Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-32).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität München, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-225).

<p>Currently, the whole globe is faced with serious problems which negatively affect people around the world: increased pollution, excessive waste, and weather pattern changes. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ wing political parties alike have embraced ‘green’ politics and for many of these parties, environmental issues have become a top priority that is very much reflected in their manifestos. This study examines the environmental goals of two of Sweden’s largest political parties and how these ambitions are reflected at a local level. The conclusions I have drawn in the study have been achieved by analysing official documents and by the comparison between two Swedish municipalities. As a result of my research, I have learned that the political leanings of a party are substantial in determining the goals and works for long-term sustainability at a local level. However, whether the prevailing parties are of the ‘left’ or ‘right’ political orientation does not seem to be of big importance because both ‘wings’ in Sweden are very liberal and have very similar environmental goals.</p>

This paper concerns the question how the Norrbottnic railway navvy has been used inNorrbottnic newspapers in order to deal with contemporary issues of a political and economicnature. The time period covered is 1951-2004 and 36 newspaper articles have been used. Thepaper shows that there is no obvious connection between the newspapers political affiliationand the components from the navvies lives one otherwise would expect the newspaper topresent. Ideological use of history is not always present. There are other uses of history to, inthe articles. On the other hand the results of this investigation shows all newspapers wants topreserve the navvies accomplishments for later generations. There is no clear connectionbetween a decision to preserve and important events in the surrounding contemporary society.A commitment to preserve is taken independently of important contemporary events.

The presented graduation thesis deals with radical right wing parties in the political system of the Czech republic. The far-right wing parties occured in the area of the present Czech republic in the second half of 19th century. In the following years their number and importance fluctuated. In the last twenty years the Dělnická strana appeared. This party was the most important far-right wing party since 1989 until present days. Dělnická strana was founded in 2002 and cancelled was by the Supreme Administrative Court eight years later. Many far-right wing parties acted in Czech republic besides this one after 1989. None of them, including Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti, which is the successor party of Dělnická strana, had ever achieved such popularity and elective results.

Previous researchers have often speculated about the role of risk taking in creativity, however this association has rarely been systematically investigated. This thesis explores the association between domain specific risk taking and creativity in human participants. It presents a systematic review of the speculations and scientific studies which aimed at uncovering the association between creativity and risk taking in various populations. This discussion aims to bring together the current knowledge centred around the link between risk taking and creativity and poses two overarching questions – Are creative individuals risk takers and if so, is this association domain specific? In five studies, the present research investigated these questions and found that creativity is strongly associated with risk taking in the social domain (but not in the financial, ethical, health/ safety or recreational domains). Additionally, with an aim to further disentangle the association between creativity and risk taking in specific populations and social situations, this thesis explored creativity in a specific group of individuals (sexual minority) who are speculated to be highly creative and are known to be more likely to take health/ safety risks such as smoking tobacco, consuming illegal drugs or engaging in unsafe sexual encounters. It was found that sexual minority (specifically bisexual individuals) were highly creative and were also more likely to take risks in various domains. As opposed to the sexual minority, another group of individuals in which creativity and risk taking are hypothesised to be different, consists of individuals who subscribe to the right-wing socio-political ideologies. As predicted, individuals who affiliated to the right-wing socio-political ideologies (in the United States) were found to be low on creativity and were significantly less likely to take risks, specifically in the social domain. A mediating role of social risk taking on the relationship between sociopolitical attitudes and creativity was also found. The research work presented in this thesis illustrates the role that social risk taking plays in creativity and paves way for the development of new ways to foster creativity.

This retroductive study aims to examine in what way paradoxes figure in contemporary political discourse, and what political effects arise therefrom. To this end, the study will address an extreme example – Swedish right-wing nationalism - which often is accused of being paradoxical; for example, when right-wing nationalistic discourse – often explicitly anti-feminist – begins to appropriate a feminist analysis in order to engage in contemporary political events. Such was the case when news of what happened in Cologne on New Year’s 2015/2016 reached Sweden. An important theoretical framework for this study is Michael Billig’s Ideological Dilemmas, and his theories on common sense and intellectual- versus lived ideology. According to Billig ‘doxa’ constitutes various contradictory values, and in this way, doxa is inherently paradoxical. Therefore, in order to understand and define the figure paradox, first we need to investigate how our own liberal doxa operate paradoxically, and what are both the rhetorical and political implications of the paradoxes constitutive of liberal common sense. The analysis of this study suggests that liberal discourse has, to a certain degree, facilitated the growth and effectiveness of right-wing nationalist discourse that has drawn on cultural differences as a permissible ground for a debate surrounding the future of western liberal principles and the defence of women’s rights.

Right-wing populism is experiencing a revival across a number of European states. To date, they have achieved remarkable results in several elections, leading to an increase in representation in local, national and european levels. Sweden and Germany are two of the European countries that have experienced this political evolution through the Sweden Democrats (SD) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The purpose of this thesis is to study the parties’ origins in order to examine whether the current versions of the parties are equivalent to the versions of the time of their founding. In order to address this question, I have used primary sources such as official party programmes, as well as secondary sources for a more impartial perspective. In conclusion, both of the parties have very different origins and have subsequently evolved in different directions towards their current forms, which indeed show significant similarities.

In recent years a wave of right-wing populist parties has sweep in Europe. Two of these are Sweden’s Swedish Democrats and Norway’s Progress Party. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to research on how political parties are portrayed in mainstream media and how that may influence political party success in the elections. Content of two daily newspapers over two months before the last parliamentary elections in Sweden and Norway is examined within the study. The method used is a quantitative content analysis. The result was added to the agenda setting theory. From the result, an analysis was conducted to reveal how publication in newspapers can be expected to affect or not affect the selected parties’ successes in the elections. The result shows that the Progress Party receives more space in the daily press than the Swedish Democrats. Both parties are often mentioned in relation to other parties. In several articles, other parties want to show that there is a difference between their basic values, as opposed to the right-wing populist parties. Negative value words appear in the articles, especially in the case of the Swedish Democrats. There are both negative and neutral values in the case of the Progress Party. However, the articles often appear in a neutral way. The conclusion is that the daily press does not seem to have influence over the political parties’ successes in the elections in this case.

This master thesis deals with the development of the protest movement PEGIDA, which was founded on October 11. 2014 in Dresden. This movement speaks loudly against the Islamization of Germany during the regular demonstrations and criticizes the political situation in the country. In times of its greatest popularity it has attracted thousands of people. Nowadays its importance is still diminishing. The aim is therefore to describe the development of the movement and its characteristics. The work is divided into four main chapters. The first one explains the development in Saxony, the second one describes the development of the movement and its programmatics. It also contains the change of relationship towards Alternative für Deutschland (AfD): from an animosity into an open collaboration. PEGIDA was created as a Facebook group: with tools like Google Trends and Fanpage Karma this chapter analyzes its evolution in an online world. It also shows a declining search rate on Google and its popularity on Facebook. The last chapter is based on studies conducted among demonstrators concerning their demographic data and their views on the functioning of democracy and politics. It follows that most Pegidists do not believe in political representation and see an AfD as an alternative. The stagnation of the...