Alcohol use among college students is often in the news. Some scholars argue, with literature to support it, that problem drinking in college is just a media-driven myth (Lederman et al. 2004). Yet it is clear that college students do drink, some to excess. Various reasons are cited from alcohol availability to the "freedom" associated with this stage of life. However, very few researchers have attempted to determine whether religiosity affects alcohol use among college students. The purpose of this study was to further examine the combined issues of religiosity and alcohol use among college students. Is excessive use of alcohol during this time of life simply an adult transition issue, as Jackson et al. (2005) contend, or is there more to it? Research seems to point to the fact that religiosity plays a role. The primary hypothesis tested was that students who valued religious activities as part of their college experience would use alcohol less, including binge drinking, than those who did not. The second hypothesis tested was that students who valued parties and Greek life would use alcohol and binge more than students who did not. The data set used was constructed by the Harvard School of Public Health and included data from 120 four-year colleges and universities from throughout the United States. The analysis supported the hypothesis that religiosity was a factor in reduced alcohol use by college students. College students who valued religious activities drank less than those who did not. The study also supported the hypothesis that students who valued parties and Greek life drank more. The heaviest drinkers were those who valued parties. These results are highly significant given the size of the sample. No other study that looked at religiosity and alcohol use among college students used a sample this large. These results help us to better understand the negative association between religiosity and alcohol use among college students as well as the positive association between parties and alcohol use. They especially help us to formulate strategies that might be considered to alleviate problem drinking during this stage of life.

Populism has been an integral part of the Finnish political system since the late 1950's. At that time the Agrarian Populist Party, better known as The Rural Party, emerged and thrived for decades until the party financially broke down in the 1990's. Reemerging on the political scene as the True Finns, the party is more radical and more influential than ever, gaining enough support to be the third largest party of the 2011 parliamentary election. Sweden, Finland’s neighbor, in contrast has a history with very little populist presence or radical right populist parties (RRP-parties). However, during the 2010 parliamentary election the Sweden Democrats attained seats in the parliament for the first time in history. In this thesis, these cases, with their different historical backgrounds, are analyzed to explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Many political scientists have tried to answer this question before, focusing on system-oriented and contextual factors, but often neglecting factors that incorporate the political actors themselves. What this thesis adds to the previous research is a perspective on the rise and growth of RRP-parties based on the dynamism between system-oriented factors and actor-oriented factors. The theoretical discussion indicates that some system-oriented and contextual factors are significant when explaining the rise and growth of RRP-parties. At the same time, actor oriented factors such as the legacy of the RRP-party and the mainstream party strategies prove to be influential on the electoral strength of the RRP-party. These theoretical approaches are then used and combined in a comparative analysis, which imply two important things. First, the legitimacy of the RRP-party itself is an aspect that does explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Second, in the case of Sweden, the system-oriented and contextual factors alone were not able to explain the rise and growth of the Sweden Democrats. Together these findings stress that the dynamic perspective between system-oriented and actor-oriented factors truly is meaningful when trying to explain rise and growth of RRP-parties.

Populism is on the rise, anti-globalism, nationalism, and xenophobia run rampant, andtraditional mainstream parties seem unable to curb the tide. Sweden is no exception, eventhough it in some cases seems like it should be, with the populist party the SwedenDemocrats gaining more support by each passing election. In this thesis, the rise of theSweden Democrats and the slow decline of the mainstream Social Democrats and ModerateParty are explored and explained through the use of the term issue alignment. The thesisexamines if the reason for mass migration from the established mainstream parties is due tothe Sweden Democrats being better aligned with voters’ stance on issues and policy.Furthermore, the thesis investigates if the mainstream parties’ voter loss is due to worseningalignment, but not finding any significant decline over time. Similarly, the thesis investigatesif the improving national vote results of the Sweden Democrats are due to improvingalignment between the party and the voters, again, finding no proof for this theory. TheSweden Democrats’ level of issue alignment with voters has not improved consistently overthe period, and similarly, the mainstream parties’ level of issue alignment has not decreasedconsistently over the period.