When the Tsunami occurred on Boxing Day 2004 it caused a major stress upon the governmental agencies in not only the affected areas but also in states that had a large number of citizens in the affected area. The governmental agencies were not prepared for the demands from the citizenry in these countries to deal with rescue and crisis management in areas situated halfway around the globe. This thesis main purpose is to research what the causal mechanisms of Sweden?s and Finland?s crisis management were through the method of process tracing. Taking its theoretical stance in Allison?s & Zelikow?s three models of decision making, the thesis compares the course of events of the first two critical days in Sweden and Finland to establish what mistakes were made during this critical period.

AbstractThis study deals with the tours carried out in the manufacturing sector, at Alfa Laval in Eskilstuna. A large number of visitors, from a variety of backgrounds, go there to see how the manufacturing of separators works. With visitors I refer to the company?s customers, suppliers, students, in- house trainee courses, managers and senior citizens groups.The study examines how these tours can be standardized using spatial design. The result shows the importance of working systematically with visualizing the work as well as the environment for optimizing the visitor's understanding.

The purpose of this essay is on the one hand to study Sub-Saharan Africa from a comparative perspective to analyze different explanations to democratization and on the other hand to compare the democratization of the most interesting cases found. To fulfil the purpose, the essay is divided into a quantitative and a qualitative part. The quantitative part starts from four different theories of democratization and thus has a deductive theory testing approach. We intend to use four theories: the modernization theory, the theory of stable institutions as a prerequisite for democratization, political culture and ethnic diversity as an obstacle for democratization, to test how they correspond with the democratic situation in Africa, and at the same time find deviant cases. The second part of the study takes its start from an inductive perspective and examines institutions and citizens of the deviant cases.

This master thesis is based on a general issue of quality in social services. I have chosen to illustrate through an empirical case, namely the position social responsibility coordinator and shortened SAS.This position is fairly new to the Swedish social services and has the overall mandate to monitor, develop and ensure quality.To study this, I have developed two analytic schemes. One is based on the concept of quality value components, the second is based on the concept of quality character components. These analytical schemes are used as the presented material. When I study mycase, I have used two methods, documents and questionnaires.In this study I will try to describe how new solutions to improve the quality of social services can conform and develop.

En hållbar utveckling definierades av Brundtlandkommissionen inför FN:s världskonferens om miljö och utveckling som ??en utveckling som tillfredsställer dagens behov utan att äventyra kommande generationers möjligheter att tillfredsställa sina behov?. Begreppet innefattar hänsynstagande till ekonomiska, miljömässiga och sociala aspekter, något som företag kan presentera genom hållbarhetsredovisning. Definitionen är ett bra exempel på hur komplext begreppet är och ger utrymme för tolkningar, vilket gör att företag som anammar idén själva kan bestämma hur de ska arbeta med hållbarhetsfrågor. Syftet med denna uppsats är därför att beskriva och analysera vilka faktorer företag på Stockholmsbörsen väljer att redogöra för i presentationen av sitt ekonomiska, miljömässiga och sociala ansvarstagande, och om det går att urskilja något mönster i valet av faktorer beroende på företags storlek.                      För att besvara syftet granskades presentationen av hållbarhetsarbete i såväl hållbarhets- och årsredovisningar som hemsidor för ett urval av företag, av olika storlek, på Stockholmsbörsen.

The function of traditional leaders in the modern states of Africa has been under debate for decades. The dominant research discourse suggests that these institutions should be integrated into the state in order to minimize the amount of parallel political spheres, since the latters are considered to affect state legitimacy negatively. But are the states in a situation where they need to compete with the traditional institutions in order to gain more legitimacy? If so, is the struggle for legitimacy a zero-sum game where there can only be one winner? Or is it possible for these institutions to co-exist or even benefit from each other? The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to research if, and to what extent, African citizens? confidence in traditional institutions has an effect on state legitimacy. This has been done by statistically analyzing the data from the latest completed round of the Afrobarometer survey, a study that has been conducted in 20 different countries across West- and Northeast Africa.

The aim of this study was to explore how social workers interpret the part of the Swedish social services act that regulates each municipality?s responsibility of the people staying in it. The study?s general methodological approach connects to sociology of law. The research questions were: (1) What factors are considered important by the social workers in assessments of responsible municipality? (2) Are there variations in the assessments of responsible municipality and in that case; how can the variations be explained? (3) What discretion do the social workers consider that they have in assessments of responsible municipality? Previous studies have found considerable differences in professional social work assessments in Sweden.

This thesis aims to describe how enterprises can approach and reach older citizens inorder to sell new technology products. For that they need information about aspectsaffecting elderlies purchase decisions regarding these kind of products. The study isbased on 13 qualitative interviews where we have applied semi structured interviews andobservations of the elderlies behaviour towards an Ipad which we used as a study objectduring the interviews.The results of this study shows several aspects which affect the elderlies purchasedecision regarding new technology but it all comes down to one matter, lack ofknowledge. In order to overcome that obstacle, enterprises need to modify theircommunication strategy. They will be needing information about elderlies preferencesand their self-image, meaning how they perceive themselves which is connected to howreceptive they are towards new technology.

