This report is a case study of ?citizen forums? in the municipality of Uppsala. These forums are arranged to make people participate more in local politics. The aim of this study is to find out if the opinions and the wishes coming from the citizens are later involved in the planning process etc made by the authorities. The aim is also to explain why or why not the opinions from the citizens are of any importance.My empirical data come from interviews that I have made with seven different respondents, both politicians and civil servants.

Subject: Independent essay in War Science (15 points) which debate the question if PrivateMilitary Companies is an asset or a threat to the Swedish Armed Forces regarding rerecruitmentwith focus on the soldiers of FS21.That which is investigated is the general attitude amongst soldiers who have completed theirconscript duty according to the old conscript system and now is employed in order to conducta tour abroad with Afghanistan as area of operations. Further investigated is their attitudeagainst the Swedish Armed Forces as an employer, as well as the private sector whichwant/could benefit from the skills the soldiers is possessing. Could the soldiers se themselvesleave the Armed Forces before the contract has expired in benefit of private companies whichclaim they solve similar tasks.Purpose: The purpose with this essay is to contribute with knowledge about a number ofemployed soldiers? attitude against Private Military Companies. Further; if the soldiersbelieve the Armed Forces provide them as they think they deserve/ want in order to stay andnot leave their job in favour of PMC:s, and through it clarify what the soldiers value asemployees.Order of Approach, Method and Material: The method I?m using is a survey in whichsoldiers and squad leaders have answered the questions.

Based on last years events that have taken place, events on the school Lundbergs and the police values of work, has the meaning of having a set of values been questioned. This study aimed to investigate and answer the fundamental values based on the common value basis for the government employees within an organization and how it perceived by employees. The new institutional theory was the framework for this qualitative study conducted with semi-structured interviews. Respondents were employees within the organization. Ethnographic qualitative methodology was the basis for our methodology and we used a thematic model of theme interpretation, communication and knowledge in our analysis.

This paper discuss the possibilities to improve the Swedish political nomination system. It brings up some of the values and norms that can be used to change the existing system. Values as openness, the demand of responsibility and also if there is values from the American spoils system that can be used in the Swedish system. A minor purpose is to discuss the part of the parliament within the nomination process. To investigate this I have some theoretical starting points and a self constructed analysis tool.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore and analyze the processes and efforts involved in rebuilding the war-torn state of Afghanistan. The examined period span from the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, to the elections in 2005. This period, commonly known as the Bonn-process, sets out the initial time for the reconstruction of the state.A theoretical framework, which considers the necessary mechanisms for successful state-building, will be used to analyze Afghanistan's re-building process. The mechanisms include the prerequisite of a stable security environment, emerging from a cease-fire, together with the development of a well-functioning economy, re-introduction of rule of law and rejuvenating civil society.The failure to establish a secure environment has had a devastating impact on all analyzed aspects of the re-building process. It is therefore crucial that the international society continuing to assists the Afghan government in its efforts to strengthen its capacity, in order to improve the security situation.

I have studied how network in a broad sense can affect decision-making. The primary purpose is to see if the political initiative somewhere disappears when it comes to understand the relations between power, actors and politics. The study discuss in a theoretical area that concerns the reliability in neoinstitutionalism to use as an analytical instrument. Some criticism is given to the theoretical standpoint in the sense that there is no power perspective included in the theory. I include a discussion about a concept of power, which I include to the theory.

This bachelor thesis is studying the INTERREG cooperation between Denmark and Germany, and if there has been a change to the organization and the individual conditions due to the Danish regional reform in 2007. The research method used is semi-structured interviews and the participants are a mixture of politicians and civil servants. The study is based on two themes, change in work routines and cooperation, and change in visions and targets.The participants have experienced change, both positive and negative, in work routines and cooperation and to a lesser extent in visions and targets. Preparation is the key to success and makes the transition much easier, which has been the case for Denmark. Other mentioned aspects are more work due to more complicated applications, and that the politicians so far lack a regional perspective and tend to stick to the local.

This report is a case study of ?citizen forums? in the municipality of Uppsala. These forums are arranged to make people participate more in local politics. The aim of this study is to find out if the opinions and the wishes coming from the citizens are later involved in the planning process etc made by the authorities. The aim is also to explain why or why not the opinions from the citizens are of any importance.My empirical data come from interviews that I have made with seven different respondents, both politicians and civil servants.

