The purpose of this study is to determine if and how municipal consultative entities through influence may affect the legitimacy of the Swedish democratic model. The study aims to do this through analysing the opportunities for influence present with the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality, to determine how the councils may affect political participation and the role of elected representatives. To do so, the study asks the following primary research question:"What requisites for influence are present for participants of municipal consultative entities, as found for the representatives of the youth and the retired within the framework of their participation in the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality?"The study answers this research question by dividing it into one question of policy and one question of democratic perspective, and investigating these matters through nine snowballing interviews with the decision makers, organisational actors and participants of the councils. The information from the interviews is then analysed per council through a framework of democracy theory, policy process theory and organisation theory.

Wermland was affected by the Spanish flu like the Swedish national average, about a half percentage of Wermlands population would lose their lives to the flu during the autumn 1918. The flu has for many fallen into oblivion. This oblivion is so wide spread that it´s possible to talk about a "collective forgetfulness". The society have selected to remember 1918 for "when the guns went quiet on the western front" and not for the millions who died from the treacherous Spanish flu. The world had already suffered enough from the four years of war that had been fought, thus the victims of the flu would be honored but would soon fade in to oblivion.  When you investigate deeper you get the picture that the national average don´t do Wermland and its cities or rural areas any justice when a large variations seems to occur within regional areas.

The Motor Group of the European Council was commissioned in the autumn of 1997 to prepare a proposal for a new European Bus and Coach Directive. In the beginning, most of the Member States did not have the accessibility requirements as their main concern; still a smaller network with actors from the National delegations from Britain, Germany and Sweden would influence the other National delegations in the Council group to finally agree to retain the requirement of accessibility of the Directive. Within the EU decision process, the European Disability movement acted as a strong player during the whole negotiation process using the proposal to a new Bus and Coach Directive as a tool to influence key actors to go towards a Directive with a strong approach for accessibility.Policy Transfer and Policy Transfer Network are used as analytical tools to understand and structure the transfer of the question of accessibility during the negotiation process. Actors understanding how the bureaucratic process works within the EU decision system have a chance to contributing for the changes in the directions they wishes for within a range of policy areas. The principal aim of the Directive was to guarantee the safety of passengers and to provide technical prescription in particular to wheelchair users.

Due to the growing wild boar (Sus scrofa L.) population in Sweden there has been an increase in wild boar related traffic accidents, damage on cropland, and conflicts regarding the management of the wild boar. Knowing what makes the wild boar reproduce and survive more or less successfully in different geographic areas is an important part of managing the population. According to previous studies the wild boars rate of increase varies from county to county. The aim of this study was to test, on the county scale level, if landscape composition and diversity as well as people and hunter densities might be the reason for this variation. The first hypothesis was that a big proportion of forests and cropland would increase the rate of increase.

The purpose of the essay was to examine the way the SwedishCounty Administrative Board works with crises communicationbefore, during and after a disaster. A qualitative comparisonbetween the County Administrative Board in the Swedish regionsHalland, Jönköping and Kronoberg has been made in order to seeinequalities and simmulariteies in their strategies and policies forcommunication. In order to fulfill the purpose two main questionswere asked:? How does the County Administrative Board in Halland,Kronoberg and Jönköping work with crises communicationbefore, during and after a disaster?? In what way does the three County Administrative Boardsco-operate with other organizations before, during and aftera disaster regarding crises communication?The theoretical base of the essay was classical and postmodernstrategic communication. I interviewed communicators at theboards and took part of their communication plans and strategies toseek answers to my questions.

Psittacines and reptiles are exotic animals that are difficult to care for and it requires extra knowledge to make a correct assessment of their wellbeing. An animal welfare inspector, with an education in general animal welfare, may not have a deep enough knowledge of exotic animals to do a proper assessment of the animal?s general condition and its environment. In this paper it was therefore examined if animal welfare inspectors have enough knowledge to do a satisfying inspection of establishments working with selling of exotic animals. A literature study was used to examine difficulties with each species.

The county hospital of Dalarna has for the last couple of years carried through a process of digitalization. The result is that within the county it exists image plate systems from two different manufacturers. In an attempt to create a tool for dose optimization and dose surveillance the county of Dalarna would like to investigate if the exposure index from Agfa and Fuji is suitable as a dose indicator. An investigation of the exposure index, S, from Fuji has already been done. This thesis has been continuing the investigation by evaluating the stability of the exposure index, lgM, from Agfa.

The Arctic region is rich in natural resources such as oil, gas, minerals and fish. Climate change causes the Arctic ice melt, making resource extraction possible as well as opening up new transport routes through the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage. This has led to competition and cross-border strife among the Arctic States. The two largest states in the Arctic are Russia and Canada, which are also members of the Arctic Council. Russia and Canada are at the moment involved in several disputes regarding the Arctic territory where the ownership of the North Pole is one example.

