The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

The Stockholm Bypass is an infrastructural project planned to be located west of Stockholm. This study investigates the argumentation concerning the project from different perspectives. The theoretical starting point is within Decision Theory. The main theories include Bounded Rationality, Kingdon's study of the political agenda and theory regarding venue shopping, framing and lobbying. The method chosen for this qualitative case study consists of both gathering data through semi-structured interviews and through documents provided by stakeholders and information available publically through archives and media.

Title: How does the buying decision process really function within e-commerce? - A qualitative study of consumer behavior when they consume on Internet.Institution: School of Economics, Linnaeus University, Va?xjo?.Course code: 2FE16E.Authors: Sara Hja?rne, Mathilda Perem, Ewelina Wallin.Tutor: Dan Halvarsson.Examiner: A?sa Devine.Key words: Buying decision process, purchase decision process need recognition, information search, evaluation, purchase decision, postpurchase behavior, consumer decision making, E-commerce, E- commerce channels, online shopping, online purchase, e-retail, internet shopping, electronic shopping, consumer behavior, online appereal shopping, social media, decision making, online retailing, website design, customer satisfaction, webshopping, perceived risk, convinience, price, online consumption behavior.Background: Buying decision process is a model that marketers use to get a better understanding of their customers and their behavior when purchasing a product. This process consists of five different steps; need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and evaluation. Buying decision process has for a long time been an accepted model but scientists argue that the introduction of Internet as a channel for consumption has changed this process. The Internet has also led to a change of power in which customers today have greater influence, which greatly affects the buying decision process in e-commercePurpose: The purpose is to explore how consumers perceive their behavior when they consume through e-commerce.Research questions:How do consumers perceive the buying decision process they experience when they consume through e-commerce?How do consumers perceive different factors that are important to them when they consume through e-commerce?Methodology: Qualitative study, cross-sectional design, semi-structured interviews.Conclusion: This thesis shows that the traditional model of the buying decision process is not consistent with consumers' perception of how they are undergoing the process when applied to an e-commerce context.

Citizens? freedom of choice has been a subject of debate in Sweden for over 30 years. This study focuses on decision making processes among patients within the Swedish healthcare system. The main conclusions are that in contrast to how patients? freedom of choice is described within governmental bills and governmental inquires and reports, patients are not following the steps included in the rational model of decision making.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze why or why not Swedish municipalities implement the gender equality policy ? ?right to work fulltime?. In order to understand this institutional change, the analysis is based on a theoretical framework consisting of two fields: political representation and feminist institutionalism. The study is divided into two empirical inquiries. The first part is based on a quantitative survey that describes the casual relationship between two independent variables; women´s political representation and party ideology, and the dependent variable; political decision about ?right to work fulltime?.

A real option model is developed to examine the crucial factors affecting the agricultural firms? decision to quit the production and rent out the land to a company building a PV power plant. The public policies in support of investments in renewable energies have created the conditions for a market regarding investments in PV installations in agricultural areas.The decision to switch offers to the agricultural firm and to society several economical, social and environmental benefits, representing sustainability. However, PV installations in agricultural areas require the allocation of a certain land area. By assigning a part of land to PV installations, thereby the area of land allocated to agricultural production decreases.

The aim of this study is through a policy analysis to illuminate the decisions that the EU has taken to respond to the terrorist attacks in the US, Madrid and London and through this analysis try to explain the problem of each decision and find out if these decisions might risk the individual rights of the European Union?s citizens.In order to reach this purpose the following questions are to be answered: In what way has the EU?s decision-making process, regarding its fight on terrorism, been affected by the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London? What consequences may the EU?s decisions against terrorism have on the individual rights?The method that has been used is qualitative studies of literature and the main material is overarching policy documents from the EU.The conclusions are that the bombings in Madrid and London have increased the speed of the decision-making process and more areas have been included in the union?s fight against terrorism. If individual rights are at risk by the union?s decisions there are reasons to be concerned. But my conclusion is that the European Union has to have strong and effective instruments to answer to the threat of terrorism..

Decision-making and valuation when buying small caps is a poorly explored area. Likewise, since disputes about deficiencies in the company?s financial and legal standing are, almost without exception, resolved in arbitration with confidentiality requirements for both sides, there is very little empirical knowledge about such disputes. This paper hopes to add empiric experience by describing such a take-over ? the purchase of the Jon Blund companies.