Every human being has the right to the highest attainable standard of health. This is regulated by the UN in the Declaration of Human Rights. However, Swedish legislation discriminate the group of irregular immigrants, regarding the right to health care. Therefore, Paul Hunt, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to health, draws serious critique on Sweden which has caused extensive debate regarding the matter, both in the civil and political sphere of society.Thus, the aim of this essay is through an analysis of the political debate; make visible the norms of citizenship which are dominating the argumentation of the seven parties represented in the Swedish Parliament. An analytical framework, consisting of three dimensions, is therefore used in order to interpret the material which is relevant for the debate.The conclusion is that Moderaterna and Centerpartiet mainly base their arguments on communitarian values, while Kristdemokraterna and Folkpartiet rather show influences of liberal ideas.

In our world, more than two billion people are living under insecure food conditions and more than eight hundred million people are estimated to be starving. The majority of these people live in developing counties which are poor and often subject of civil war. The past fifty years the main subject of security analysis has been the sovereign and rational state and the threats have been viewed in terms of military and weapons of mass destruction. This has come to change over the last decades and security as a concept has broadened, which better represents the reality of today. Within this broader conceptualization of security the main referent of security is the individual, rather than the state, and threats are not only analyzed from a military point of view, but also seen as threats against human rights and freedoms.

Liberia har på senare tid präglats av instabilitet och misslyckat fredsbyggande. Vår ambition är att ge en välgrundad förståelse för inbördeskriget 1989-1996, och att på ett resonerande sätt besvara frågan varför man inte lyckades etablera varaktig fred efter krigsslutet. Uppsatsen är en teorikonsumerande fallstudie av Liberia med ett tvådelat syfte. Vårt fall analyseras utifrån teorier om krigsorsaker och fredsbyggande och empirin utgörs av tidigare forskning på området. De slutsatser vi nått är att kriget kan förstås som ett resultat av statens urholkade makt och de missförhållanden detta skapade.

The aim of this paper is to see how the local authorities in Norrköping create a way to look at homelessness. This aim is examined with the help of the central questions: How does the municipality describe homelessness as a phenomenon? What causes to homelessness can be seen in the texts? How do they describe homeless people? And What kind of actions are used or proposed? The analysis has been done with the tools and thoughts of the critical discourse analysis and made on text documents written by politics and employees of the city of Norrköping. The theories which have been used are those of postmodernism, welfare, homelessness, civil society and relative poverty. The analysis shows that the way the municipality of Norrköping looks at homelessness correspond with the way homelessness is presented in current Swedish research.

The municipality of Falkenberg is a result of a unification of several smaller municipalities in 1971, each one with a small library. This left Falkenberg with an unusual large amount of smaller branch libraries. The object of this thesis is to describe and try to understand the political conflicts that have erupted during the period 1971-1994. Through a case study containing press clippings from the local newspaper, different reports, political meeting protocols, a historical background of the library and a study of library specific norms and regulations I can create an image of the heated debate. The participants in this debate can be divided into politicians and civil servants and the conflict circles round the fact that from an economical perspective, there is not enough budget to keep all the small, local libraries.

With the end of the Cold War the number of conflicts where the United Nations have intervened has increased dramatically. This has entailed a need for a burden-sharing between the UN and regional organizations regarding management of conflicts. The aim of this study is to make a comparative analysis of the effectiveness and the efficiency in the efforts undertaken by ECOWAS and the UN during the civil war in Sierra Leone, through using theories on conflict resolution and the advantages of regional organizations in conflict resolution.My conclusion is that both ECOWAS and the UN were quite successful in managing the conflict and had an impact on the resolution of the war, although both peace operations suffered from internal problems. ECOWAS was effective in managing the conflict and in its mediating efforts as an insider from the region. The UN was more efficient in managing to attain their goals.

The purpose of this study was to examine the incentives behind Sweden?s decision to engagein the Afghanistan conflict.The method used to fulfil the purpose of the study is content analysis. The material that hasbeen used in the study is various books and articles concerning Sweden in Afghanistan,Swedish foreign policy and perspectives in political science.The study is multi-theoretical and thus the analysis explains the incentives from a liberal, arealist and a constructivist point of view.The conclusion of the study is that identity has a great part in explaining the incentives forSweden to engage in Afghanistan, especially because of the transformation in strategy andforeign policy that has taken place since the end of the cold war. Other factors, such as peacebuilding and national interests also are incentives supported by the material used in the study.Yet, perhaps they are first and foremost connected by the constructivist idea of identity..