The purpose of this study is to examine the actual political conditions that exist for the Iranian women. What is the political reality of the Iranian women and how can they exert political influence within the political system that exists in Iran today. This is done to see how the Iranian women's potential political influence affects Iran's democratic status. This will be answered through the overall research question: What opportunities do the Iranian women have to influence policy? This overall question is then split into three smaller research questions:1) What formal possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?2) What real possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?3) How have women in Iran tried to exert political influence outside the institutional framework?This will be done through a qualitative text analysis where texts concerning the Iranian women?s political influence are examined.

This thesis investigates how recipient countries' domestic type of democracy affects its inclusive ownership in international development cooperation. This is done by examining Swedish development cooperation with Rwanda and Tanzania during the period from 2010 to 2014, a time when ownership - a concept which emphasizes recipient countries' leadership over its own development - was a central part of the international development agenda. The two cases were selected through a most similar case design where the value of potential explanatory variables was similar, except for the recipient countries' types of democracy. Furthermore, the case study uses a comparative analysis to analyze strategies and reports done by SIDA and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previous research focuses on the exclusion that national ownership can result in, in undemocratic national contexts. The main argument for this should be seen as the fact that ownership can not be representative if the power of the recipient's development agenda is limited to a decision-making elite.

To distribute goods to customers in urban areas is necessary to support the economic and social development in the cities, but has consequences that affect both residents of cities as well as the environment. The environmental effects of these types of transport involves not only the emissions of various pollutants, but also an increased noise level inside the cities. Many companies and organizations are working hard to change the distribution pattern to streamline transport in the urban area, while environmental impact is reduced. This is in line with what is called the City Logistics. The purpose of this thesis is to create a method for describing and measuring a given transport solution in order to compare it with an altered transport solution to achieve a more sustainable development.

The main argument of the thesis is that multinational companies (MNCs) can promote democracy through corporate social responsibility (CSR). MNCs hold some prerequisites giving them the means to create positive changes. But they lack one important prerequisite: knowledge about local conditions. Therefore the best CSR result is reached through partnerships with local NGOs.H&M's CSR-work in Bangladesh, including a partnership with the Bangladeshi women's rights organisation Karmojibi Nari, serves as an illustrating case. It is argued that the CSR-work promotes democracy through strengthening the civil society, through indirectly implementing national laws concerning labour legislation and human rights and through raising awareness about rights and legislation among the workers.The CSR process changes the terms for both NGOs and MNCs.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the democratic views in the two latest party platforms, belonging to the two Swedish political parties Vänsterpartiet and Sverigedemokraterna. This by applying Robert A. Dahl's democracy model, Polyarchy, and Carol Pateman's democratic Participatory model, on to the party platforms. By doing so, my hopes were to determine if the two political parties can classify themselves as democratic parties. The result shows that both Vänsterpartiet and Sverigedemokraterna meet the majority of the democratic demands created by Robert A.

Aiming to contribute to the discourse on the sustainability of consociational democracy in plural societies, this case study provides an examination of Lebanon?s power sharing model. The study begins with an evaluation of the Taif Agreement. After acknowledging its effect on Lebanon?s consociational system the function and operation of Lijphart?s four consociational elements are analyzed.

This essay is a comparative research between pupils' experience of how the headmaster, teachers and other school staff interpret and apply the democratic education. The results are based on a survey carried out in senior high school, as well as interviews with the school staff. The democratic education charge has a long history of Swedish school system and is the basis for the maintenance of a democratic society. Both policy paper of state investigations and researchers in the field, regard to school as the primary and unique instance in order to promote and develop democratic skills in children and young people. However, it is shown that those who come out from school lack of knowledge and awareness of democracy and the will to speak their mind.

