The three post-communist states - Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine ? have gone different ways in terms of freedom and democracy since the breakdown of the Soviet Union 1991. During these years, the state and the civil society have been fundamental actors in the struggle against, and even for, authoritarianism.A strong state with great capacity in Belarus has undermined the chances for the civil society to fulfil its task as a watchdog of the state and link between the citizens and the government.Failed authoritarianism in Moldova has led to a situation where both the state and the civil society are weak. The major problem is lack of organization and cohesion; both the state and the civil society have often been divided by ethnical differences and are therefore not strong enough to promote democracy.In Ukraine, the dominance of a strong state ended in 2004 when the Orange Revolution took place, sometimes called a ?peak of democracy? where popular mobilization and protests succeeded in it's opposition against the state.

This paper attempts to survey the debate in the Swedish parliament on state surveillance on the Internet, from 1994 to March, 2007. With a discourse analysis inspired by Foucault, we follow how the idea of state surveillance is viewed by politicians during the period. By focusing on the Internet, we expect to find how politicians in the parliament regard the idea of an unregulated forum for citizen communication and interaction, and how the need for state surveillance on the new arena that is Internet, is expressed and argued for. Theoretical framework is given by Foucault?s theory of the Panoptic state, as well as his thoughts on discourse, power and governmentality.

Graphic design is an integrated part of the public spaces we move through in our daily lives. This thesis explores the emotional aspects of graphic design, with a focus on environmental graphics for the public space. The goal is to find ways in which the emotional aspects of a design solution can be varied without compromising the practical aspects, i.e. affect the conveyance of information. This goal is pursued through an analysis of historical and contemporary literature as well as by design practise.

The liberal state, it has been argued, must be neutral between different conceptions of the good. Embodying ideals such as fairness and impartiality, state neutrality is intuitively appealing, but working as a restraint for state actions it is somewhat unsatisfactory. People make mistakes about their lives and people live less valuable lives than they could do. To then restrain the state from doing as much good as it can seems just as unappealing as neutrality at first seemed appealing. In this paper, a possible solution to this dilemma is presented.

The aim of this study was to examine the relations between women?s perceived stress off the job (dependent variable), responsability for household chores, emotional support, number of children living at home, neuroticism and age (independent variables). Comparisons between the present sample and two independent samples from previous research were made with regard to perceived stress and neuroticism. The sample of this study consisted of 186 women working in the fields of health care and geriatric care. The results showed that perceived stress correlated positively with neuroticism and number of children and negatively with emotional support, though the effectsizes for number of children and emotional support were fairly small.

The largest project at the AICG lab at Linköping University, Cognitive models for virtual characters, focuses on creating an agent architecture for intelligent, virtual characters. The goal is to create an agent that acts naturally and gives a realistic user experience. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement an appropriate learning model that fits the existing agent architecture using an agile project methodology. The model developed can be seen as an online unsupervised reinforcement learning model that enhances experiences through reward. The model is based on Maes model where new effects are created depending on whether the agent is fulfilling its goals or not.The model we have developed is based on constant monitoring of the system.

This thesis aimed to, with the help of a case study, investigate and discuss state responsibility towards climate refugees. The state of Tuvalu was selected because of their vulnerability as a low-lying island state. This was fulfilled by on-site study how the state Tuvalu acted to climate threats, determine if the future migrants from Tuvalu can be counted as climate refugees and find out if they are by that definition included by the UN Refugee Convention. The result indicated that the state of Tuvalu is adapting to climate threats, that in the future the population can be seen as climate refugees, if they are forced from their homes due to climate change, and that they, despite that definition, can not be included by the UN Refugee Convention. The study also indicates a need for greater international protection of climate refugees by, for example, an expansion of the UN Refugee Convention so that these vulnerable people do not fall into oblivion due to a question of definition..

Photography has a big role in information sharing today. Especially in the hotel industry where it is the closest thing a customer can get to the product that is being sold. This study intends to find out how you can make use of rhetorical models and techniques of photography to enhance the communication skills of photos of hotel rooms. The main focus was to understand the difference between informative and emotional photographs and what consumers themselves focus on when choosing a hotel, and also how to use the collected information to create a larger buying interest through hotel photography. Using previous research work and quantitative data collection method, we have concluded that the informational and emotional photography methods have obvious differences but also many similarities, and are most effective used together and that the hotel consumer is more aware of the images influence then we assumed..

