This thesis aims to map what arguments are used by the two biggest parties in Swedish politics, The Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party, when discussing European politics in the European Affairs Committee (EAC) of the Swedish parliament. In order to realise this, frames used by the party representatives in the committee have been analysed. With the typology of Helbling et. al. (2010), a categorisation of four frames is applied, where each frame corresponds with a side of the left-right or the GAL-TAN-dimension. The study is structured by a number of hypotheses constructed based on findings of previous research, comparing both between the parties and changes over time. The results are assessed in relative terms, meaning that the study focuses on the parties’ relative use of frames rather than the absolute. All hypotheses find full or partial support, confirming expectations of previous research made on other European countries. However, some surprising results are found, highlighting new potential research questions for future studies.

Willy Brandt, chancelier de la RFA de 1969 à 1974, a, certes, marqué l’histoire de l’Allemagne d’après-guerre par son Ostpolitik, la politique de détente entre l’Est et l’Ouest et de normalisation des relations entre la République fédérale d’Allemagne (RFA) et le bloc soviétique. Mais, sa carrière politique a connu de nombreuses expériences et des engagements très divers sur le plan international. Willy Brandt, l’Européen convaincu de l’ancrage de la RFA à l’Ouest, est aussi le protagoniste de l’ouverture à l’Est et l’avocat du développement dans le tiers-monde. / Willy Brandt, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), from 1969 to 1974, has certainly marked Germany’s history post-war period by his Ostpolitik, the Détente’s policy between East and West and the policy of relations’ normalization between the FRG and the Soviet bloc. But his political career has had many experiences and a variety of commitments at international level. Willy Brandt, as an European, who believes in the FRG’s integration into the West, is also the protagonist of the opening to the East and the advocate of the Third World’s development.

“The Proletarian Prometheus: Socialism, Ethnicity, and Revolution at the Lakehead, 1900-1935” is an analysis of the various socialist organizations operating at the Canadian Lakehead (comprised of the twin cities of Port Arthur and Fort William, Ontario, now the present-day City of Thunder Bay, and their vicinity) during the first 35 years of the twentieth century. It contends that the circumstances and actions of Lakehead labour, especially those related to ideology, ethnicity, and personality, worked simultaneously to empower and to fetter workers in their struggles against the shackles of capitalism. The twentieth-century Lakehead never lacked for a population of enthusiastic, energetic and talented left-wingers. Yet, throughout this period the movement never truly solidified and took hold. Socialist organizations, organizers and organs came and went, leaving behind them an enduring legacy, yet paradoxically the sum of their efforts was cumulatively less than the immense sacrifices and energies they had poured into them. Between 1900 and 1935, the region's working-class politics was shaped by the interaction of ideas drawn from the much larger North Atlantic socialist world with the particularities of Lakehead society and culture. International frameworks of analysis and activism were of necessity reshaped and revised in a local context in which ethnic divisions complicated and even undermined the class identities upon which so many radical dreams and ambitions rested. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2007-12-14 20:26:40.652

The Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party are two parties with different ideological background. The parties have different opinions in issues of public and private matters. The Social Democratic Party profiles it self, through the local and national party programs, as a party for solidarity and security. The Moderate Party, on the other hand, profiles it self through their programmes as a party with a possibility for the individual to shape his or her own life. Through a survey on members in the local government, and two key persons at national level, the view of municipal self-government has appeared. The party programmes constitute a platform for the parties´ views on municipal self-government. These views have been put together with the result of the survey. Urban Strandberg has designed an analysis frame related to municipal self-government. His concept, municipalities’ basic character, board of directors and administration, is the theoretical foundation of the thesis. The content of the Party programmes and the results of the survey are thendiscussed within the frame of Strandbergs concept and Demokratiutredningens rapport SOU 2000:1. From the collective perspective of the theory, the content of party programmes and the result of the survey an image of the parties’ views on municipal self-government starts to grow. Within each party respectively, they keep a common strategy in important issues, which the local governments and the parties’ basic characters have raised. There are dividing lines due to the administration of the municipalities. Civic participation unites the parties in ideological issues. The opinions, in the issue of municipal self-government, differs between the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party. The reason for that is because of their fundamental different views in the fields of social order and ideology, as it is described in the party programmes. In reality when the parties shape the politics they cannot profile themselves as much as in the"vision"in their party programmes. The parties have to find a middle course, which is reflected in the answers from some of the respondents.

