The challenge of immigration has divided EU member states, political parties, media and academia as well as the electorate of EU countries, leaving political decision makers under tremendous pressure on both national and EU level. To alleviate the situation for highly burdened member states, the Commission has suggested a permanent relocation mechanism for refugees, but so far, many member states have been reluctant to accept higher shares of refugees. Some observers have labelled the situation a crisis of solidarity, challenging the idea of European integration, but also questioning the Union’s capacity to demonstrate solidarity between member states, and consequently its capacity to show solidarity with arriving refugees.   By looking at European Parliament debates, this paper examines the main differences between the European Christian Democratic and Social Democratic understandings of solidarity and how these differences become visible in relation to relocation of refugees and asylum seekers between EU member states. The findings suggest that while there is some convergence, Christian Democrats are more inclined to consider refugees as a threat and to advocate the need of securing external borders than their Social Democratic counterparts. Social Democrats also to a larger extent favour the idea of making relocation mandatory, while many Christian Democrats emphasize the importance of subsidiarity.   The findings can be associated with the foundational values of both party groups and their political understandings of solidarity. Most interestingly, however, this paper finds that the national level variance within these two party groups is frequently bigger, than between them – indicating that MEP’s understandings of solidarity are perhaps more strongly mediated by nationality than political affiliation.

Utilizing the debates of the German Reichstag, the proceedings of the SPD, the memoirs of the leading military and Marxist figures and the principal newspapers of the Second Reich and Weimar Republic, this dissertation attempts to show how the army chiefs and the socialist leaders of Germany altered their policies not only to promote their interests but also to protect the state.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the integration policy in Sweden. The nation is known for its generous migration policy, which is why a lot of people choose to move to Sweden.  It is paramount that the immigrants become accustomed to and integrated into the Swedish society. For that reason, it becomes relevant to investigate the view of integration policy of the two of Sweden's largest parties, namely the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats.  The various philosophies and principles of the parties hereby make it important to research the view of integration of the Social Democrats and the Swedish Democrats. By employing idea analysis in a comparative case study setting, we aim to analyze the integration strategies of both parties. Throughout the following work, focus lies on multiculturalism and assimilation. The aim is to investigate whether similar or different integration steps are being taken by the parties. The analysis uses the party programs of both parties, numerous party bills, and party congresses. The Social Democrats pursue a perspective of multiculturalism, while the Swedish Democrats follow a perspective of assimilation. Thus, the study concludes that the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats follow different views on integration policy.

The purpose is to understand the reasons for changed perceptions about Swedish nuclear weapons during the time when Sweden considered acquiring these weapons. The main question is: which stories about Swedish nuclear weapons did key players in Sweden present from 1958 to 1963 and how did these stories change. Primary sources are texts from 1958– 1963, texts for or against Swedish atomic weapons, government investigations and political texts and bills. The theoretical perspective is framing analysis (Kuypers) and narrative analysis (Shenhav) unified in a method. Text-by-text, framing, agenda extension, and story are investigated and compared, supported by previous research. The analysis shows that stories can be divided into five categories, the military, the dystopian, the scientific, the state community building and the security policy stories. In 1958, the military story of nuclear weapons dominated as an issue of weapons development in the nuclear age. The following year, new stories came from opinion leaders, the yes side developed stories about the necessity of the bomb for the military and in foreign policy. The no side told stories about the consequences of a Swedish bomb as a dystopia for humanity and the collapse in foreign relations. Both told scientific stories about the effects which either ended in calming message to the people or created fear of radiation damage and the genetics of future generations. After 1959 both the Social Democrats and the military began to hesitate and changed their stories. Among other things, future civil nuclear power, economic realism and good relations with the US outweighed the idea of nuclear weapons guaranteeing a Swedish non-alliance policy. The change in the stories could also be interpreted as an early de facto no a conclusion shared by previous research. By 1963 the Social Democrats' story of a modern society without nuclear weapons dominated.

Election campaigns in the Czech Republic are undergoing a major professionalization process since 2006. The most noticeable proof of this trend is the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), which is effectively cooperating with foreign agencies. In 2006 CSSD followed the example of British Labour Party and applied market-oriented party concept to its behaviour. The strategy of a market- oriented party is to identify public priorities, analyze them and to create an election program; since voter's satisfaction is crucial for a market-oriented party, it uses a wide variety of marketing services and techniques. I am analyzing the election campaigns of Czech Social Democratic Party in 2006 and 2010 using the Market-Oriented Party Model published by Jennifer Lees-Marshment in 2006. My goal is to find out whether CSSD followed the Market-Oriented Party Model in 2010 and whether it is going to keep applying the concept in the future. Key words: Election campaign, Czech social democratic party, political marketing, election management.

