The focus of this thesis is on social workers? knowledge in assessing and making decisions in child welfare cases. The primary aim is to identify what skills or knowledge social workers find most useful within child welfare agencies in Swedish municipalities. Six different types of knowledge, social policy and the approach of child welfare cases are perspectives considered in the analysis. The interviews with social workers were held in three agencies in southern Sweden, in 2014.

The aim of this paper is to try to explain how specific, foreign policy decisions are made, and why one state decides to use violence against another state. A qualitative method is used, and text and documents are analysed. The two theoretical points of departure are central within foreign policy analysis: realism´s theories on external threats and constructivism´s theories on ideas´ policy influence. The empirical case chosen is the US decision to use military violence against Iraq. The paper investigates whether the real threat from Saddam Hussein´s Iraq was the cause of the American military attacks, or whether the ideas of leading politicians in the USA were decisive for the decision to invade the country.

Sweden introduced a development assistance policy in 1952 and thirteen years later Sida, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency started, in 1965. But in 1995, five separate development assistance authorities came together and established the new Sida as it is today. Sida is Sweden?s representative in the development assistance policy field and they work through projects that have to be presented through a Country Strategy Process (CSP). The aim of this paper is to point out Sida?s perspective on the conducted development assistance policy and what guide lines that are followed.

Engblom, Gustav (2009) De nya riksdagspartierna och den politiska dagordningen ?The new parilament parties and the political agenda.?1988 and 1991 the swedish parties Miljöpartiet, Ny demokrati and Kristdemokratiska samlingspartiet made it over the 4 percent threshold and successfully entered the Swedish parliament. Sweden was once described as one of the most stable political systems in the world, but the parliament elections of 1988 and 1991 showed that Sweden was no exception from the growing instability in west democratic political systems.The stability and instability that followed in the west democratic political systems is believed to be explained by the political parties? efforts to adjust to changes in their political environment. This has lead them to cartelize and the cartel party is believed to prefer stability over triumph for various reasons.The established political parties are believed to be able to manipulate the political agenda in such a way that political topics that would have caused great turbulence in the political system, if debated, are kept away from the political agenda.

The study aims to show how the publicity surrounding the Sweden Democrats have been during November in 2012 when polls for the party rose. The method that has been used is quantitative content analysis and a total of 215 articles from tabloids Expressen and Aftonbladet are encoded. The period of the encoded material has been in November 2012 and the variables have been designed to answer how much publicity Sweden Democrats have received during that period, any topic that the articles touched on, the actors that have been cited, if players have received criticism or praise, how the party looked like and if certain words were used in the articles.The theories of the study are based on agenda setting, priming, ?The spiral of silence? and democratic role of the media. They concern, among other things, how media sets the agenda for what people think is important and how after being exposed to something, subconsciously creates a feedback about the phenomenon.The results show that the Sweden Democrats have received much negative publicity at a time when their poll numbers increase, which goes against the established truth that says that positive publicity is beneficial to the parties while the negative publicity is adverse..

Essay in Political Science, Advanced Course, by Christoffer Hagström?The Bush Administration´s view on international cooperation and internationallaw and political-theoretical traditions influence on the administration´s foreignpolicy?Supervisor: Jan OlssonThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the American foreign policy, particularly with regard tointernational cooperation and international law. The two following research-questions are used inorder to fulfil the purpose: (1) what is the Bush-administrations´s view of of the place forinternational cooperation and international law in American foreign policy?, and (2) how does theadministration´s foreign policy correspond to dominant political-theoretical thought-traditions? Thetraditions used are: liberalism, realism and neoconservatism. The sources of the study mostlyinclude literature and policy-documents.

The purpose of this thesis is to study to what extent the UN millennium development goals have influenced Sweden?s development policy. The research method that I have used is a qualitative text analysis and I have studied the ideas in governmental texts and millennium development goals reports from 1995-2008.My hypothesis is that the basic ideas that has symbolized Sweden?s development policy has not changed much since the adoption of the millennium development goals in year 2000. This hypothesis is based on different ideas that the basic perspectives in international development policy are rather constant.My conclusion is that many of the areas that are affected by the millennium development goals already are prioritized areas within Swedish development policy, for example poverty reduction and gender equality.

