The aim of this thesis is to investigate and analyse the debate of ideas on gender equality policy during 1998 - 2011. The questions raised in this thesis are; which gender equality policy ideology has prevailed during 1998 - 2011, and which ideological orientation have the different ministers of gender equality expressed during the same period of time? I have conducted the study by analysing government publications and debate articles against a ideological framework consisting of different types of feminist theory. In order to get a result as representative as possible, I have only used the material from each of the ministers during their time in office. The research method that I have used when analyzing the material is qualitative text analysis.

The aim of this thesis is to ascertain if women are discriminated in the European Parliament, and if so, how it is expressed. Our hypothesis is that female members of the parliament suffer a kind of double discrimination. The European Parliament consists of roughly one third women, but nevertheless the discrimination does not end there. According to our hypothesis women do not have the same opportunity to influence as their male colleagues, hence the double discrimination.The results of this thesis show that women are discriminated, mainly by not gaining access to the European Union's important issues, whilst the female dominated issues are scheduled on late evening and at the end of a session week. Another unsatisfactory issue was that even though half of the reports were given by women, they only received one third of the references to their reports while men received two thirds of the references.

This master thesis is about a place that has a story to tell. Olsson?s garden came about when Mr Carl Oscar Olsson acquired a piece of land in Landalabergen in the beginning of the 1930's and at that time he started his industrious work of uniting much of Sweden's flora in his garden. Since the very beginning Olsson's garden has played a lot of different rolls in a variety of situations and meant different things for different people. Today one can find traces from Mr Olsson's life and deeds in the garden.

The role of cultural policy within the general political planning of a community can vary both historically and regionally. The aim of this study has been to explore the cultural policy plans, during the 1990's, in the recently formed geographical region of "Västra Götaland". This is a qualitative study, carried out during 1999, and based upon structured interviews with five representatives of the cultural-policy sector in the "Västra Götaland" region. In order to identify connections and tendencies in a more general social context the aims of the five representatives regarding cultural policy have been explored from the perspective of three cultural policy paradigms, namely Dorte Skot-Hansen, Olav R. Spilling and Göran Nylöf.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of funding and sponsorship of culture within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards funding and sponsorship of culture by comparing the discourse of cultural policy in the 1970s with the discourse of cultural policy in the 1990s. The theoretical and methological starting point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. Another theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy reasearcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries, and Norman Faircloughs, of critical discourse analysis, theory of the marketization of discourse. Four governmental cultural policy documents, two from the 1970s and two from the 1990s, are analysed through a model loosely based on Laclaus and Mouffes idea of nodalpoints and elements constituting a discourse.

In this thesis we have examined Västra Götalandsregionens ways to lobby and network in the European Union. Our aim was to examine which kind of methods the region uses to lobby in a successful way in Brussels. We found that the region uses both formal and informal methods of lobbying to gain advantages in Brussels. We also wanted to locate various networks which the region is involved in to more easily have their interests satisfied. We found that they had a lot of different alliances and that it is necessary to be involved in different networks to have a chance to lobby the EU institutions.

This study investigates Swedish and Finnish official perception of Russia following the Cold War. This is aimed at categorizing changes in perception of Russia over time and assessing the impact of perception on defense policy. The study uses a comparative method where the contents of three foreign policy reports of Sweden and Finland respectively are analyzed according to dimensions based in image theory. Results show that Swedish and Finnish perceptions of Russia are overall similar between the reports being compared, except for Finnish perception of Russian relative power being significantly greater. Changes in Swedish and Finnish official perception do not clearly correlate with changes in defense policy.