In a historical view, house prices have developed at the same rate as inflation. In the end of the 20th century the prices on the housing market started to differ from the inflation rate, and today the deviation is strong and the real price increase has been very strong.The financial crisis in 2008, which was a result of a subprime mortgage crisis on the American real estate market, has made several agents on the housing market in Sweden question today?s prices. Robert Schiller, an American economist who predicted the mortgage crisis in 2008, claimed during the Nobel Prize ceremony 2013, that Sweden shows signs of a financial bubble ? "I think that people here in Sweden have an illusion that increasing prices is a lasting trend, but that is more suggestive of a bubble".

The present study discusses the political integration of immigrants in local government in the muncipality of Växjö from 1971 to 1991 in the form of representation. The main data source consists of lists of people holding local commissions of trust in the various boards and committés appointed by the municipality council, as well as in the council itself. These data are then compared to population statistics from Statistics Sweden. Main findings of the study are that immigrants are insufficiently represented in relation to their proportion of the population. It is suggested that this is a result of structural discrimination and possibly insufficient socialisation..

This thesis focuses on the perception of immigration and refugees in the commonEuropean refugee and immigration policy. It identifies different discourses andstudies their development and interrelated power structures.Using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, documents from theEuropean Council, the Commission, the Justice and Home Affairs Council andParliament debates are analysed. The study is defined in the time span of 1999-2006, i.e. from the European Council's first agreement on developing a commonEuropean asylum system, following the period up till today.Four discourses are distinguished, focusing respectively on rights, security,European Union's needs, and cultural identity. I use Sandra Lavenex theory ofrealism and idealism to analyse one of the main points in the thesis: There is afundamental schism between the one rights-based discourse, focusing on universalhuman rights, and the three sharing a particularistic focus on immigration as asecurity concern.

Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) is not considered to be a native species to Swedish forests. It´s origin is the pacific coast of Northern America, an area that is dominated by a coastal climate which makes it likely to believe that it would be well suited for growing in the south-west of Sweden. This study aims to investigate the gain in production that can be reached by growing sitka spruce instead of Norway spruce (Picea abies) in the county of Halland. A regression model based on data from forest experiments was produced to explain the gain in production. This model was based on elevation and annual precipitation. The model was then used to create a map layer in arcGIS that shows the gain of volume in comparison to Norway spruce in percent. An analysis was carried out to find what share of the forestland in Halland county that fell into four different classes of production gain.

AbstractThe Swedish Road Administration in the region of Mälardalen has since 2004 worked to in¬crease the efficiency of the maintance of bridges based on limited functional requirements and time demanded action.The maintenance of the bridges is contracted in the county of Uppsala since 2004, and Örebro since 2007. The county of Nyköping and Västerås is contracted by the traditional system. The contractor will perform a regular maintenance on all bridges. The bridges are inspected by the contractor at least once every year.The contractor registers the result of the inspection in a database called BaTMan. BaTMan is a Bridge and Tunnel Management system and is a strictly web solution were the user logs in via the internet.The Swedish Road Administration also inspects the bridges to se that the demands on the bridges are followed.My work is to compare these different inspections and to see any development..

The local council of Eskilstuna has a lot of fans on their Facebook page, but not so many people that ask questions, likes, comments or share their posts. This is a bachelor-thesis on how to inspire dialogue and encourage the fans to be a part of Eskilstunas Facebook page.I have made guidelines for the council how to use Facebook as a way to reach out to those who live in Eskilstuna, based on results from literature studies, analysis of several other Facebook pages and interviews. I've also made examples of statuses for the Facebook page for one week, in May 2012.The result shows that the fans want's to read about their local environment. It is important to have a personal appeal. Post should be no longer than 400 character, if they are, the posts will be truncated, and hidden.

Animal welfare in Sweden has gone through major changes during the later years. In 2004, Swedish Animal Welfare Agency took over the central responsibility for the animal welfare from the Swedish Board of Agriculture, and in 2007 the board again became the central authority for animal welfare in Sweden.Even the practical supervision has changed, from the 1 of January 2009 the supervision is to be performed by the county administrative boards, instead of by the individual municipalities. Since 2006 every horse in the European Union has to have an identification card, in Sweden called a ?horse passport? which describes the color and markings of the horse as well as any veterinary treatments.The ELOF-project, a collaborative project between the Swedish Board of Agriculture and the county administrative boards, intends to make the animal welfare supervision effective, standardised, fair and risk-based. Because of the takeover of the supervision and of the ELOF-project the Örebro County Administrative Board has began to make an inventory of the number of horses and horsefarms in the county. Another Ethology and Animal Welfare-student and I did, in collaboration with the county administrative board created a checklist that in connection with the inventory will lead to a risk-based animal welfare supervision.