This is a study of how democracy is affected by regionalization. The study focuses on values related to the democracy; these values are representative, transparency, participation, anchoring of decisions and accountability. The case study for this essay is the Regional Development Council of Värmland case study of Region Värmland.1997 a proposition was put forward the Swedish government about changes in responsibilities regarding four Swedish counties. It was decided that Kalmar, Gotland, Skåne and Västra Götaland County would be part of pilot project with extended regional autonomy.Region Värmland was formed at 2001 as a Region Development Council and was at 2007 transformed to a co-cooperative body. Region Värmland has an indirectly elected council, i.e.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the environmental scanning by the employees and politicians at the central administration at the County council of Kalmar län. The background of the study is the closing of the administration library in January 2003, which gave more tasks to the hospital libraries of the County council.The main questions of this study concerns the information needs of the employees and politicians, what electronic sources they prefer to use to satisfy those needs and if they are experiencing a need for more support and help, from a librarian or by the development of a common catalogue of hyperlinks. All 104 persons in the population were asked to answer a questionnaire on the Intranet. The task was performed by 60 persons.

Background: Studies show that unsolved contact tracing of chlamydia increase in Uppsala County. Research shows that the meeting between patient and caregiver, when performing a contact tracing, may be crucial to the outcome of contact tracing. Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate how midwives describe the encounter with the patient during contact tracing in youth clinics in Uppsala County council. Methods: A qualitative approach with semi- structured interviews was used to collect data. Nine midwives of varying age and work experience from seven different youth clinics in Uppsala County council were interviewed.

Information management is today a matter of great importance for every organisation. It is therefore necessary for organisations to see information and its management as a significant part of the organisation s key to success. In this essay we have chosen to study the implications of information policy and information strategy for The Nordic Council/The Nordic Council of Ministers. These two intergovernmental organisations share the same information department. Although The Nordic Council/The Nordic Council of Ministers are non-profitable organisations, they share some characteristics with those acting in a competitive market.

This memo discusses and problematizes the work of organizing and cataloging the archive of the Environmental Advisory Council.The archive mainly consists of records concerning meetings which the Environmental Advisory Council has participated in, but also records concerning different tasks of the council and a few records concerning the coun-cil itself.The overriding problem, which is discussed in the final part of this memo, is the lacking knowledge about the creator of the archive and the creation of the archive itself and how this effects the work of ordering and catalog-ing. An attempt is made to evaluate the archive as a source of information to the Environmental Advisory Coun-cil and its work.This is a one year master?s thesis in Archival Science.

Abstract D Level Essay in Political Science, Spring Semester 2010 by Sangrid von Zedtwitz-Liebenstein. Tutor: Malin Stegmann McCallion. ?Democratic Accountability in Networks? The aim of this study is to highlight the problem of the democratic deficit in the private-public partnerships in Sweden. This is a comparative case study with four ideal types.

The Swedish system of environmental quality objectives is a so-called MBO, Management By Objective and has the purpose to guide the Swedish society towards sustainable ecological development. The system involves the whole society from the parliament and the government down to individual citizens. At the regional level, it is the county administrative boards that are responsible for the work with the system of environmental objectives. At the County Administrative Board of Västmanland County, it is the environmental unit who is in charge of work with the environmental objectives and they want input for how to improve their work with the environmental objectives, both internally at the Administrative Board and externally with external parties.The main purpose and goal of the study is to present the work of four other county administrative boards regarding their work with the environmental quality objectives and to identify external parties? opinions of how they want the County Board of Västmanland county to work with them in this matter.The work is designed as a case study of four County councils, where the environmental objectives coordinators at the four county administrative boards were interviewed about their work with environmental quality objectives.

This essay examines the policy process of specialist medical training in three Swedish counties. The essay will first describe the policy process. Secondly the politicians parti-cipating in the process is examined. Thirdly, it is tested whether it is possible to analyze the policy process based on Ostrom's theories of cooperation around a common pool resource. In this case, the common pool resource is specialized medical practitioners skills that the Swedish County councils must collaborate on to competence should be sufficient for the County council needs, something that is not the case today.One conclusion of the study is that the health care law is not clear enough when it comes to who is responsible for providing a sufficient number of specialists.