This study uses variables derived from Rational Choice Theory to examine the theory’s predicted covariancebetween public opinion and the parties’ policies. The collection of material has been guided by three arenas: the parliamentarian, the media and the voter’s. It has categorized the analysis based on the strategy concept, using ends, means and ways. It asks how the Moderate Party and the Social Democratic Party changed their strategy within the period of 31 May 2013 and 14 September 2014, and how this can be understood from a rational choice perspective. The purpose of the study is to examine the assumptions of Rational Choice Theory in the Swedish context in front of the election in 2014, and to understand this from the perspective of the theory. This can help in our understanding of defense policy formation and to our understanding of states’ relations on the international arena. The results show that there has been a more ambitious change in defense policy which covariates with the indicated positive change in public opinion on defense issues, but this did not make defense issues one of the 2014 election’s most important questions for the voters in choice of party to vote for. This can be understood as rational, seen from a RCT-perspective, since the other issues renders more support, a circumstance that is in line with the history of Swedish elections.

In this study I examine the decisions to sign and later terminate the so called Saudi agreement, a military memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Sweden and Saudi Arabia, understood as a gateway agreement for future arms deals as well as exchange of defense technology knowledge. Comparing statements from the Social Democratic Party (SAP), who held government both in 2005 when the agreement was signed as well as in 2015 when it was terminated unilaterally by Sweden, I examine the ideological preferences of Swedish foreign policy. Could the shift in policy be explained by ideology?

The presented doctoral thesis deals with the hitherto neglected personality of the Slovak politician Ivan Markovič (1888-1944). The aim of the thesis is to clarify the political activity of Ivan Markovič, to analyze his ideological anchoring and to increase the overall awareness of his person in the context of Czecho-Slovak relations in the first half of the 20th century. The thesis is divided into four chapters and an epilogue, while the individual chapters are devoted to the study of various time and thematic contexts in which Markovič was active. The first chapter introduces the research into the broader context of Czecho-Slovak relations and the background of the first years of Markovič's life. The second chapter examines his work as the founder and editor of the magazine Prúdy in the period before the outbreak of the First World War. The third chapter deals with his activities in the resistance movement abroad during the war. Finally, the fourth chapter deals with the activities of Markovič in the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Worker's Party and his involvement in the top politics of the interwar Czechoslovak Republic. The epilogue presents the last years of Markovič's life as a political prisoner in Nazi concentration camps and outlines the destinies of his family. For the research of...

The party system of Iceland was always well-known for its strong stability and moderate nature typical for its whole modern development. But since the 1999 parliamentary election the Icelandic party system has been going through several changes and it is not appropriate to consider it nowadays as a traditionally stable party system with, in the long term, the dominant Independence Party. The party system is splitting off and the new parties are found out. Although after the 2013 election the system returned to the pre-2009 model, there is still an important question whether it reflects repeated stabilization of the Iceland political and party system, or it is only a reaction to the left-wing government in the years of 2009 to 2013. The aim of this thesis is to answer the following questions: is the Icelandic party system going through some changes of its structure or inter-party competition, and if so, is this transformation caused by the financial and bank crisis in 2008, or does it concern long- term transformations? Did the electoral shock in 2009 result from the reaction of the Icelandic voters to the financial crisis, or the election results were only another validation of the long- term Icelandic party system trend, namely by erosion of its traditional adjustment? In the analysis of the...

