AbstractSince democracy was developed in the ancient Greece it has come to be used within a small city state, within the national state and as today used within a bigger perspective. After the end of the second world war political leaders wanted to make sure that there would never be a war between European countries again. Now, about 60 years later this type of cooperation now involves 27 of the European countries and goes under the name of the Euroapean Union. This means that democracy is no longer used just within the nation state, but within a big organisation that is responsible for almost 500 million Europeans lives. This also means that the European Union need to make some institutional reforms to be able to handle all the future challenges.

ABSTRACTThe EU as a normative power in Belarus ? a critical caseBy Anna JohnssonUniversity of VäxjöSchool of Social SciencesSpring semester 2007The European Union?s identity is a much debated topic. Some say it?s a unique actor in the international arena because of the different tools it has at its disposal. Ian Manners claims that the EU is what he calls a normative power.

Within the political science research it is common to examine the effects on the national parliaments caused by European integration. In this Bachelor Thesis the aim is instead to show what involvement of the national parliaments in the European Union implicates to the European integration process.The object of examination is the introduction of the parliaments as supervisors of draft legislative acts, this is also known as ?the Early Warning Mechanism?, through the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. An analysis of answers from the national parliaments in the tests of three pilot cases, conducted by the COSAC, is made with help of Institutional theory and an Europeanization perspective.The main findings show that the mechanism of early warning probably will not become an obstacle for continued European integration, but it could slow down the process in some areas. Most probably though is that the mechanism forces the national parliaments to adapt and to be better equipped to react at events taking place at the European level.

Abstract: Hightech EU/Japan ? a research about European hightech companies? interest in establishing business on the Japanese market with the help from a middleman. Subject: Marketing. Problem: The Japanese market is highly developed and therefore interesting for foreign companies. The Japanese culture is very different from the European and this together with the long distance creates problems for European hightech companies to compete on the Japanese market.

This bachelor thesis in European studies examines the perceived effects ofEuropeanization among officers, soldiers and seamen in the Swedish Armed Forces(SAF) through the use of semi-structured respondent interviews. The study focuses onchange in rules, values, identity and organizational changes.The study shows the most important parts of what is believed to be the biggestfactors behind the major change in the SAF during the last 20 years. The biggestfactors are shown to be the fall of the Warsaw pact and the increasing influence ofNATO in Europe. Interviews show that staff within the SAF has difficultiesseparating change coming from the EU and the above-mentioned factors, partially dueto the fact that most members of the European union are also part of NATO. Although in some areas, such as the completion of the Nordic Battlegroup, EU has played an important role and presents itself as a major factor in the ongoing change of the SAF..

In 1995 something happened that radically changed the European football. This was the arrival of the Bosman ruling, a decision made by the European Court of Justice which meant that players with an expired contract could change clubs for free and that the European Union's internal market including the free movement of labour was now a part of the European football. The effects of theBosman ruling are wildly discussed today. Many powerful people in the European football mean that football now is less competitive than before, that there are a small amount of teams that actually have the ability to win any trophies. This bachelor thesis is studying the effects of the competitive forces in football after the Bosman ruling as a case of the free movement in the European Union.

Abstract    The purpose of my essay is to understand how language and identity interact in individuals with an immigrant backgrounds? My main focus is rooted in the individual`s identity and my questions are:-        How is the informants talkning about the importance of being able to make themselves understood with the language?-        How do they talk about the creation of identity?-        How does language and identity be linked in their discourse about language and identity?   To accomplish this and to answer my questions I have chosen to use a qualitative method based of interviews. I believe that this method is the most appropriate in order to provide answers to my questions. I interviewed four people who have lived in Sweden between 3-6 years. Two of  the  informants are from Latvia and speak fluent swedish, the two other informants come from Chile and are currently learning swedish.