Unauthorized changes in listed buildings and environments occur all around Sweden. The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how these forms of transgressions have been and are being handled in some Swedish county administrations. What do legislation within conservation of heritage expresses when transgressions occur? How do county administrations interpret and apply legislation to actual situations? What methods do county administrations make use of to prevent unauthorized changes?16 out of Sweden´s 21 county administrations have been studied and used as an empirical basis. This basis has led to a general conclusion of the county administrations experiences and working processes when handling unauthorized changes in listed buildings.

The aim of this study is to try to explain the process using both an actor driven perspective as well as a structural perspective examining the reasons why the County council of Värmland wants to merge with Region Västra Götaland. The answers to the following research questions are sought to shed light on the problem: What constrained the discretion of  the political actors in the choice of region to merge with? Which role did  different political actors play? Does the study provide Game Theory, from Rational Choice theory,  and Path Dependency, from Historic Institutionalism, a new perspective and strength especially  when bringing them together? The study is limited to two policy areas, health care and regional development policy. The structural background is drawn upon the Annual Report 2008 of the County council Värmland, the Regional Development Program and Regional Transport Infrastructure Plan 2010-2021 by Region Värmland. The chronological order of decisions and events is drawn upon protocols from various regional political organs all linked to the municipal of Värmland and the correspondence between the officials of Värmland?s municipal and the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency of the State.

The purpose of this work is to find out how present manager contracts are set up in Landstinget Västmanland (the County council of Västmanland), explore managers? perception of these contracts and why managers have chosen leadership. The work has also reviewed the question if managers need to have a relationship or expertise to the activities they lead and which qualifications are needed in such case. The survey was conducted in two divisions in which nine interviews were held with managers at all levels. In addition to this a questionnaire including the 87 managers in the divisions were held.

AbstractThe purpose was to investigate whether a recovery perspective, viewed from a psychosocial approach is applied in municipal / private and county related care and rehabilitation. A recovery perspective means that the attending staff ensures that the clients are viewed as holistic individuals, where all aspects of life are considered to ensure adequate care and rehabilitation. A questionnaire was answered by staff in psychiatry, social psychiatry and addiction treatment from different areas of the municipal / private and county related sector.The results show no difference in application of a recovery perspective between these two types of organizations. However, there is a slight tendency (non-significant) to lower-rated general individual competencies for municipal / private. There is also a strong tendency (non-significant) to a general difference between the aspects of the implemented recovery perspective, where the tendency is that the respondents as a whole estimate that the organization to a greater degree creates good conditions for a recovery perspective compared to the degree they are actually working on that basis.

Over the past thirty years the political parties in Sweden have lost five out of six members. In order to retain existing members leadership in these organizations has become increasingly important. The aim of this paper is to identify what group leaders for party groups within the municipal council believe are the driving forces that underlie the councillors' voluntary commitment, identify the group leaders' leadership style and identify whether there exist a relationship between these driving forces and the leadership style. The approach applied is qualitative consisting of twelve interviews with twelve group leaders from six different municipalities in Stockholm county. The theoretical framework of this paper includes the Volunteer Functions Inventory and the Full Range Leadership Theory.

The Security Council?s resolution 1325 addressed the major negative impact that armed conflict has on women and children. This in turn complicates the Council?s work on maintaining international peace and security. The resolution therefore highlights women?s rights as participants in peace- and conflict processes.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the role of regional development planning concerning a regional perspective of green structure and to reflect on its future role. The target group of the study is foremost practitioners but also students of regional planning and development. Three questions are examined. 1) What view concerning green structure has the regional planning body of Stockholm County council (RTK) communicated through the years? 2) Has this view contributed to generating a common understanding concerning green structure among the actors in the county? 3) Has this common understanding been referred to by actors in discussions concerning how this green structure should develop? The empirical material consists of documents from rtk, the County Administrative Board, the municipalities of the county, a network of ngo:s, as well as interviews with representatives from the above mentioned organizations.