Since the introduction of the European citizenship in the Maastricht treaty, social rights havetaken a back seat to the economic and political elements. Nevertheless, over the past yearssocial issues have been increasingly included on the agenda following the universalrecognition of challenges resulting from further economic integration and demographicchange. The extensive research on European social policy so far tend to focus on initiativesput forward by the European Commission, and offers little to explain the multitude of lines ofreasoning on how far EU social policy should be taken or why it still remains one of the leastdeveloped policy areas. By examining plenary debates in the European Parliament concerningfamily policy, this Bachelor thesis aims to describe the complex of problems connected to afurther development of the social dimension of the European citizenship.The analysis finds that the most imminent problems impeding an expansion of the EU familypolicy lie not only in the many clashes of opinions between advocates of the various existingwelfare models, but also in the conflicts of interests and the different levels of ambitionbetween EU institutions - most notably the Commission and the European Parliament..

In the present case, the conception of policy hitchhiking gets evaluated in terms of its implications for democracy. This task is executed through the accomplishment of a case study of the use of social- and environmental clauses in the Swedish competitive tendering.A useful definition of policy hitchhiking, including different types of actors, is created.Through the defining of democracy and policy hitchhiking, the author comes to the conclusion that policy hitchhiking in some respects does meet democracy values.The thesis? result can in some sense be regarded as a contribution to the pursuit of knowledge of how power is distributed in the society and how the current distribution can be explained and understood..

Author: Gabriella Agné and Helena LarssonTitle: Disability policy program ? a case study of a municipals implementation of UNs Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.Supervisor: Marianne Westring-NordhAssessor: Ulf DruggeThis study aims to examine how a small municipal in southern Sweden works with the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and examine the assistant officers knowledge about this work and user organizations inclusion and user involvement.The study operates from a qualitative approach based on the results of nine semi-structured interviews with local politicians, assistance officers and representatives from three different user organizations.The results show that the municipal has chosen to work with the implementation of the convention by creating policy programs for their departments through dialogue with user organizations, and by mapping the accessibility to public places. The results also show that the assistant officers have been given no information regarding the convention or the policy programs from their employers and instead operate from national legislations and prepositions. The user organizations feel that they were initially included in the process, but that their impact has later been removed due to structural reorganization..

The notion of door policy has received little academic investigation. In the media this phenomenon has however received much attention and has been connected to allegations of discrimination. The authors of this thesis take another view in trying to identify the mechanisms behind door policy from an economic perspective.Based on case studies in nightclubs in Stockholm the authors conclude that there are two types of door policy: including and excluding. While including door policy aims to comply with regulations and commonly is part of a cost-leadership or focus strategy, excluding door policy is primarily a tool for attracting and selecting a certain audience in line with a product differentiation strategy. It thrives on the principles of exclusivity and reciprocity.Forming the identity of a club, audience is of great importance and excluding door policy is found to be an important tool in creating the correct composition of audience, which ultimately aims to increase profitability..

This Bachelor?s thesis examines and describes the governmental cultural policy in Sweden. The relation between the state and the market in society is in focus. Earlier research is used to describe the development of cultural policy in Sweden after the world war two until today. Two governmental bills are examined and described, one from 1974 and one from 2009.

During the time of membership in The European Union Swedish domestic policy has gone through many changes. A lot more political areas are being influenced by the EU policy. Today every ministry has got some sort of EU office. Swedish politicians are functioning on two arenas, domestic and European. At the same time Swedish membership has gone from being highly discussed to being a state of normality.

The aim with this study is to identify and discuss discourses in public service policy documents to clarify that public service policy is political and not self-evident. The study's theoretical as well as methodological starting point is the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, which ontological position is that all meaning is constructed by discourses. In the studied material, two discourses have been identified in policy concerning the content in public service media. The responsibility-discourse construct meanings of what content the policy wants to see in public service media and in the quality-discourse meanings of how the content should be is constructed. Public service policy is consistent over the period that has been studied and the study shows that there is consensus in the parliament about the regulation of the content in public service media.

