In the past years the traditional donors of development assistance have been increasingly aware of changes in the donor landscape. This as emerging economies like China and India has undergone a transition from recieving aid to becoming emerging donors. By identifying and comparing ideas, beliefs and interests pursued using foreign aid between so called emerging and traditional donors, the greater purpose of this thesis is to take a closer look at the alleged changes in the world order. The starting point is Goldstein & Keohanes framework of the impact of ideas and interests in foreign policy and the one of K.J Holsti about institutions as markers metrics of change. The results show that there is no vast difference in interests but a detectable difference in the ideas behind foreign aid.

This essay examines how public planners and the inhabitants of södra Gårda relate to the physical planning of the area and to the demolition versus the preservation of the quarters Eken and Cedern, and how the dialogue between planners and citizens appears to be. How do the planners and policymakers relate to citizen participation in urban planning, and how is participatory planning carried out in the legislation, rhetorically and in practice. Former research indicates a distinct gap between rhetorics, legislation and actions in practice regarding citizen participation in planning, which is why we find it an interesting topic for further research. The essay aims to highlight the different actors interests and visions of the development of the area. Which are the standpoints and arguments the different actors set out for the future visions of the area? The essay focuses on citizen participation in urban planning in the city of Gothenburg.

This thesis examines organisations as mediators and how different kinds of organisations have different prerequisites to act as mediators. Global, regional and subregional organisations are often asked to mediate in conflicts, but considering the circumstances, who should mediate?In a mediating process the mediator should be considered as important an actor as the disputing parties and should hence be scrutinized as one. Mediation is a complex subject to study and theoretically the opinions differ on what characterises a good mediator. I have taken many of the different views in consideration and constructed a model from which organisations and their prerequisites can be compared and evaluated.

Gender equality is a political issue that has gained a lot of support in the last decades. Researchers have however pointed out that gender equality has a wide variety of understandings.SKL (Sveriges kommuner och landsting) is an organization that looks after the interests of local authorities and county councils in Sweden. SKL has by the government been granted 145 million Swedish crowns to support gender mainstreaming at a local level. During a period of three years, 2008-2010, funding has been given to 89 projects for this purpose.The aim of this study is to examine what meanings are given to the term ?gender equality? in these projects.

The subject for this paper is the Class Action against Skandia Association, a civil organization formed in 2003 with the aim of claiming compensation for some 1.2 million life insurance customers. The background to its formation was one of the largest financial scandals in Sweden in recent times, involving a number of questionable affairs within the insurance corporation Skandia and its subsidiaries, most notably the life insurance company Skandia Liv. The interests of both the stake- and stockholders of the company seem, in certain ways, to have been grossly misrepresented. The scandal, as well as the reaction it spawned, pose a number of questions. In this study, we focus on two: a possible, and in many ways apparent crisis in the representation of interests in Swedish society, and the role of civil society in upholding the balance between these interests.We argue that what is often held to be the ?greed? or ?immorality? of individuals in scandals such as Skandia is, to a great extent, a mere reflection of the ?rational? underpinnings of modern-day capitalism.We find that trust has been a key mechanism of control in the relationships between consumers and agents in pension and life insurance markets, and that ?the Swedish model? that distinguished post-WWII Swedish society was a model heavily based on trust towards existing models of bureaucratic governance.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the theory of cosmopolitan democracy provides a satisfactory solution to the boundary problem in democratic theory. I argue that David Held's version of cosmopolitan democracy rests on two incompatibleprinciples: the all-affected principle and the all-inclusive principle. However, the theory does not need to presuppose both these principles; it requires only one of them.Furthermore, I try to show that both of these principles fail to provide an adequate solution to the boundary problem. The all-inclusive principle suggests that all citizens of the world should be included in a global democratic unit. I argue that such an ideal is not desirable since it conflicts with the principle of subsidiarity and withdraws from regional political communities their sovereignty.

Stone walls in agricultural land are incorporated in the general protection of biotopes. They are protected because they provide a habitat for endangered species. Therefore it is illegal to carry out proceedings in an area that is included in the protection of biotopes. In order to do that, exemption is needed which can only be granted if there are special reasons. The essay stipulates what these special reasons are.In an exemption errand the interest for nature conservation must be weighed against a public or a private interest.

