More than ever before the European integration project reached a point of political and economic crisis that cannot be dismissed. The main academic and political solutions presented for the crisis is to refocus on European citizens, enhance their rights and make them part of the system, a move considered to be a response to democratic deficit. The present thesis takes the discussion one step furth

Representative democracy is the most fast growing political system in the world. The politician, however, plays various roles within his representative assignment. This paper shows that there are divergence between the representatives’ normative position and her political actions. The aim of this study is to understand what representation is and what we can expect from the representative. The main

In January 2014 a reformed CFP came into force in the EU. The reformed policy tackled many of the policy field’s troubled areas and offered realistic solutions for elements of the policy which had been criticised for years by academics, stakeholders and even EU institutions. The purpose of this thesis is to explain how the reformed policy came about and in doing so it adopts a case study design wh

Populism is a phenomenon gaining popularity throughout Europe and has been enhanced by the current economic crisis. The aim of this thesis is to examine the image of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the media and analyse whether it can be qualified as populist. I have included an overview of previous researcher on populism, in order to define it. In addition to the theories of knowl

A number of non-EU members – or third states – have chosen to participate in EU CSDP operations. This thesis seeks to answer why one of them, Iceland, has chosen to do so despite not being a member of the Union and not having any armed forces which are traditionally used in such activities. States have various motivations for participating in international crisis management operations and the same

The purpose of this thesis has been to seek, by political theoretical discussion, an effective norm or standard with to evaluate three critical neoliberal reforms in recent Swedish housing policy. By discussing the theories of what the government can and should do, 6 normative principles are formed to evaluate these neoliberal reforms. The three neoliberal reforms that are evaluated is: Marketisat

The process of constructing the individual must be understood as the production of a specific political subject. How the individual is constructed affects how the individual understand its identity framework and its perceived role as a political actor. The aim of this thesis is to compare the discourse production between the judicial discourse and the facebook discourse of the individual with the

This thesis examines the possibility of a connection between perceived European identity in the member states, and turnout in the 2009 European parliament. Through identifying what constitutes a European identity and then applying this definition to a survey regarding geographical identity by the EVS and the 2009 election turnout. Due to lack of significance no correlation could be found between

In 1987, the international community adopted the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer – subsequently labelled as one of the most successful environmental treaties of our time. In 1992, Peter Haas emerged with a study on epistemic communities and their efforts to protect stratospheric ozone. According to Haas’ research, epistemic community members – consisting of United Stat

This study examines election promises in order to analyze what determines whether politicians can fulfill their campaign promises or not. The study hence makes a contribution to the scarce literature in the area. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to bring the troops home from Iraq and shut down the Guantánamo bay. This study tries to answer why only one of these election

This study examines how and why threat images get a breakthrough. What decides which threat pictures will be on the agenda and which will not? Often it can seem like the most dangerous threats are the most prioritized. But threat images can be exaggerated and manipulated, which means there can be a lot of different factors that decide which threat picture will get a breakthrough. On April 24, 200

The development discourse on the international agenda is currently dominated by the MDGs and the SDGs, which is why it is important to analyze them. In this thesis my main purpose was to understand whether there were any changes within the discourses of the criticism on the different development goals, when using a postcolonial feminist theory. I chose to study this criticism in order to understan

In this paper two cases of local public initiatives have been compared. The cases, taking place in municipalities outside Stockholm with political and socio-economical similarities, turned out in two very different ways. The purpose of this paper has been to find out why that was. Institutional theories combined with theories of political adaptation were used. As a source of data, a total of nine

This paper departs from an interest which has grown exponentially since the beginning of the 2000s’ for cooperation between donor governments and diasporas in development initiatives directed at the diasporas’ country of origin. It notices a discrepancy between identified potential and observed practical results. In an attempt to understand this discrepancy, the thesis seeks to explore the seldom

This thesis examines the relationship between experts and democracy in a specific case, the project of establishing a tramcar route from the central station in Lund to the northeast part of the city. The theoretical approach stems from the concept of networks and potential clashes in the relation between experts and democratic values. An examination has been done of 25 documents concerning the inv

This study looks at how perceptions of European integration are constituted; more specifically, how leading academic ideas and theories regard European integration and the elements which contribute to that view. The work is driven by a thesis that materialism forms the main component of this view of integration. The study analyses five key theories of European integration, and the ambition has bee

Sweden was always considered a high trust country, yet recent extreme right movements and increased xenophobia have complicated the picture of a stable social cohesion. The problem with such phenomena is that it focuses on the fear of the “other”, as observed by a perceived societal in-group. The purpose of this thesis is, on the contrary, to examine the feelings of one perceived out-group. In ref

Enligt svensk rätt kan inte juridiska personer begå brott. Principerna om företagaransvar är svaret på frågan vilken fysisk person som ska bära det straffrättsliga ansvaret då brott har begåtts inom ramen för en juridisk persons verksamhet. Företagaransvaret saknar lagstöd och har utvecklats i rättspraxis och doktrin. Författare inom den juridiska litteraturen lägger delvis olika innebörd i begrepAccording to Swedish law a juristic person can not be liable for a crime. When crimes have been committed within the organisation of a juristic person a natural person, usually the director or manager, may incur an individual criminal responsibility as a result of negligence to exercise supervision and control. Such criminal responsibility for a representative of the company (Sv. företagaransvar)

The European Union is expected to respond to world events every day and terrorist acts are predominate and often conducted by terrorist organizations or non-state actors. One of the most delicate cases is the Lebanese Hezbollah frequently resorting to violence and has over the last 20 years grown evermore important in the Middle East and Lebanon, thereby increasingly elevating the need for the EU

While the Swedish legal anti-discriminatory framework was extended to include the educational system in 2006, differences in elementary school results are continually growing. This raises questions about the ambitions and effectiveness of the school system’s anti-discrimination policies, which are framed as equal treatment. This study investigates the normative underpinnings of the concept of equa