During a political election the public?s interest in politics and political journalism increases significantly. During the American presidential election in 2012 a big amount of articles on that topic were published in two of Sweden?s largest newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet. Political journalism tends to frame politics as sports, game and scandals rather than focusing on the political issues.

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.

AbstractThe thesis investigates how the European Union promotes stability and security in the Mediterranean region. The aim is to analyse the European Union?s security ambitions with Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the Barcelona Process. An analytical framework with five sectors (military, political, economic, environmental and societal), based on the Copenhagen School?s theories about security sectors and securitization, is used for the analysis.

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.

In 1998 the Swedish Socialist Government initiated a project in order to promote economic growth and to end the discriminating social and ethnic segregation in the greater city regions of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. One of the goals of the project was and still is to promote political participation in 24 of the poorest areas of the three cities. In a quantitative analysis I evaluate whether or not the project so far has been successful in promoting a specific part of political participation, i.e. electoral participation in communal elections. The results of the 24 poor city areas are compared with a group of 14 likewise poor city areas of major swedish cities.According to my hypothesis, general improvements of the socio-economic status of poor city areas ought to generate positive effects on electoral participation in communal elections.

This paper studies the Swedish Alien?s Act regulations regarding individuals in need of international protection. The purpose of the essay is to examine the differences between the three grounds of protection that are found in the Swedish Alien?s Act. Central questions have been whether the origins of protection statuses granted in this act are national or international, as the UN convention relating to the status of refugees and also the progress of the European Union?s Common European Asylum System both are affecting the Swedish legislation.

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.

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.

This paper is a study of a European citizenship in relation to two different perspectives on citizenship ? universalism and pluralism - from a gender perspective. We discuss a universal citizenship with equal rights and a pluralistic citizenship with different rights (groupdifferentiated rights), in relation to women within the European Union.First, we try to decide whether the European citizenship draws towards a universal or pluralistic direction. Secondly, we discuss problems with the universal and the pluralistic citizenship in relation to women in EU. It's not evident which of them best favours women's needs and interests; both are problematic in its own way.

Since the Maastricht Treaty the European Parliament has gained competence in the decision-making process and the Parliament is today one of two decision-making institution, next to the Ministers of Council. In this study the main focus has been to shed light over the negotiation culture within the European Parliament, which up till now has been a neglected research area. This is of great significance because the internal negotiations in the European Parliament decide the external negotiation position with the other institutions.After face-to-face interviews with MEP:s and assistants I have been able to identify certain characteristics to create an understanding of the negotiation culture in Europe's elected Parliament. The negotiations are oriented towards a problems-solving approach and the prevailing apprehension is consensus-based negotiations instead of the existence of political blocks. The committees are stronger than the European party groups, which further encourage negotiation.

The starting point of this thesis is the debate surrounding the two referenda?s in France and the Netherlands in May and June 2005, regarding the proposal of a European constitution. The aim of this study is to analyse how democratic legitimacy and the role of the citizens portrays within the democratic discourse of the European Union. The empirical material is based upon both speeches from the European Commission and news articles from the French newspaper Libération and the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Discourse analysis is used as a theoretical frame of reference combined with models of democracy.

The so called democratic deficit and the lack of legitimacy have been at the core of the EU-debate in the last decades. Low turnouts in the elections for the European parliament and disapproval in the ratification processes of the latest changes of the treaties are examples of the citizens lack of confidence for the EU and continuous integration. In Nice 2000 the heads of the member states governments agreed to try to improve the democratic legitimacy in the EU and initiated a public debate aiming at proposals for changes in the decision making processes in the EU. In July 2001 the commission published a white paper with their view. A fundamental presumption in discourse theory is that language and language usage not just is a way to deliver information about ideas and behaviours.

This thesis explores how the concept of ?legal corruption? manifests itself within the European Investment Bank with a modern approach to the theoretical understanding of anticorruption efforts. This approach conceptualises the idea of complementing theories based on contextual applicability rather than focusing on their competing qualities. The European Investment Bank (EIB), as the world?s largest multilateral lender, is an underexplored yet vital organ of the European Union, which has recently faced criticism for its alleged lack of transparency and dubious application of policy.

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.

This report looks at the possibility of designing a universal adapter for Flat Blade windshield wipers in cooperation with European Automotive Supplier AB.To understand and see if this is possible, a research and an extensive patent search where done. Then to add structure to the project a Ganttschematic were developed. To generate good and solid ideas, different methods for product development were looked upon.When a method was chosen and applied, a series of concepts emerged. Now the focus was to design and construct all the pieces. The desired manufacture procedures were looked upon as well as materials.