The purpose of this study is to illustrate why Norway is not a member of the EU from a rational choice perspective. In order to fulfil this purpose, two questions will constitute the framework of the study. These are:1. What are the arguments of the EU-opposers in the Norwegian EU-debate?2.

The purpose with this study is to investigate how the two biggest political parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderate/Conservative Party, looks at a membership in the defense alliance North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The question have the illegal annexation of Crimea affected how the parties look at a membership in Nato will be answered and analyzed. How they discuss, how they believe that a membership can affect the Swedish foreign policy will be examined in this paper. Nato is a topic that during the last century?s have divided the Swedish population into two groups: one that advocates a membership and one that fight?s against a Swedish membership in the alliance. The debate about Nato has, since the illegal annexation of the Crimea, changed and are now more relevant than ever to discuss.

Abstract: According to previous research, it is not unusual for online poker players to create profiles which indicate they are members of the opposite sex. This phenomenon, known as 'Gender Swapping', is partly being utilized in a strategic fashion. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether or not the gender of an opponent has an impact on decision-making in an online poker environment. An experiment was constructed where subjects made 15 poker-related decisions against seven randomly generated opponents, consisting of three male, three female and one genderless opponent. The results indicate no significant differences in decisions against male and female opponents.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to investigate the operation of membership criteria, which are applied against countries that wish to join the European Union (EU). More specifically, the importance of some criteria in comparison to others is considered. To answer this proposal, three questions are posed: What are the EU membership criteria? Are some criteria more important than other criteria? Does the EU treat candidate countries differently in applying the membership criteria? Three countries are used in this analysis, each country representing one recent enlargement round: Poland (2004), Romania (2007), and current candidate country Turkey. Both official documents, such as EU treaties, and unofficial documents such as statements from EU leaders are used to analyze the application of membership criteria.

Looking at the debate on nuclear power in Sweden, the issue of risk is central to understanding the difficulties in resolving differences between proponents and opponents. I sought to answer the research question: "how is the concept of risk constructed in the nuclear power debate in Sweden?" Four main aspects of risk construction were defined and investigated to identify differences between sides in the debate. Through a qualitative study of the debate and its actors I found clear differences in respect to all four aspects of risk construction. First, the perception of nuclear power as a "normal risk" is common among nuclear opponents in contrast to a largely probabilistic view among proponents.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to investigate the operation of membership criteria, which are applied against countries that wish to join the European Union (EU). More specifically, the importance of some criteria in comparison to others is considered. To answer this proposal, three questions are posed: What are the EU membership criteria? Are some criteria more important than other criteria? Does the EU treat candidate countries differently in applying the membership criteria? Three countries are used in this analysis, each country representing one recent enlargement round: Poland (2004), Romania (2007), and current candidate country Turkey. Both official documents, such as EU treaties, and unofficial documents such as statements from EU leaders are used to analyze the application of membership criteria.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party was for a long time skeptical of Sweden?s opportunitiesto apply for membership in the European Community. Sweden?s longstanding policy ofneutrality was until the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe 1989 seen as an obstacle tomembership. These changes were an important factor to why the social democratic partychanged their position on the EC and in October 1990 applied for membership.

The Swedish Prime Minister, Tage Erlander, made a speech on the 22 of August 1961 in which he dismissed speculation that Sweden was seeking to abandon its neutral stance and non-alignment in foreign policy with a view to requesting membership of the European Economic Community. The reason was that the EEC was supposed to have a political part where a connection with NATO should have existed. This speech led to a domestic discussion which has been called the most intense debate of foreign affairs in recent history. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the reactions of the other parliamentary parties to Erlander?s speech.

