<p>Abstract</p><p>This study examines the conclusions made by Roland Paris in his case study of fourteen major post-war reconstruction efforts following the end of the Cold War, and applies them to the current reconstruction process in post-war Iraq. Paris found a common denominator of the fourteen cases – a belief that a rapid liberalization process, turning war-torn states into liberal market democracies, would foster sustainable peace. Paris calls this belief “Wilsonianism” after Woodrow Wilson, who was one of the first advocates of it. However, as it turned out this immediate liberalization generated a number of destabilizing side-effects, which endangered the very peace such policies were designed to strengthen.</p><p>Thus, the aim of this study is: to try whether the developments in Iraq after 1 May 2003 correspond with Paris’ conclusion from his study of peacebuilding operations during the 1990:s, that a rapid liberalization process endangers the very peace it is expected to bring about.</p><p>Even though I had some difficulties separating the involvement of the American-led coalition as an invading power as opposed to the power behind the liberalization process, I found Paris’ conclusion to be well in accordance with how the post-war reconstruction effort of Iraq has developed.</p>

Abstract This study examines the conclusions made by Roland Paris in his case study of fourteen major post-war reconstruction efforts following the end of the Cold War, and applies them to the current reconstruction process in post-war Iraq. Paris found a common denominator of the fourteen cases – a belief that a rapid liberalization process, turning war-torn states into liberal market democracies, would foster sustainable peace. Paris calls this belief “Wilsonianism” after Woodrow Wilson, who was one of the first advocates of it. However, as it turned out this immediate liberalization generated a number of destabilizing side-effects, which endangered the very peace such policies were designed to strengthen. Thus, the aim of this study is: to try whether the developments in Iraq after 1 May 2003 correspond with Paris’ conclusion from his study of peacebuilding operations during the 1990:s, that a rapid liberalization process endangers the very peace it is expected to bring about. Even though I had some difficulties separating the involvement of the American-led coalition as an invading power as opposed to the power behind the liberalization process, I found Paris’ conclusion to be well in accordance with how the post-war reconstruction effort of Iraq has developed.

According to Ronald Ingleharts research deindustrialized and affluent societies are expected to have increasingly open, progressive, and tolerant citizens. However, during the last decade political developments have been reversed. More than 25% of Europeans now adays vote for a right-wing populist party. In addition, the globalization has created winning and losing regions, with one of its biggest impacts being deindustrialization of the West. Big cities have flourished while disfavored suburbs, smaller industrial towns and rural communities have been marginalized. Consequently, the support for right-wing populist movements is often highest in such negatively affected areas. Inglehart have previously explained this through the idea of a “conservative backlash” caused by a combination of increasing inequality and culturally revolting age-cohorts. His arguments are mainly based on cross-national or intranational data while other research pointing at the necessity to analyze the association between regional deindustrialization and the rise of the far right. This thesis filles that gap by conducting a multi- level analysis, in which Ingleharts theory is tested by studying associations between values and changing levels of industrialization in 327 European regions. The result confirms earlier research regarding the association between industrialization and authoritarian-libertarian values, but puts in to question Ingleharts explanation of inequality as the reason for the contemporary conservative backlashes. The result shows no support for a relationship between inequality and authoritarian-liberal values.

The purpose of this study is to examine and investigate the party culture that exists within the political youth association Liberala Ungdomsförbundet, connected to the liberal party of Sweden- Liberalerna. Using data from seven semi-structured interviews and a text analysis of the magazine of the organization I describe the current party culture found in it. In analysing the material I use the toolkit brought forward by Rauven Kahane aimed to understand youths with post-modern values. This toolkit, called the Code of Informality, is used together with previous findings regarding the mother party made by Katarina Barrling made in her thesis “Partikulturer” from 2004. I find the party culture of the youth party to be rather similar to that of their mother party with some minor differences. The differences in culture can partly be understood as expressions for the post-modern values of youths introduced by Kahane.

Denna uppsats skrevs med syftet att undersöka hur ungdomspartier förmedlar den egna rollen som har sitt syfte att bidra till demokratin i Sverige. Detta gjordes genom att använda Robert. A Dahls teori kring den demokratiska processen som analysverktyg. Analysen gjordes utifrån ungdomspartiernas hemsidor, sociala medier och stadgar samt andra tillgängliga dokument. Arbetet avgränsade sig till tre olika ungdomspartier vilka var Ung vänster, Liberala ungdomsförbundet och Ungsvenskarna. Resultatet blev att alla dessa kommunicerar tre helt olika roller. Ung vänster förmedlar en roll som kopplades till ”kontroll över agendan” vilket innebär att de primärt fokuserar på sakfrågor och att föra fram sina åsikter. Liberala ungdomsförbundet har istället valt att fokusera på att sprida kunskapen kring sin ideologiska grund som kopplas till kriteriet ”upplyst förståelse”. Ungsvenskarna förmedlar en roll som bidrar till ”effektivt deltagande”, vilket betyder att de rekryterar och utbildar framtida politiker till sitt moderparti. Alla tre har dock fler funktioner och kan kopplas till flera kriterier men detta var vilka deras primära fokus riktade på. / This paper was written with the purpose of examine which role youth parties communicate to have for their contribution to the swedish democracy. This was accomplished by using the theory of the democratic process created by Robert. A Dahl. The youth parties webpages, social media and accessible documents was used in the analysis, the sampled parties was “Ung vänster” (the young left wing), “Liberala ungdomsförbundet” (the young liberals) and “Ungsvenskarna” (The swedish youths). The result being that all three are contributing to the democracy by showing different primary roles yet still being able to fill some of the other criteria as well, however to a lesser extent. “Ung vänster” communicates a role which connects to the criteria of “control of the agenda” which means they have taken on the function of influencing the decision makers of society. “Liberala ungdomsförbundet” has instead chosen to put their focus in spreading information about the main thoughts of the liberal ideology, this role connects to the criteria of “enlightened understanding”. “Ungsvenskarna” is primarily focusing on communicating a function of recruiting and educating new party members with the goal to create future politicians for the main party, this role connects to the criteria of “effective participation”.