There are intense discussions within the European Union regarding the introduction of a European Public Prosecutor (EPP). The proposed EPP will have jurisdiction in the entire union, and will work under a unified set of rules of procedure. These procedural rules will differ from the Swedish rules of criminal procedure, especially regarding the handling of illegal evidence. The thesis describes the European legal history, especially regarding criminal procedure. The thesis also describes what the purposes and principals are in Swedish criminal procedural law, and the purposes and principals in the proposed European criminal procedural law.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The purpose of this study is to examine how some people who do not want children construct their identity in a context where children is the norm. The study therefore focuses on how they legitimate and present their identity in this context. 4 women and 2 men with the intention to remain childless have therefore been interviewed, and from these interviews I analyze and describe how intentional childless people construct their identity. My theoretical framework is built up by discourse psychology and gender/heterosexual hegemony theories. The thesis shows that it is hard for the intentional childless to construct their identity as once and for all given, the identity is constructed as a ?norm? against the norm, as well as affected by the norm.

The purpose of this study was to try to develop a better understanding of the process that being a member in a new religious movement might imply, and to find out how the identity of a defector changes from the time upon entering the movement, while they are within the movement and after leaving the movement. We also wanted to examine what kind of help and support would be needed around a defection. The study focuses on identity and our questions were: How does the defector describe him/herself and his/her identity before joining the new religious movement until the period after defecting? What demand for support and help may there be when defecting from new religious movement? The theoretical starting point was The Identity Theory, Structural Role Theory and KASAM. A qualitative method was used and four defectors from new religious movements were interviewed.

This joint study has researched the use of non-European history in a Swedish textbook for the High School course History 1a1 as well as internet based material regarding the same issue. The aim of this study was to clarify the use of non-European history in regards to the Eurocentric theory.As for the textbook analysis the purpose was to research what non-European history was mentioned in the material with regards to geographical location and the events that were mentioned, as well as to study how much non-European history was included in the material compared to European or Western history.The study of internet based material aimed to show what kind of teaching material could be found on internet based databases by and for teachers. The study aimed to show how well the material handled non-European history, as well as to what degree the material used European perspectives when dealing with non-European events and geographical areas.In our thesis we have created our own definition of the theory regarding eurocentrism. The method used was a combination of a quantitative and a qualitative discourse analysis of the texts.Our results showed that the textbook was overwhelmingly Eurocentric, not only giving vastly more focus to the European parts of world history, but also using European perspectives and ideals to describe non-European events and areas. The internet based material, on the other hand, proved more diverse and less biased, but also more difficult to find and less plentiful.Our conclusion, then, is that teachers have to choose between the risk of letting their students develop a severely limited and heavily Eurocentric view of the world, and the additional workload required to find and organize non-textbook material to broaden their students horizons.We hope our study will contribute to the discussion of the place of Eurocentrism in today?s global and multicultural society..

This essay in how to create a brand identity is a result of a case study of the Spanish mobilephone company Xfera and their new brand ?Yoigo?. Our object was to identify the critical variables in the process of building a brand identity. To achieve this we collected data about the company through several interviews with respondents with good insight in the company. The critical variables that we obtained by analyzing the interviews are presented in an empirical driven model.

The aim of this study is to look at the identity of the public library, and to examine one way to make the identity of a specific library strong. PUNKTmedis is a newly opened library in Stockholm, aimed solely at people between 13-19. The question to be answered was: How can it affect the image of the public librarys identity when you aim the activity towards a specific user group? To answer this question, the qualitative method of case-study was used. Five interviews were carried out, with representatives from three different groups: users, politicians and librarians.

The main purpose of this study is to examine if variations in voter turnout for the European Parliament elections in each member state is affected by the rate of national party polarization on the EU-dimension of party politics. The theoretical background assumes that a high level of polarization generates higher voter turnout since more alternatives are presented to the electorate. This makes it easier for the electorate to find a party that represents their preferences. This will, in turn, increase the likelihood that they will participate in the election.This study uses a research design based on a quantitative analysis with data from each member state, except those with compulsory voting, in the European Parliament elections of 2004 and 2009. The results of the analysis indicate a relationship between high levels of party polarization and lower turnout in the European Parliament election.