In 1982, when the Social Democrats returned to power, they had two goals. One was to increase the growth in the economy, another to decrease the public debt. This led to a new economic policy for the Social Democrats. The new economic policy was influenced by the neoliberal ideology that started to spread throughout the world from the late 1970s. The purpose of this study is to examine if the Social Democrats favoured economic growth over welfare, fair distribution and state ownership. The results of the study was analyzed with the use of Hiroto Tsukadas Welfare State Theory. The theory claims that politicians favour investments over welfare because welfare consumption decreases economic growth. The empirical analysis is based on parliament debates, party and union congresses, policy programs and memoirs. The results show that the arguments from leading social democrats were pro-growth and for investments over welfare spending and fair distribution policy.

The topic of this thesis is the disputes between the teacher strikes 1966 and 1971 and how the labour movement perceived the teachers and the srikes throught the perspective of class. Various text sources from different agents within the labour movement has been examined. Interprations of two marxist theories and Bourdieus theory of habitus has been used to define various ”class perspectives”. The thesis argues that the labour movement percieved the teachers as a different class from the labourer and that the strikes were percieved as a threat to the labour movements interests.

Countries with proportional representation are increasingly introducing an electoral threshold to stop smaller parties from entering their parliaments. In this paper, I’m focusing on the  proportional electoral system and mainly why some countries choose to impose a barrier to their parliaments and others do not. First I did a survey to see which countries that are using it and after that I decided to do three case studies including: Sweden, The Netherlands and Turkey. I used Carles Boix theory on proportional electoral systems. The main variable in his theory is that the “threat” from the social democratic parties has an affect on the enforcement of a PRsystem. I wanted to examine whether it was possible to apply this theory on the implementation of thresholds. Finally, it is possible to conclude that Boix theory can be used even when studying the emergence of electoral barriers. Boix theory suggests that any "threat" from new parties makes the old, larger and established parties or other government organizations want to impose a threshold to secure their positions. This was the case in Sweden and in Turkey. In countries where this situation does not exist, it seems to be no need for an electoral barrier, as shown in the Netherlands.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine how the Swedish parliamentary left viewed Brexit and its expected consequences. The standpoints concerning Brexit that were presented by the Social Democrats (S; SAP), the Left Party (V) and the Greens (MP) during the foreign policy debates of 2016 and 2017, and during eight of the consultations with the Committee on EU Affairs, from December 2015 to September 2016, are analysed. The actions of the three parties are explained with the help of the concepts politicization, programme realization, vote maximization and maximization of parliamentary influence. The standpoints are categorized using a qualitative text analysis. The conclusion is that the Social Democrats and the Greens had a negative attitude towards the United Kingdom leaving the EU, and they argued that the result of the referendum was a matter of regret. According to the Social Democrats and the Greens, Brexit meant that the EU had to start fulfilling the wishes of the citizens; otherwise the legitimacy of the union would be damaged even further. The Left Party neither approved nor disapproved of Brexit, but it did consider the event a historic opportunity to reform the EU. The analysis of the standpoints showed that Brexit couldn’t be classified as a politicized (contentious) question for the Swedish left. The actions of the Social Democrats are seen as an attempt to achieve all the strategic goals: programme realization, vote maximization and maximization of parliamentary influence. The Left Party prioritized vote maximization over the other goals, while the Greens prioritized maximization of parliamentary influence at the expense of programme realization.

<p>Den här studien undersöker skillnaderna i de sätt på vilka Junilistan respektive Socialdemokraterna officiellt talar om demokrati, samt tillskriver begreppet värde. </p><p>Med en kombination av diskurs- och ideologianalys, med tyngdpunkten på diskursanalys, granskas det sätt på vilket de båda organisationerna, i idéprogram samt debattartiklar, använder demokratibegreppet vid diskussioner om EU som institution, samt vid resonemang om hur det svenska partiväsendet representerar de svenska väljarnas åsikter i unionen. </p><p>Tanken bakom studiens fokus är att demokratibegreppet, med sin legitimitet och positiva värdeladdning, blir oerhört viktigt att knyta till sin verksamhet för att kunna visa på grundläggande demokratisk förankring i sina resonemang och därigenom vinna väljarnas bifall. </p><p>En av studiens centralaste slutsatser är att de båda organisationerna i stor utsträckning talar om varandra. Det vill säga att när Junilistan talar i negativa formuleringar så talar Socialdemokraterna i positiva, utan att argumentationen på allvar möts i detaljfrågor.</p>