Cette thèse de doctorat est une biographie politique de Paul Levi, militant marxiste qui a fait carrière en Allemagne durant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. Dès 1914, Levi incarne un courant radical à l’intérieur du Parti social-démocrate d’Allemagne (SPD). Il dénonce, entre autres, aux côtés de Rosa Luxemburg l’appui du parti à l’effort militaire national. Levi s’inspire également de Lénine qu’il rencontre pour la première fois en Suisse en 1916-1917. Lorsqu’il prend les commandes du Parti communiste d’Allemagne (KPD) en 1919, Levi dirige celui-ci d’une main de fer, selon le concept du « centralisme démocratique ». Il fait également tout en son pouvoir pour faire éclater la révolution ouvrière en Allemagne afin d’installer une dictature du prolétariat qui exclurait toutes les classes non ouvrières du pouvoir. En ce sens, Levi imagine un État socialiste semblable à celui fondé par Lénine en Russie en 1917. Contrairement à l’historiographie traditionnelle, notre thèse montre conséquemment que Levi n’était guère un « socialiste démocrate ». Il était plutôt un militant marxiste qui, par son radicalisme, a contribué à diviser le mouvement ouvrier allemand ce qui, en revanche, a fragilisé la république de Weimar. Cette thèse fait également ressortir le caractère résolument rebelle de Paul Levi. Partout où il passe, Levi dénonce les politiques bourgeoises des partis non-ouvriers, mais aussi celles de la majorité des organisations dont il fait partie, c’est-à-dire les partis ouvriers de la république de Weimar et le Reichstag. Son tempérament impulsif fait de lui un homme politique isolé qui, d’ailleurs, se fait de nombreux ennemis. En 1921, à titre d’exemple, il se brouille avec d’importants bolcheviques, ce qui met fin à sa carrière au sein du KPD. Les communistes voient désormais en lui un ennemi de la classe ouvrière et mènent contre lui de nombreuses campagnes diffamatoires. Levi, de son côté, dénonce ouvertement la terreur stalinienne qui, selon lui, est en train de contaminer le mouvement communiste européen. Notre travail montre également que Levi, cette fois en tant qu’avocat juif, lutte corps et âme contre les nazis. En 1926, dans le cadre d’une commission d’enquête publique du Reichstag chargée de faire la lumière sur des meurtres politiques commis en Bavière, il tente par tous les moyens d’inculper certains criminels nazis. Levi est conséquemment la cible de la presse antisémite allemande. Il refuse toutefois de céder à l’intimidation et choisit plutôt de poursuivre en justice quelques-uns des plus importants membres du Parti nazi, dont Alfred Rosenberg et Hitler lui-même, en plus de forcer de nombreux autres nazis à comparaître devant la commission d’enquête du Reichstag. Bref, si ce travail se veut critique envers la pensée révolutionnaire de Levi, il souligne aussi l’intégrité politique de cet homme dont les convictions sont demeurées inébranlables face aux dérives criminelles des extrêmes idéologiques de son époque. / This Ph.D. thesis is a political biography of Paul Levi, a German Marxist of the interwar period. Already in 1914, Levi embodied a radical faction within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Alongside Rosa Luxemburg, the leader of this same left wing, he is contesting, above all, the party’s participation in the national war effort. But Levi is also inspired by Lenin, who he met in Switzerland in 1916-1917. In fact, when taking over the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) in March 1919, Levi ruled with an iron fist according to the theory of “democratic centralism”. As Lenin has done in Russia in October 1917, Levi also did everything in his power to promote a workers’ revolution in Germany in order to set in power a dictatorship of the proletariat, which would exclude all other social classes from sitting in the government. Consequently, in opposition to traditional historiography, this thesis shows that Levi was not a “democratic Socialist” of the Luxemburg school, but rather a Marxist whose political thought resembled that of the Bolsheviks. In fact, his action contributed to further weaken an already frail Weimar Republic and all its democratic institutions. This study also shows that Levi’s outstanding career was in large part the result of his rebellious character. Throughout his life, Levi consistently denounced the bourgeois politics of the non-workers’ parties, but he also systematically went against the majority within the political organizations in which he took part: the workers’ parties and the Reichstag. His impulsive nature set him apart as a solitary politician. In fact, Levi had many enemies. In 1921, he ran afoul of major Bolshevik leaders, which caused him to lose the leadership of the KPD. The Communists subsequently saw him as an enemy of the working class, slandering him in the press and in the Reichstag. Levi denounced, for his part, the Stalinist terror and made a mockery of the KPD, which had become, according to him, no more than a Soviet puppet. But this thesis also reveals that Levi, as a Jewish lawyer, led a major political campaign against the Nazis. In 1926, for example, as he served on a Reichstag public commission investigating Bavarian political assassinations, he tried by all possible means to charge important Nazis with murder. The Nazi press replied with a vicious anti-Semitic press campaign against him. Levi, however, refused to kneel before such intimidation and rather chose to sue important Nazi leaders, such as Alfred Rosenberg and Hitler himself before the court, in addition to summoning many others before the above-mentioned Reichstag commission. In the end, despite the fact that this study very critically evaluates Levi’s ideology, it praises his political integrity, which remained unshakable though faced with adversity and the criminal drift of the political extremes of the interwar period.