This Masters thesis work describes a comparison between two different methods for estimation of the down channel (base station to mobile subscriber) in Wide-band Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA). The first estimation method, Optimal Feed-forward Channel Estimation (OFCE), is a conventional method that bases the estimates on data that is known to both sender and receiver, so called pilots. The second method, Decision directed Channel Estimation (DDCE), is an elaboration of OFCE. It also uses user data for estimation. Simulations show that DDCE, in comparison to OFCE, does not attain an improvement in signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) for high bit error rates (BER).

The investigation aims to clarify to what extent non-conscious thought has efficacy in e.g. decision making and also examine some aspects of the question whether decisions are caused by free will. This will be conducted through an analysis of new research pertaining to neuroscience, economics, the combination of the two within neuroeconomics; evolutionary theory and especially the new theory of Unconscious thought (Nordgren & Dijksterhuis 2006) which will enjoy special scrutiny due to its recentness in the scientific field. A decision strategy ought to put high-level conscious cognition to use where it's most effective and this is on a different level than the canonized one. Meta decision making is decision making pertaining to which decisions ought to be made consciously.

Att det idag finns flera metoder och modeller för att fatta beslut är inte konstigt då beslutsfattande sker varje dag och i vissa sammanhang kan ge ödesdigra konsekvenser om det blir fel. Denna kandidatuppsats kan ses som en förstudie för hur naturligt beslutsfattande skulle kunna stödjas genom en förbättrad utbildning till beslutsfattare. Uppsatsen ämnar behandla naturligt beslutsfattande och intuition hos experter inom räddningstjänsten, närmare bestämt om de använder intuition och i så fall vad som ligger till grund för denna intuition. Intervjuer utfördes på räddningstjänsten i Motala efter critical decision method som är framtagen för cognitive task analysis. Inom räddningstjänsten använder sig befälen av intuition när de tar det flesta av sina beslut i fält.

In 2002, the euro as a common currency did replace the national currencies in the EU member-states that did choose to take part in the EMU. It was then viewed as one of the greatest accomplishments ever to be made by the EU. However, during the latest years, the economic situation has deteriorated in several EMU member-states. This affected the whole euro-area and the current situation is referred upon as the euro-crisis. In 2011, at the time of the euro-crisis, the Heads of State or Government of the euro-area did reaffirm their full commitment to strengthen EMU.

A Road project?s frame is built up of a decision- and consultation process, where the results of the preparatory studies are being discussed. The aim with a consultation process is that all theopinions and knowledge from the operators' will be taken into count in the basis of information, that is needed in order to the different involved operators' to take a decision.The aim of the essay was to investigate how the decision- and consultation process for a road project, the E4 section between Uppsala Läby, turned out. The aim is also to bring up how theprocess could have been done more correctly. The study was carried out through a qualitative method with an analysis of materials from the National Road Administration's archives, the associated Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and through interviews of the different operators.My theoretical basis has been a Stakeholder Analysis and its principles, and theory about different executions of social planning.The result showed that the decision- and consultation process has been bursting in democracy and consideration taking of the different operators' opinions, has been poor from the developer?s, in this case the National Road Administration's, side.

Municipalities are steered organizations with a democratic decision-making. They are responsible for an extensive activity. The local municipal audit is the municipal council?s tool to control that the activity operates. The local municipal audit will in the beginning of every audit period plan for what they will review.

The aim of this essay was to look into and compare the experiences and opinions about the practice of 13 § LVM among persons that, through their profession, use the law.The questions we have been asking were; what experiences and opinions the individuals have about the paragraph in general, what they think about the cases when no application for LVM is made after a client has been taken in charge as directed by 13 § LVM, and of the fact that the majority of cases of LVM are initiated by the same paragraph. Another question was how the individuals think about the legal security in connection to 13 § LVM.The methods used are qualitative and we have interviewed individuals from different fields of social work that comes in contact with drug abusers.The findings from these studies include that care made out of the clients' free will is the main reason why an application is not made. It is also the reason to why many LVM initiates as directed by 13 § LVM for the reason that the districts above all try to help the clients without force. The economical aspects are repeatedly mentioned as another reason to the problems appeared in connection with 13 § LVM..