On March 1, 2012, Google introduced its new privacy policy which is applicable to all Google services. This means that search history may be saved by Google indefinitely and may also be associated with the specific account during the first 18 months. We assume that few people read this policy and we have hypotheses that a deeper knowledge of the contents of the privacy policy affects how users perceive Google as a company and/or the usage of Google services. In this study, we have conducted surveys at the IT University of Gothenburg, to investigate how many participants that have read or possess some knowledge of the privacy policy. We have found that very few participants claim to have read the privacy policy.

Equal opportunity issues are considered to have a clear position in Swedish policy and the making of Swedish gender policy is considered a precursor. Though many experts and scientists have shed light on the fact that the issue of women assault has had a less stable development than other gender issues such as child care, the labour market etc. within the Swedish society, and that it does not attract the wide political support it needs. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the Municipalities', in the county of Kronoberg, policy on the issue of women assault within their local policies of equality. In my thesis I have chosen a theoretical framework that is built on a dilemma of justice based on three different dimensions; the extent, content and influence of the local policies.

This thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between municipal policy for housing supply and the planning of new housing in Sweden. Through a case study of Göteborg municipality and a comparative content analysis of Göteborgs policy for housing supply and a number of plans featuring housing the analysis seeks to investigate the effect of policy for housing supply as a tool for securing the demand for housing in the Swedish municipalities. The thesis also seeks to discuss its findings using theory concerning the implementation of policy and the general planning situation for Swedish municipalities today. The result of the analysis shows that most plans fail to regulate most of the content suggested in the policy for housing supply, particularly regarding aspects such as pricing, type of housing and type of ownership. The result also points towards a relationship regarding the prevalence of municipal land contracts and compatibility to policy for housing supply as well as a connection between how extensive the plans are in their proposed land use and their compatibility with policy for housing supply.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the municipal guidelines regarding the construction of the prerequisite "other living expenses", and how the construction of the prerequisite was constructed in relation to the legislation. The sample of the thesis was the municipalities in Stockholm?s county. The empirical result was compiled with the hermeneutical method, and analyzed through a legal perspective and three different theoretical perspectives, as well as compared with previous studies. The theoretical perspectives were legal pluralism, bureaucracy, legitimacy and rule of law.

To integrate environmental concerns into non-environmental policy making has become an important policy objective within the European Union. This essay investigates policy instruments in use to achieve environmental policy integration in the EU's transport sector respectively fisheries sector. The point of departure is a theoretical discussion about governance and the use of different policy instruments for environmental management at the EU-level. The focal point is the argumentation that regulatory policy instruments alone cannot achieve environmental policy integration satisfactory. By using Jordan et al's classification of so called "new" environmental policy instruments (market-based instruments, voluntary agreements and ecolabels) as complements to regulatory measures, the essay investigates whether the first-mentioned are used within the two sectors.

The creation of Region Skåne, and the transfer of the development responsibility from the national administrative country board (Länsstyrelsen) has given the state new challenges. New structures have grown between Region and State, and also between different municipalities. These can be characterized as Policy-networks, and the goal of this study is to analyze the planning process of the regional infrastructure with these theories.This is a qualitative study of the infrastructure process in Skåne, and the actors that acts within this process. It has been studied with the eyes of the theories of Governance and Policy-networks. The main method to collect material has been through interviews with different actors within the process, and very little written material has been used.

Aid effectiveness is a reoccuring theme in the social sciences. Maybe rightfully so, as development is slow in many parts of the developing world. Core literature on the matter seems to suggest that aid effectiveness is contingent on recipients? level of corruption. Assuming this to be true, I examine the EU?s disbursements of Official Development Assistance over the past decade by running regressions: is there a relationship between the level of aid received, and a country?s level of corruption? As the EU is one of the largest donors of foreign aid globally, and has the power to shape the global foreign aid agenda, this question puts to the test whether the EU is leading the way, or rather is an obstacle in front.

As the numbers of immigrants to Sweden and the EU are ever increasing even the right-wing populist parties grow faster in number. Sweden, Germany and France are three European countries that receive 90 percent of all asylum seekers and should therefore have a well-established and talked about immigration policy one can think. Yet the political parties in Sweden do not mention much about the immigration policy apart from the political party Sweden Democrats. This study aims to analyze eight different political parties in the Swedish parliament through a textual analysis to see what kind of immigration policy they share. Carl Dahlström has a theory to determine what type of policy a certain party has and whether they want to assimilate or integrate immigrants.