Photography has a big role in information sharing today. Especially in the hotel industry where it is the closest thing a customer can get to the product that is being sold. This study intends to find out how you can make use of rhetorical models and techniques of photography to enhance the communication skills of photos of hotel rooms. The main focus was to understand the difference between informative and emotional photographs and what consumers themselves focus on when choosing a hotel, and also how to use the collected information to create a larger buying interest through hotel photography. Using previous research work and quantitative data collection method, we have concluded that the informational and emotional photography methods have obvious differences but also many similarities, and are most effective used together and that the hotel consumer is more aware of the images influence then we assumed..

This paper examines the relationship between the experienced quality in the offering of a brand, emotional attachment and consumer commitment. The study aim to explore several dimensions of the experienced quality in the offering of a brand. Further we examine two conceptualizations of emotional attachment - Brand Attachment and Brand Love - and intend to declare the two of being two separate phenomena. We then conduct a relationship-based analysis wherein the mediating ability of Brand Attachment and Brand Love, between the experienced quality in the offering of a brand and consumer commitment, is examined. Therefore we conduct a focused quantitative study, wherein 171 customers of the fashion retailer H&M have responded to a comprehensive survey both online and in-store, to examine this fun-damental relationship and its components.

This study was built on the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) as an ability with four branches, to effectively: (1) perceive (2) reason (3) understand and (4) manage emotions. By closely studying the four processes of EI through eight semistructured interviews with psychologists, counselors, CBT-therapists and psychotherapists, a study of participants' stories from real practice was done and then analyzed and interpreted. The purpose of this study was to get the participants to describe and put words on practical experiences that occur with clients that correspond to the four domains that define the concept of EI according to Mayer et al. (2008) and find out about if their way of "doing" EI gets trained and developed after several years of professional activity. The results shows that the practitioners used all four branches of EI in dialog with the client, both intra- and interpersonal.

This study is about state officials who handle applications for sickness benefits and about municipal officials who handle applications for financial assistance. The purpose of this study is to explore the differences between the two professional roles regarding their conception about their exercise of authority, in terms of flexibility, individual adjustment, empathy and legal security.The study has a qualitative approach and is based on structured interviews with two state officials and two municipal officials. The questions that this study aims to answer are:- Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their experience and use of flexibility? - Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their perceptions of legal security, individual adjustment and empathy in their exercise of authority? - What kind of bureaucracy can you find in the two organizations?The results show that the state officials in this study have very limited flexibility due to legislation which makes their exercise of authority neither empathic nor individual. The municipal officials in this study state in their turn that the law entails broad flexibility and the opportunity for them to be empathic and to make individual decisions.

The function of traditional leaders in the modern states of Africa has been under debate for decades. The dominant research discourse suggests that these institutions should be integrated into the state in order to minimize the amount of parallel political spheres, since the latters are considered to affect state legitimacy negatively. But are the states in a situation where they need to compete with the traditional institutions in order to gain more legitimacy? If so, is the struggle for legitimacy a zero-sum game where there can only be one winner? Or is it possible for these institutions to co-exist or even benefit from each other? The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to research if, and to what extent, African citizens? confidence in traditional institutions has an effect on state legitimacy. This has been done by statistically analyzing the data from the latest completed round of the Afrobarometer survey, a study that has been conducted in 20 different countries across West- and Northeast Africa.

During the last years a discussion has emerged around problems with Swedish state boards trying to influence the public opinion and even political bodies through different kind of information efforts. Several observers inside and outside the academy have studied how state boards increasingly use information as an instrument and also how political bodies increasingly have given such instructions to state boards. This essay put those studies into the context of both information political history and previous theoretical interpretations in that field of research.The analytical tool consists of four ideal typical ways ('state opinions') to arrange relations between the state and the citizen. Some critics focus on problems with too much political steering and how political majorities uses state boards to spread ideological propaganda. Others highlight problems with autonomy and bureaucratic organizations taking initiatives by themselves to spread normative information.

Abstract:The aim of this study has been to investigate (theoretically as well as empirically) the problematic notions of state neutrality and political perfectionism and, in particular, the potentially vast continuum existing between these concepts both in theory and in actual political practice. In order to accomplish this, a conceptual analysis has examined (some of) the arguments for and against state neutrality and political perfectionism, different aspects of neutralism and perfectionism as well as the exact definition of the concepts of ?neutrality of justification? and ?conceptions of the good?. Using a specific (though not entirely uncontested) definition of these concepts, an empirical analysis was made of Swedish parliamentary parties and their cultural policies. The empirical part of the study seemed to confirm one of the basic premises of this study; that state neutrality and perfectionism are often (as has indeed been recognized by critics of state neutrality) intertwined in the business of everyday politics..