In the thesis we discuss South African teachers? conceptions of democracy in general and school democracy in particular. The essay is based on interviews with twelve teachers, working in South African high schools. We have asked questions concerning different views of democracy, such as what the term means to the teachers and how they define a democratic school. We take our stand in different theoretical approaches such as school being the ultimate link between a state and its people to make the Citizens think and act democratically.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the European certificate of succession, and how it affects Swedish inheritance law. The European certificate of succession is a European document that will be introduced in august 2015 in the EU regulation of succession. The certificate of succession is meant to simplify the current process of cross-border inheritance by legitimizing the concerned parties, which according to the regulation are: heirs, legatees, executors of wills and administrators of the estate. According to the regulation, the member state of which the deceased had habitual residence shall have jurisdiction to rule on the succession as a whole. Since the certificate is a European document, it will have legal effect in all member states.

Media has the power to influences society. Some call them the third power of a state. Through amongst others, the agenda setting theory and the framing theory, this report seeks to understand how media describes the swine influenza and how it uses its power to influence people to vaccinate. As this report will show, there is no doubt that media has had an impact on the Swedish population of which 60 per cent followed through with the vaccination. Media used an information discourse and attempted to present its articles in an impartial manner and used governmental authorities and experts to support its arguments.

Malmö, like many other bigger cities in Europe, faces a double undertaking when facing the challenges the future. Not only must the municipal be able to provide its Citizens with welfare and a high standard of living, it must also establish a level of economic growth that allows the city to act as catalyst for the surrounding area. In order to provide the population with welfare and the economy with a qualified working force, these two challenges have been combined into one plan for the future called Welfare for Everybody. As part of this plan, new organisations have been created with the purpose collaborating with the social services office and support people in their transaction from welfare recipients to self-providing workers. The purpose of our thesis is to build on Michael Lipsky's classic work "Street-level Bureaucracy" and by conducting interviews with a number of front line workers study how they view their role, the client group and how they motivate the working line.

Media has the power to influences society. Some call them the third power of a state. Through amongst others, the agenda setting theory and the framing theory, this report seeks to understand how media describes the swine influenza and how it uses its power to influence people to vaccinate. As this report will show, there is no doubt that media has had an impact on the Swedish population of which 60 per cent followed through with the vaccination. Media used an information discourse and attempted to present its articles in an impartial manner and used governmental authorities and experts to support its arguments.

The purpose of this study is to examine young peoples' perception of their media criticial competence in relation to digital news. The study is based on quantitative research interviews with young people (15-17 years) and qualitative interviews with people in the same age group as well as teachers and international media professionals.This study's theoretical point of departure is McQuail´s observation that peoples' values and views to a great extent are influenced by the media. Another source of theoretical inspiration was Haberman's ideas about how a diversity of views and arguments increase the Citizens' ability to reflect critically on social developments - maybe even more so than in societies with  independent media and "neutral" news.The study shows that the young generation of web based news consumers assumes that it is very important to be an aware and critical consumer but also that they do not feel sufficiently equipped with the right tools required to understand the long-term impact and effect of the media reporting online. Young people basically seemed to acquire their knowledge about media by doing and learning on their own. Surprisingly, according to the young people that were interviewed for this project, the schools seemed to play a secondary role in the development of their media critical capacity.

Every year the Swedish gambling monopoly serves as a significant source of income for the government. This income is later distributed by the government on various areas for the common good. The question is wheather the state is allowed to preserve this lucrativemarket for itself by any means necessary. Also is it enough to claim that the monopoly exists to protect the Citizens, and thus escaping the conditions of EC-law, and its struggle to harmonize trade between the member states? This thesis describes the Swedish gambling monopoly and its relationship with EC-law.

Researchers in the field of political corruption generally expect voters in democratic states to lose trust in corrupted politicians. However, there are cases where corrupted politicians maintain their popularity, a phenomenon studied in this thesis. Focus lies on three cases of political corruption: the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who has been the subject of several judicial investigations and court cases; the impeached former president of Lithuania, Rolandas Paksas; and the German Christian Democratic Union's (CDU) involvement in a party funding scandal. The cases are chosen based on the method of agreement. Berlusconi, Paksas and CDU have all, in spite of their corrupt behaviour, kept or regained popular support among a large group of their country's Citizens.