This thesis takes as its point of departure the Swedish governmental family policy and the debate on the proposed reform ?vårdnadsbidraget?. The supporters of the reform present it as something that will increase the freedom of choice for families and benefit the children, whereas the opponents warn for decreased equality and a return to the male breadwinner-model.From a constructivist perspective, language is closely related to power through defining and ascribing meaning to reality. By applying a feminist political theory on the debate within the Swedish national parliament 2007/2008 and conducting a discourse analysis, the aim of this paper is to analyse which concepts are used and how they construct to what makes a family within the political debate ? is there any difference or similarity between the view of the opponents and the supporters of ?vårdnadsbidraget??The main conclusion of this paper is that even though the political ideal and rhetorical concepts differ between the supporters and the opponents, they still constitute the heterosexual nuclear family as an obvious norm in family politics.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the extent of listening in a debate in the Swedish media. If the debaters listen to each other in a complex issue such as religion's place in society and if a debater who has a high degree of listening initially already in problem definition phase, has more possible solutions than the one that has a lower level of listening. The results show that there is a listening in all the articles, but the articles that have a broader definition of the problem also have a broader problem solving, than the articles that have a more narrow definition of the problem.The articles with a broader definition of the problem and a broader problem solving, have a predominantly agonistic debate strategy. Even if the debate rhetoric is primarily designed to win over the opponents, there is partly a genuine listening and an interest in finding new possible solutions. But despite that the opponents? arguments are mainly used to present the authors own arguments, the authors? intentions seems to be predominantly honest.

Turkey has taken part in regular negotiations to gain membership in the EU since 2005. At the same time is Turkey a candidate that stands out from those of earlier rounds of enlargement, and its possible membership got both supporters and critics amongst the Unions member countries. The aim of this thesis is to, trough a textual analysis, investigate the prospects and obstacles Turkeys candidature faces. The material consists of documents from a number of think tanks connected to the European Commission, as well as the Commissions own documents regarding Turkeys negotiations.A recurring picture is that Turkey is treated differently then earlier candidates, and that the Commission has a hard time keeping an unambiguous line in its negotiation frame. The material of the think tanks attributes the public opinions distrust of the member countries of EU as a hindrance, and Turkeys meddling in the conflict on Cyprus is problemized.

EU is an organization that has expanded really fast during the last years. When you read about different EU membership processes you notice that some processes have been much faster than others. Spontaneously you think that this depends om that some countries have not been fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria. However, during the last decennium some scientists have written articles about motives that have affected the membership processes. The basic problem in my essay is how we are supposed to understand a membership process? Since I was interested in if I could see the same inconsistent behavior pattern in other membership processes I chose to study Turkey and Croatia.

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 union organization rate has continuously diminished since the mid 90's. The aim of this essay is to investigate non-members approach to the union. Central questions are what personal experiences the respondents have of the union and how they view the union as a phenomenon. According to previous research the main cause of the great decline in membership to LO are the increased membership fees to the union and the unemployment insurance funds (UIF) in 2007. The increased fee led to a greater accumulated cost for those who were both union- and UIF -members, which had a negative effect on the membership numbers for the union.

Based on widespread public debate prior to Swedish EMU-referendum 2003, the main purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze the standpoint of the Swedish parliamentary parties in the EMU-issue, from perspektive of the following questions;1) What is the official standpoint of the parliamentary parties in the EMU-issue?2) What claimed effects of a Swedish EMU-membership or non-membership have the parties presented?3) What rifts can be found within the parties, in relation to their official standpoint in the EMU-issue?The Sweidish parliamentary parties´ standpoint in the EMU-issue will be analyze from the point of view of a number of current theories. These theories are basically democrazy theories that all have transnationalization and Europeanization as a common ground.The conclusions are, among others, that the parliamentary parties` standpoints in the EMU-issue are based on ideological values about whether or not a Swedish EMU-membership is good for Sweden. The Liberal Party, the Christian Democrats, the Moderate Party and the Social Party have a positive view on EMU and a deeper European integration, and basically value the economic efficency of the EMU higher than democratic decision making and a national currency and monetary policy. As for the EMU-critical parties such as the Centre Party, the Green Party and the Left Party, their view in the EMU-issue can be regarded as more nationalistic, since they say no to an exapanded financial cooperation.