The European bison is a species which is no longer present in the wild fauna of Sweden. Reintroduction has been proposed in several different forums. Reintroduction is an attempt to reestablish a viable population of a species in an area to which it is native. To make such an operation successful in the long run it is essential to know the attitudes of the stakeholders involved. This study has sensed the attitudes towards reintroduction of European bison to Sweden.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of market-led culture, focusing on literature, within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards cooperation between culture and business by comparing the attitudes and ideas expressed in the governmental policy documents from the 1970s with the governmental policy documents from the 1990s. To illuminate, and with an effort to explain, these attitudes and ideas expressed in the documents their political and social context has been studied as well. The theoretical starting point is two political ideologies, and Danish cultural policy researcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of cultural policy in the Nordic countries. The methodological starting point is two variants of analyses that are textual ones.

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse how young men who have participated in a riot describe their life-situations regarding to their relations to the police, their neighbourhood, employment, the background to the riots and how they use hip-hop as a resistance to subordination. The study is conducted through three semi-structured qualitative group interviews and to some extent field studies. The theoretical points of departure are Slavoj Zizeks theory of violence, which is divided into subjective, symbolic and systemic violence, and subcultural theory. The results of the study show that the young men in their daily life are exposed to by both systemic and symbolic violence, feel secure within their neighbourhood and find themselves harassed by the police. A major finding is that the riot primarily can be understood as an act to get society conscious of their situations, while they found themselves marginalised, lacking employment and youth club.

During the last decade millions of people have migrated to Europe. Parallel to this development, we see that many countries are becoming more hostile towards immigration. The success of radical right-wing parties (RHP) has been accredited to natives within the receiving countries turning to RHP to reduce their perceived threat from immigrants. Paradoxically, the RHP-support has also increased significantly among the immigrant population given the common assumption that immigrants are in solidarity with regards to shared experiences of immigration. In this dissertation, I argue for the importance of considering the increased RHP-support amongst immigrants, something that has been neglected in contemporary research.

Over the past twenty years, the cooperation within the European Union (EU) has strengthened and expanded with both more number of Member States and stronger influence on international politics. The unique character of the Union and its ability to enforce peace and humanitarian intervention has attracted attention in political science. This prominent position of the Union is perceived by many scholars who often hold this derived from the Union's influence in international relations. Various terms have been used to define the powers of the Union. The British researcher Ian Manners states that the unique identity of the Union in the international arena is formed by its normative power.  An important policy area within the Union is the environmental cooperation.

Due to the growing population in Stockholm, some of the urban green areas are beingsubjected to exploitation. Hammarbyskogen is an urban forest in the south of Stockholm andis an example of a green area that is planned to be transformed into an urban environment.This paper investigates key qualities and values of an urban forest of Hammarbyskogenvalued by local inhabitants of the neighbourhoods of Hammarbyhöjden and Björkhagen in thesouth of Stockholm. In addition to that, the study seeks to investigate people?s perception ofthe planned development of the forest as well as investigate how these perceptions andqualities are being incorporated into the process of neighbourhood development.Using text analysis, interviews and discussion forums, findings have been made showing thatthe local inhabitants value the urban forest mostly for its ecological and recreational qualities.Regarding perception of the change, people are either positive or negative to the developmentwhich can be explained by people?s experienced sense of place and place attachment of thearea and the forest itself. The study has also shown that the urban planners rely on localinhabitants? view, as well as on expert knowledge during the process of planning.The results of the study contributes to a better understanding of why and for what purposesurban forests are important for the city dwellers..

The purpose of this essay is to examine the Swedish governments discourse on integration of immigrants and thereby examine what social reality it constructs. The aim is to examine how integration and immigrants are constructed within the discourse. The method and theory being used in this essay is discourse theory. As a methodological instrument we use the policy on functional impairment as a comparison. The material being analyzed in this essay is political documents on the strategy on integration policy and the strategy on the policy of functional impairment.

This essay is about Swedish government cultural policy.The premise is that cultural policy is a form of welfarepolicy. The welfare state has changed and this affects theconditions for the cultural policy. Welfare is funded andorganized in different parts of society, in three spheres thatcan be said to represent society as a whole. These spheresare the public sphere, the market and the civil society. Theaim is to analyze how the national cultural policy appearedin the 1970s, compared to how it appears today.