Since the nineteen-fifties, the American political scientist Robert Dahl (born in 1915) has been one of the most prominent democracy theorists in the world. In the book Politics, Economics, and Welfare, he and his colleague Charles E. Lindblom in 1953 introduced the notion of polyarchy as a denomination for the incomplete democracies of the Western world. Linguistically speaking, this notion was formed in connection with the ones already existing in the philosopher Aristotle's (384-322 B.C.) comparative teachings on government. Later, it has become apparent that the notion of polyarchy has already been in use by other authors, such as Johannes Althusius (1614) and Sir Ernest Barker (1947).Robert Dahl has been active at Yale University (in New Haven, Connecticut, USA), and is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of the political-science discipline known as pluralism.

This is a survey of different techniques that may be used for embedding geographicdata into web pages. Different models of GIS communication are examined and a testsubject in the form of an application is implemented and evaluated.The test application (?StudentKarta? eng. ?Student Map?) lets students submit theirresidential data and shows their position as pins on an embedded Map.An expire date is used to let the pins fade away and disappear.The application uses the popular Google map engines to display the geographicalpresentations.

The transition from having been under another country?s control to becoming a democratic country can, many times, pose difficulties, which has proven itself to be quite common. Estonia and Moldova?s processes towards a democratic regime are two examples of countries with varied success in the final transition phase.When the USSR (Soviet union) fell and collapsed in 1991 Estonia was well on their way from having a communistic ruling to a democratic one due to the fact that their democratic work had already begun a few years prior to 1991. After the collapse Estonia continued with their democratic work and in 2004 the country became a EU member state.

This paper investigates the possibilities to construct automatized portfolios based on optimizations strategies that could outperform comparable indexes. The study is based on time-series of Swedish stocks dating from 1986 to 2006. In the research four different portfolio optimization techniques were studied. These were: the Classical Markowitz Approach, Mean-Absolute-Deviation, Minimum-Regret and Conditional Value-at-Risk of which the three latter are based on generated scenarios. The behaviour of these models was studied for different choices of parameters such as backward time-horizon and targeted average return.

The purpose of the present thesis is to investigate the interaction between the branches in the different villages and its users and the importance of the branches for democracy. To illustrate these points, I have focused on Högsby municipality, a local council in Kalmar county. Högsby municipality is of particular interest in this connection, since all seven of the branches have been closed recently; only the main library remains. Moreover, three of the closed branches were, in 2005, taken over by citizen organizations local to the part of Högsby municipality where the libraries were located. The specific issues that were addressed were:- What needs were satisfied by the local libraries in Högsby council and is it possible to satisfy these needs in other ways and then, how?- Does the absence of a local library affect democracy?Interviews were performed.

Neighbourhood offices were established in the municipal of Lund by a decision in the municipal council 1999. During following years four offices opened in the surrounding villages; Veberöd, Genarp, Södra Sandby and Dalby. By using a goal oriented model and making interviews I study whether the offices reaches the goals of more effective service, developed IT-support, a stronger local democracy and a better feeling for service. The offices has improved the information to the citizens and efforts have been made to strengthen the local democracy but more complex matters can not be handled at the offices today, which is a disappointment for many involved.To explain the result of the evaluation I use Vedungs ?A general theory of public efforts result?.

This study examines whether social media had an influence on the revolution in Egypt. Social media was an important tool for the revolution since the president Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian regime strictly controls the media. However social media was not the determining factor for the revolution, the revolt evolved due to many underlying factors. Social media facilitated communication, made the mobilization effective and, spread information to the inhabitants and to the rest of the world. The authors are discussing this theme from the new institutionalism perspective, democracy- and revolutionary theories and based on six selected interview persons; activists, researchers and journalists..

Academic research concerning how to determine the power situation in a supply chain where an investment product supplier is involved did not exist. Therefore new models has been developed that analyses the power relations and maps out the power situation in a supply chain. In the future these models can be applied on similar cases by modifying the included parameters. The new models show that case company FAS should focus on the big producers of garbage bag which are Trioplast, Rullpack and Miljösäck. By strengthen the brand FAS can make more money in these relations.