing intolerance or dissatisfaction with representative democracy and its institutions. This theory has been verified on the example of the European Citizens' Initiatives (ECI), which are deemed to be one of most promising political tools adjusting EU's democratic deficit....

EIA's contribution to increased environmental awareness is a posited means by which EIA's contribution to a substantive level of environmental protection can be measured. However, little research has been done to evaluate and properly contextualise this increased environmental awareness in members of the public who participate in EIA and its associated processes of public participation. Utilising a Foucauldian understanding of power and governmentality, this research has shown how this process of becoming environmentally aware takes place within a broader application of governmental power and it is within this context which the success (or otherwise) of steering towards a greater environmental awareness must be evaluated. The biopolitical intentions EIA has for managing environmental life in general draws strict boundaries of expertise and authority in governing the environment, and as products of this formation of governmental power the public become subjects of expert direction. In opposition to this, the public produced a rural environment and local community as defined and governed by forms of experiential knowledge, which although pertaining to a truth-oriented mentality of rule, exerted a similar biopolitical control over the environment and immutable form of authority and expertise within it. It is contended that for EIA to penetrate bounded environments and disrupt their totalising environmentalities, the tool must extend the meaning of uncertainty to explicitly recognise the conflict that exists between actors and their respective environments. In this way, EIA can contribute to a form of self-reflexive and -critical environmental citizenship deemed necessary for a thorough investigation into the political dimensions of the environment and its associated substantive measures of enhancement and protection. Employing a realist governmentality approach to the case-study of the 2016 public inquiry in shale energy proposals in Lancashire, this research generated discourse analyses of key policy documents and public contributions to the inquiry in addition to a 'lived experience' of the inquiry as a participatory space through participant observation. The key findings were that at the policy level, the participating member of the public is produced as both a trustee and an expert, heightening the potential for conflict. Further to this, the experiences of the public inquiry added to this potential by seeking to impose on the participant an individualised, silent identity which was directly contradicted by the public during 'non-technical' sessions who sought to participate actively and collectively. Within their contributions the public produced further internal conflicts, with aspects of this discourse relying on existing institutionalised forms of knowledge and expertise to respond to environmental problems, while in others asserting that localised and personal experiences were necessary. EIA as a technique of government can have a leading role in defining the environment in both a physical, surrounding sense and as a mentality. To do so and challenge essentialised and concrete ideas regarding the environment avoiding the acts of exclusion that underpin them becoming normalised the thesis builds on the analysis to make a proposition for a more effective agonistic EIA process.

This study aims to acquire knowledge about the concept of drag storytimes in public libraries. It addresses research questions regarding their relation to the libraries' mission, as well as associated experiences with and perceptions of these events. The study adopts a qualitative approach, utilizing interviews with different stakeholders, alongside non-participatory observation, as well as media and social media analysis. The theoretical frameworks of agonistic pluralism and visibility are employed.  Findings show that drag storytimes promote accessibility, representation, and acceptance of diversity, aligning with libraries' democratic mission. They also bridge the gap between the art form drag and literature, serving as a means for libraries to encourage and facilitate children's reading. Findings also highlight misconceptions and misrepresentations of drag storytimes in media and public discourse. While libraries have encountered challenges and resistance when hosting drag storytimes, they have also received significant appreciation and support. Resistance is based on concerns about sexualization, indoctrination and unsuitability for children. These concerns are addressed with observations and interviews, which refute these notions.  This study finds that the purpose of drag storytimes lies in promoting reading and providing entertaining experiences for children, emphasizing their child-centric nature. Opinions and perceptions influenced by adults' perspectives, biases, and fears impact the power dynamics among libraries, the public, and politics. This study underscores the challenges faced by libraries in this dynamic and emphasizes their resilience. It underlines the importance of information dissemination, communication, and destigmatization of drag and drag storytimes. By engaging in open conversations, librarians can address misconceptions, confront prejudices, and broaden perspectives.