This paper?s main goal is to study how religious studies teachers and religious studies teacherstudents reason concerning armed religious conflicts, with fundamentalism and terrorism ascentral concepts. The study does this with the use of semi-structured interviews. The resultsare analyzed with a phenomenographic analysis with the interviewees? understanding of thecentral concepts being the target of the interviews.

The purpose of this essay has been to examine the public`s view of the Swedish eldercare during 2006. This study uses discourse analysis as a research method, the reference material has been articles from the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The aim of the research has been to find central themes, conflicts and consensus in the discourse of eldercare. The analysis resulted in four main subjects which were based on four main questions; the questions of responsibility and execution, the question of contents, and the question of where the eldercare should take place. The analysis of conflicts and relations of consensus in the discourse of eldercare resulted in two different main views; the traditional and a more modern.

The purpose with this study was to describe and analyse the daily activities of a criminal group in a southern suburb of Stockholm, Norra Botkyrka, and their attitude to drugs, the police, crimes in general, accomplices and their plans for the future. The study is a combination of different qualitative methods that is built on unobtrusive methods and interviews that was carried out during winter in 2006 and spring in 2007 and six interviews. My interest to carry out this study was grounded on my several years of experience as a prison and probation officer in the prison. I chose to ?live? with a group of criminals and participated in some of their social activities.The respondents that I chose to call ?anti-heroes? proudly tell me about their criminal lifestyle that characterizes of violence, drugs, crimes and conflict where this people show no regret.

The aim of this essay is to examine which of the two approaches within the field of conflicts that best explains the conflict between Georgia and Russia using negotiations, dialogue and conciliation. According to the first approach negotiations are used to handle a conflict, according to the second approach negotiations are used to solve a problem.  The focus will be on how the two states acted and how the dialogue from the European Union as a conciliator was brought before the war escalated in 2008. The EU is today an important actor within the international politics and has established close relations to the two states. The conflict goes back in history and is still not solved. In the fields of international studies, there is a realistic view that claims the international politics to be shaped by suspicions between states as main actors. War is never far away, what is claimed to be solved through diplomacy.

In the year of 2006 I moved to South Africa for a year, a land that has fascinated me because of its history. During the time of my stay I became very surprised how strongly apartheid permeates the community where the white South Africans today are building walls around themselves. Through media we get surrounded with pictures that media creates and to find information regarding what?s happening in the world this is, most often, the primary source. Therefore I believe it?s interesting to explore how two different local newspapers from the county of Kalmar, with two different ideologies, present pictures of the same event, namely the revolt of Soweto in 1976 and how these two newspapers relates to racial policies.

ABSTRACTGustafsson, J. & Söderqvist, N., ??The Island of Peace in the Sea of War? A newspaper study of Växjö city?s newspaper editorials regarding the conflicts of the Second World War in the Nordic countries?, Linnaeus University. A qualitative textual analysis delving into three local newspapers from Växjö city is in many ways the essence of this study. The main purpose of this study is to examine three key conflicts, the Winter War, Operation Weserübung and the Continuation War. Each conflict has been assessed in relation to the opinions advocated in the editorials of the three politically diverse newspapers.The theoretical basis for this study is founded on similar analysis made by Nybom, Johansson and Åmark who all have contributed to the content of this particular essay.

This thesis studies public service social workers' opinions regarding their ability to act with moral courage as loyalty conflicts occur. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the social workers' experiences of their possibilities to stand up for what they believe in. We made qualitative interviews with five social workers in Stockholm. In an effort to pinpoint their experiences we asked them questions about what they want but cannot do and what is stop-ping them, what they do not want to do and why, aswell as what the possible solutions would be as loyalty conflicts occur. We were able to identify five different opinions on the organisa-tional cultures and how the employees' experience the extent of their actions.

This essay talks about how teachers in schools are working with a particular focus on students with autistic syndrome. The aim is to investigate the methods used for these students, who develop their learning and achieve the goals of the school. The methods that were used in this study were two interviews in two different schools in central Sweden where teachers and professionals were interviewed. One part of the study was to compare both schools to see which methods they used and when they used them. My interest for autistic students started during my practice in a school.