Since the 1990?s Open Access has developed into an alternative model for scientific publication. Today an increasing political interest in promoting Open Access is commonly channeled through the implementation of policies by research funders. However, in the scientific community the uptake and acceptance of the model has been of notably different character.This Master?s thesis examines the understanding of and attitudes towards open access among eight senior Swedish researchers and how these have been affected by the implementation of the Swedish Research Council?s Open Access-policy as implemented in 2010.

Trade was assigned as a Community responsibility at the founding of the European Community in 1957. It was then recognized that Europe would achieve a greater international influence if it were to negotiate trade deals with one voice. Since then, the basic rule has been that the European Commission negotiates agreements on behalf of the EC, and presents the agreements negotiated for approval in the European Council. Today, the 25-member European Union is the largest trading power in the world, and most member states have decades of experience of coordinating their national trade interests into a common position. However, partly as a result of the complex nature of the trade decision-making processes it is sometimes problematic to identify who or what really influences EU trade policy.

Abstract:Styrdokument i musikämnet-En komparativ studie av norska och svenska styrdokument i Musikämnet i skolan.(Music Subject governing documents- A comparative study of Norwegian and Swedish policy documents in the Music subject in school)The purpose of this study is to compare the Norwegian and Swedish policy documents on teaching in the Music topic. The comparison also applies to the requirements which have been in Sweden over time. In comparison, the policy document LGR 11 from Sweden, analyzed, and the governing documents MUS1-01 and R94 from the Norwegian School.The main issue in the study is: How does the policy documents for the topic music in Sweden, compared to Norway? In order to answer the question, I compared the above-mentioned policy documents and set in relation to the musical substance is designed in Norway and Sweden.In curriculum theory treats one problem based approaches in structural functionalism, pragmatism, social epistemology and post structuralism. The starting points are then used to explore various relationships between curriculum theory and didactics.The principal researcher and proponent of curriculum theory is Ulf Lundgren.

This thesis examines the relationship between recognition of prior learning and the aim to increase social and ethnical diversity in higher education. Recognition of prior learning is a result of educational politics aiming to broaden social and ethnical recruitment to higher education. By examining if recognition of prior learning rather can, and shall, be seen as part of what Pierre Bourdieu calls educational social reproduction I try to question whether it fulfils education policy goals or not. My results show that persons responsible for recognition of prior learning rather recognise knowledge from prior educational institutions than knowledge gained outside the educational system. Considering this, recognition of prior learning does not quite live up to the aims.

This paper aims to find out how media in different countries in the same part of a continent portray the latest development in the Korean conflict. To achieve this, the articles published by two newspapers, The Japan Times and The Korea Times, in the last five months have been analysed. The theory used to analyse the published articles is the agenda setting theory. This paper has found that geography, in the sense of proximity to the conflict, do affect what stories the newspapers publish and how they portray the story..

During the 90?s, several reforms took place in order to change the educational system. The reforms intended to increase the freedom of choice and to facilitate the start-up process for driving independent schools. A broad alliance of political parties from left to right supported these reforms. Twenty years later, the independent schools constitute a substantial part of schools in Sweden.

The cultural policy area has a tendency to be seen as a consensus area, where there are no big conflicts between the parties. The aim of this master?s thesis is to study the moderate party?s cultural motion 2005/06Kr:233 with the party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt as first author. If consensus rules, the party?s ideology should not be visible in the motion, but the assumption in the thesis is that it is visible.

AbstractThe aim of this thesis is to examine Interreg as an instrument for regional policy in the European Union. Interreg is an initiative designed to strengthen economic and social cohesion throughout the European Union by fostering balanced development through cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation. But how does it work in practise? Three main questions are asked to answer this:How well does the implementation in the programmes work?How does the programme management look and how well does it work?What degree of efficiency does Interreg show in financial and physical effectiveness?With evaluation and implementation as theories the questions are answered together with a qualitative method. The conclusions that can be drawn is that Interreg strengthen European unions economic and social cohesion in form of integration and regional development that in many ways make it easier to travel and trade over the borders.