Cette thèse porte sur les conceptions d’Egon Bahr dans le domaine de la politique à l’Est (Ostpolitik) de la République fédérale d’Allemagne (RFA) entre 1945 et 1975. L’analyse se concentre sur le lien entre l’Ostpolitik et l’idée que Bahr se fait de la place et du rôle de l’Allemagne en Europe. Plus précisément, cette étude veut cerner les buts poursuivis par Bahr dans le cadre de la politique orientale. La première partie traite du développement conceptuel de l’Ostpolitik (1945-1969), tandis que la seconde examine sa mise en application entre l’élection de Willy Brandt comme chancelier de la RFA et la conclusion des accords d’Helsinki (1969-1975). Les principales sources utilisées sont les écrits de Bahr ainsi que des documents inédits se trouvant dans divers centres d’archives non seulement en Allemagne, mais aussi aux États-Unis, en France et en Grande-Bretagne. Pour Bahr, l’Ostpolitik ne saurait se résumer à l’élimination des obstacles qui gênent la diplomatie ouest-allemande durant la guerre froide. Bahr poursuit plutôt un projet nationaliste ambitieux dans le contexte des relations avec le bloc soviétique : créer les conditions d’une redéfinition de la place de l’Allemagne en Europe. Pour lui, l’Ostpolitik constitue un instrument idéal pour faire de l’Allemagne la puissance prépondérante dans un nouvel ordre de paix européen. Trois éléments complémentaires participent à l’accomplissement de cette vision : 1) la consolidation de la paix et de la sécurité continentales; 2) la réunification allemande et 3) l’émancipation de la politique étrangère (ouest-)allemande. Cette thèse éclaire la pensée politique de Bahr et contribue à une meilleure compréhension de la signification de l’Ostpolitik dans le contexte plus large de la politique étrangère de la RFA. Les conceptions de Bahr sont uniques dans l’Allemagne de la guerre froide parce qu’elles sont centrées sur les notions de puissance, d’intérêt national et de « normalité ». En même temps, Bahr comprend que la coopération doit toujours rester l’instrument diplomatique privilégié des Allemands vu leur position géographique centrale. À travers le prisme des conceptions de son « architecte », l’Ostpolitik apparaît comme un véritable effort de réconciliation entre la paix en Europe et l’affirmation de l’influence allemande sur la scène internationale. / This thesis deals with Egon Bahr’s understanding of the Federal Republic of Germany’s (FRG) Eastern policy (Ostpolitik) between 1945 and 1975. The analysis is centered on the link between Ostpolitik and Bahr’s conception of Germany’s position and role in the European system. More precisely, this study aims at finding out which goals Bahr pursued in the context of Bonn’s Eastern policy. The first part of the thesis deals with the conceptual development of Ostpolitik (1945-1969). The second part takes a look at its implementation for the period between Willy Brandt’s election as West German Chancellor and the conclusion of the Helsinki Final Act (1969-1975). This thesis relies primarily on Bahr’s writings, including a vast number of unpublished sources, located mostly in German archives, but also in American, French and British archives. According to Bahr, Ostpolitik was not limited to the elimination of West Germany’s burdens in foreign policy during the Cold War. In fact, he pursued an ambitious, nationalistic project in the context of relations with the Soviet bloc. Bahr sought to create the necessary conditions for Germany to redefine its place in Europe. With Ostpolitik as his diplomatic instrument, his ultimate goal was to see Germany become the central power in a new European peace order. Three interrelated objectives formed the core of this vision: 1) the consolidation of peace and security on the continent; 2) German reunification and 3) the emancipation of (West) German foreign policy. This thesis sheds new light on Bahr’s political thought and contributes to a better understanding of Ostpolitik’s significance in the larger context of West German foreign policy. Bahr’s conceptions were unique in Cold War Germany because they were based on notions of power, the national interest and “normality”. At the same time, Bahr understood that Germans, because of their central geographic position, always had to rely on cooperation as the prime instrument of all their diplomatic initiatives. Through its “architect”, Ostpolitik appears as an effort at reconciliation between a peaceful Europe and the unhindered affirmation of German influence in world affairs.