En hållbar utveckling definierades av Brundtlandkommissionen inför FN:s världskonferens om miljö och utveckling som ??en utveckling som tillfredsställer dagens behov utan att äventyra kommande generationers möjligheter att tillfredsställa sina behov?. Begreppet innefattar hänsynstagande till ekonomiska, miljömässiga och sociala aspekter, något som företag kan presentera genom hållbarhetsredovisning. Definitionen är ett bra exempel på hur komplext begreppet är och ger utrymme för tolkningar, vilket gör att företag som anammar idén själva kan bestämma hur de ska arbeta med hållbarhetsfrågor. Syftet med denna uppsats är därför att beskriva och analysera vilka faktorer företag på Stockholmsbörsen väljer att redogöra för i presentationen av sitt ekonomiska, miljömässiga och sociala ansvarstagande, och om det går att urskilja något mönster i valet av faktorer beroende på företags storlek.                      För att besvara syftet granskades presentationen av hållbarhetsarbete i såväl hållbarhets- och årsredovisningar som hemsidor för ett urval av företag, av olika storlek, på Stockholmsbörsen.

The so called democratic deficit and the lack of legitimacy have been at the core of the EU-debate in the last decades. Low turnouts in the elections for the European parliament and disapproval in the ratification processes of the latest changes of the treaties are examples of the citizens lack of confidence for the EU and continuous integration. In Nice 2000 the heads of the member states governments agreed to try to improve the democratic legitimacy in the EU and initiated a public debate aiming at proposals for changes in the decision making processes in the EU. In July 2001 the commission published a white paper with their view. A fundamental presumption in discourse theory is that language and language usage not just is a way to deliver information about ideas and behaviours.

The thesis ?Vi fixar och trixar oss fram till att hjälpa människor? focuses on social work in the field of prostitution and human trafficking in Sweden. Through semi-structured interviews with social workers in the municipalities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö working with persons selling and buying sex, and through discourse analysis, the author analyses the perceptions among these social workers of the relation between human rights, prostitution and human trafficking, and the social work which they conduct.The thesis concludes that although the social workers perceive prostitution and human trafficking and social work in this field as human rights related, they are not explicitly using a human rights based approach in their work.The thesis concludes that the social workers identify several aspects that infringe on the rights of their clients in relation to the human rights principles of Universality, Non-discrimination, Accountability and Rule of law and the principle of Participation and Inclusion. They portray the human rights situation of street based sellers, especially those not being Swedish citizens and those affected by human trafficking, as severe.The thesis concludes that the social workers find several obstacles (legal as well as structural) that diminish their ability to strengthen their clients? human rights situation.

Partly as a reaction to a perceived crisis in contemporary democracy, the nineties witnessed an upsurge in different forms of citizens? fora, dedicated to the promotion of increased participation by the citizen in the political process. Youth councils are a special point in case as they entail the general characteristics of a deliberative forum, with an emphasis on political learning. This study aims to undertake an evaluation of a regional youth council in the region of Skåne in the south of Sweden. Through qualitative analysis, the study aims to portray the origin, purposes and consequences of such a forum.

On the 17th of January 2002 the Swedish government presented a bill to theSwedish parliament, proposing ways of strengthening the Swedish democracythrough reforms for increased elements of participatory democracy. A publicreport on the state of the Swedish democracy had been released two years earlierwith similar enthusiasm for participatory democracy. However, the participatoryideals of these two documents were strongly criticised by a group of scholars.The aim of this thesis is to analyze and compare the arguments articulatedbetween the years 2000 and 2002 by the actors mentioned above, and to examinetheir relation to arguments concerning political participation, articulated bythinkers from previous times. By classifying the arguments into different groupsdepending on their content I find that both parties in the Swedish argumentationfocus on the effects of participatory democracy on political equality, on theefficiency of the political decision-making and the quality of the decisions beingmade, and finally on the personal character of the citizens. Among the argumentsarticulated by thinkers from previous times, similarities with the Swedishargumentation can be seen as well as important differences.

There is a growing awareness that multinational companies have opportunities to influence political conditions. Ethical activities made by multinational companies and ?Corporate Social Responsibility? (CSR) can therefore function as a positive input in society. The primary purpose of this master thesis is to investigate CSR´s contribution to strengthen human rights, and thereby to democratization. The research questions are listed below:1.

The purpose of this essay is to examine if there is any difference in the style of conversation between a municipal politician and a politician in parliament? In order to answer this question I have created two sub-questions that are more precise. The first question is: Are the municipal politicians more open to cooperate with politicians from other parties than the politicians from parliament? And the second question is: Is the rhetoric between the politicians in parliament different than the rhetoric between the municipal politicians?My study is a comparative case study with two different groups of politicians. With the help of a survey I have tried to examine if there are differences in the use of language in the daily work for the politicians.