Due to globalization, decentralization and the capitalist system's need to physical location cities have become increasingly important economic spheres during thee last decades. City mayors are seen as increasingly important actors, who can shape the future economic development of their cities through networking with businesses and strategic policy development. Therefore several European countries have introduced mayor reforms to enable mayors to take a bigger responsibility for the local development. These reforms raise interesting questions concerning what leadership changes they produce at the local level and if there is a difference between local leaders and leadership in different countries. This paper further explores the connection between the local leader and the locality since this relationship often has been neglect in studies concerning mayor reforms.

Since Africa?s decolonization a number of foreign economic actors have begun toemerge in several African countries and they prove a vital role in many ways. China isone of the largest actor and they have a long history of political and economic ties withAfrica. China act primarily in Africa to meet their growing economy?s demand fornatural resources, and by providing aid and trade with development countries in Africathey get important natural resources like oil and iron ore in return.

There is a growing interest for ethical consumption, in general as well as in the clothing industry. The consumption of ethical clothes is a complex phenomenon though, where aspects such as quality, style, function, price, time assets, accessibility and ethical attitudes affect the decision making. Researches that have been executed show the diversities in development between different countries. There are fairly strong indications that the ethical clothing market is more advanced in the United Kingdom than in Sweden and therefore these two countries are objects of this research. The aim with this thesis is to describe and explain what have affected the development of the ethical clothing market in the United Kingdom compared to Sweden. For that reason a qualitative approach has mainly been used, where deep interviews with people within the ethical clothing industry have contributed to most of the empirical part. As a complement secondary data such as statistics of the two countries have been used in order to investigate our area. One useful tool, among others, to investigate the macro environment is the SLEPT model.

What role does the state play in economic development? This thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between a strong state and economic development. To define the concept of a strong state I focus on the relationship between the scope of state functions and the efficiency of which these functions are implemented. The concept of a strong state is in this thesis defined as the efficiency of the state functions. By using a database constructed by three economists; David Kaufman, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi as a measurement of a strong state I test the relationship with economic development empirically.

This thesis takes as its starting-point the different stands on the ever ongoing growth of multinational corporations (MNCs) and its consequences. Two opposing branches of theories, arguing that the establishment of MNCs in developing countries is good respectively bad for these countries, are tested for the aspect of state capacity. A quantitative method is then used to test if there exists such a relationship at all and if so, which of the two notions that are right.The presence of MNCs is measured as FDI of GDP while state capacity is defined as a combined index for three of ICRG's Political risk indicators. The two variables are analysed, mainly by cross tabulation, using an extensive dataset of 130 developing countries measured for a period of 20 years.The outcome is though ambiguous: No solid correlation can be found, but countries with a higher rate of FDI of GDP tend to have a slight worse rate of state capacity throughout the analysis. Thus the result points in favour of the notion that MNCs are bad for developing countries? state capacity.

This essay intends to provide an understanding of the developments in the right of public access and recreational activities in the forests of Sweden, and which factors and prerequisites that have affected this development. The forest and its history, along with recreational development has in many ways shaped today?s rights of public access, but there is also an age-old tradition of public access that has affected how we have used the forest, and that also has enabled the development of outdoor recreation. Many are unaware of this, which causes misunderstanding to appear around the rights of public access and how it is supposed to be used.The essay opens with historical descriptions of public access, the Swedish forest and outdoor recreation, to thereby provide a picture of how these three fields have influenced each other over the centuries. This is followed by a description of the current access rights and the problems associated with those, and a description of other countries' equivalent of the right of public access.

Virulent strains of Staphylococcus hyicus produce exfoliative toxins and cause a potentially fatal skin disease in piglets known as exudative epidermitis. Vaccines and antimicrobials are used to control the disease. Antimicrobial resistance and the prevalence of several different toxin genes and toxigenic strains make it problematic. The aim of this literature study was to identify potential differences between countries and between healthy and diseased pigs regarding antimicrobial resistance and toxin-producing strains. Great differences could influence vaccine production, treatment strategies and surveillance programs.

This thesis analyzes and discusses the role of institutions concerning countries' abilities to create economic wealth. The countries that we are analyzing are the former members of the Warsaw pact and former Yugoslavia. These countries are referred to as transition countries. In order to analyze the transition countries institutional structure we are using Douglass C. North's theory regarding institutions and institutional building.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to compare the perception and significance of reference work in two countries, Sweden and Germany. This will be achieved by means of a literature review of previous research literature and public documents and a content analysis of articles from two library journals.A first step was to examine the historical development of reference work in the selected countries. In connection with this there proved to be distinct phases in the discussion regarding reference work. These phases with their specific discourses, themes and emphases reflected and thus later were confirmed in the second part of the study.The results show that despite some similarities there are also quite a few differences in how reference work is perceived in both countries. For Sweden, the idea of reference work was introduced relatively early.

This is a study, where we have deepened ourselves little more in the Swedish and the Turkish teacher training. We have both looked on the differences and the resemblances. We are also aware about that the essay builds on a small study and a limited material, special when it comes to the Turkish teacher training. Therefore we have drawn our conclusions with big caution. They are examined and preliminary, but we are than however convinced about that.

Fresh water has become more and more of a scarce commodity. Water scarcity isn't first and foremost a cause of drought and wasting, but a cause of inequality and mismanagement. This is not only a problem for developing countries, and there can also be variations within countries. The municipality of Gotland has a development program called Vision Gotland 2025, with goals for growth and sustainable development. The aim of this study is to examine whether the use and management of water resources on Gotland and Vision Gotland 2025 is conformed to the Water Framework Directive and the Ecosystem Approach in terms of sustainability.

The object of this paper is concerned with the subject youth and politics. The aim of the paper is to study what influence our today modern societies has between two social landscapes, Greece and Sweden and try to give an explanation to why young peoples political engagement is different in the two countries. To fulfil my aim of this paper I have used a few questions, these questions will give me an insight in how young people look at politics, what their interests are and if they feel that they can and ought to act political. The theoretical starting points I?ve used I?ve chosen with reflection to look at the social landscape we live in and its changes over time.

How affected are the sugar production in Mozambique and Tanzania by EU sugar regime? What does the EU sugar reform constitute in these countries?Using theories regarding free trade and anti-free trade, I am able to answer these questions. The aim of this paper is to study how the various sugar agreements with EU affect the sugar production in Mozambique and Tanzania. Therefore I am using a method called a most similar system design in this comparative case study. The conclusion is that the EU sugar regime is the main reason to how the sugar productions in developing countries are.

sustainable development by reducing the energy use by EU:s directive of energy efficiency and the UN Convention. The second purpose is to present the technical solutions regarding ventilation and heating system that is being used in passive houses. This was done using 8 passive houses, 4 germany and 4 swedish passive houses. Even the international and Swedish system requirements for passive houses have been addressed in this project. The goal was also to explain how and why the mechanical system in passive houses has developed to the technology used today.

The aim of this paper is to analyze aid, grouped into sectors, and its effect on growth in developing countries, to find out which type of aid has had the most positive effect on growth. We compiled a regression analysis based on panel data over 81 developing countries from 1975-1999. In our first regression we considered and group countries by institutional quality, in the other we considered and group countries after regional differences. As a measure on institutional quality we used the KKZ-index. The principal aim of this paper was to find out what kind of aid is the most efficient in its influence on growth in LDC?s.