This is a qualitative study, whose purpose is to examine if night shelters effects homeless peoples self-perceived psychosocial health. In Sweden alone there are almost 18000 homeless people, and 12% of them uses a night shelter. The homeless can?t be seen as a heterogeneous group but instead homelessness counts as a state of being in. The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare have done mapping over the homelessness since 1993 and the problem is an important part of what the welfare system has to fight against.

The media industry, and especially the news, in Sweden is living in a dark world that seems to get even darker by the minute. According to Nordicom (2013) the number of readers in the ages 15-24 has dropped by 24 percentage points between 2007 and 2012. This is a big problem for the news industry, but also for democracy that require Citizens that are well-read and know what is going on in society. Enda and Mitchel (2013) found that 65% of people in the USA have stopped reading a certain news source since it no longer fits their needs. Maybe with a better understanding for young adults needs this trend can change.This qualitative study was conducted using interviews with eight respondents to find out why young adults who study at a university consume news.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has progressively revised the rule of purely internal situations to ensure a wider scope of application of the economic freedoms as well as the EU Citizenship right to move and reside freely within the Union. This development, combined with the increasing importance of fundamental rights, has strengthened the family life protection of those EU Citizens who come within the scope of EU law. The limit between the individuals who may benefit from a EU right to family reunification and fundamental rights protection and those who find themselves in purely internal situations has, however, become more legally uncertain. The disadvantage suffered by those who fall outside the scope of EU law is known as reverse discrimination.The 2011 case Zambrano confirmed the trend towards an increasingly generous EU law protection of family life in cases where the exercise of freedom of movement and enjoyment of EU Citizenship rights is potentially restricted by a Member State measure. By contrast, in the subsequent McCarthy- case, it became clear that families in purely internal situations may only rely on national immigration and procedural law to obtain family reunification and protection of their fundamental rights.

The levels of unemployment are unusually high compared to recent years, and the consequences are diligently debated in media. Swedish safety systems regarding people?s welfare have gone through changes lately which affected the situation negatively for many concerned Citizens. This study aimed to illustrate individual?s situation of unemployment within their social context.

This thesis examines the democracy theories that can be found in the internet websites of Region Skåne and Stockholm county council. Within the framework of deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and electoral democracy, the author tries to distinguish democratic aspects by empirically studying these websites and their communicative effect on the internet users.This research shows that Region Skåne is slightly better in implementing democratic aspects at their home page, which is probably due to an active work with these issues carried out by the politicians and the report on the democratic development from 2004. However, a great deal of work regarding democracy and the possibility of civic participation in the decision- making process is still to be done.The problems and challenges in using internet as a democratic tool shows that Citizens run a risk of being neglected, due to their uneven participation in using internet in daily life. The conclusion of this thesis is that the politicians have to make an active choice in deciding to what extent the internet is allowed to be used when it comes to developing democracy. This work has to be done in cooperation with political scientists and IT experts, in order to assure a correct democratic model..

In recent years the concern about the future of the European Union and itssupposed lack of democracy, efficiency and legitimacy has increased. Thisconcern has resulted in extensive debates and the establishment of a conventionwith the task to create a draft treaty for a European Constitution.The aim of this essay is to study how the three theoretical concepts,democracy, efficiency and legitimacy, have been described and used in the debateabout the future of the European Union. My main interest is to see how theseconcepts are described in a debate regarding a political system that goes beyondthe borders of the nation-state. I have made a comparative textual analysis of thedebates taken place in Sweden and Spain during a period of over two years. Ihave, for instance, found out that openness and clearness have a prominentposition as democratic values together with equality and justice (in Spain) and theinstitution of accountability (in Sweden).

The purpose of this master thesis is to find out if library activities in civil society may be seen as a complement to public activities. The incitement lies in a discussion in the research activities of social sciences and among politicians, where the opinion is that civil society may function as a complement to governmental policy. The NGO-library Föreningen Miljöbiblioteket i Lund and the municipality of Malmö stad where chosen as units for examination. The common feature of the two units is the global task introduced by the UN, to create a sustainable development. The material used is exclusively concerning domestic information activities.