This thesis tackles the subject concerning arguments as a conceptual basis forunderstanding the general strategy of the European Union Commission on issuesconcerning EU-harmonized environmental taxes, politically delicate and intergovernmentaldependent. The Commission's official proposals, communications and other relevant documents are subject to inquiry, where the theoretical bases are that harmonized environmental taxes in the EU is an issue conceived as supported by academic debate, and where the institutional arrangement in relation to an European-national dimension alongside the discursive context, allows meaningfulspace for arguments. The study makes a distinction between substantial (environmental cancerns in itself) and instrumental (other benefits, mostly economic ones) rationality as a foundation in various types of arguments.The study's main findings are that the Commission's official documents over the past 20 years, have been trying to keep a strong image of reason and knowledge based arguments for an EU-wide environmental tax reform. In particular, the types of arguments tend to appeal to the Member States by stressing the instrumental rationality in a European environmental tax reform, indicating the value of good arguments as a part of the Commission's main strategies. In sum, this may have further theoretical suggestions concerning questions of environmental and elimate change policies in a European context or other more general studies relying on theoretical assumptions of logics of argument, legitimacy or studies of motives behind action strategies in politically sensitive issues such as taxation at supranationallevel..

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how municipalities handle planning of megaprojects. The term megaproject here refers to a large project in terms of time, space, investments, numbers of agents etc. With an increasing importance of the phenomena the need of discussing the role local politics could take in this process is important.How do municipalities handle the difficulties that come with megaprojects and what roles do they take in their work with megaprojects? These empirical questions are tested on a case where the municipality of Lund works with the megaproject European Spallation Source (ESS). A theoretical question discusses the megaproject in the light of governance and government, and structures the analysis around these two important terms.Different parts of the municipality handle there part of the planning from there own logic.

This essay analyses text written by a gender equality movement critical of feminism. Themovement is active on the Internet and through this essay I would like to show the tensions in contemporary political debates on gender equality and feminism. 350 blogposts have been deconstructed through discourse theoretical method. In the analyses I have shown the discursive struggle that is going on within the movement in giving meaning to concepts as knowledge, society, gender, politics, feminism and gender equality. The movement is using the technical potential in blogs and common Internet forums tocreate a common political we.

The European Union has been working to promote equality between women and men for a long time. Despite this, Sweden still have a gender segregated labor market where men generally has the leading positions. According to European law the member states shall promote gender equality and to take all appropriate measures. Statutory gender quotas for company boards is one such measure that some of the European member states have implemented in national law. The Swedish law has no provisions governing gender quotas and therefore the purpose of this study is to explain how gender quotas for company boards relate to current law, both of European law and national legislation.

This study is mostly based on previous research, which includes Sub-national actor?s attitudes and regional action towards the European Union. The purpose of the study is to investigate if four Swedish municipalities in Värmland operate internationally towards the European Union and deepen an understanding of their actions. The main research question is: - How can we increase our understanding of municipal action against the European Union? The research questions of this study are answered through qualitative method and semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The purpose of this degree project was to examine which remedies are available to individuals when the State has violated their right to a fair trial as stated in article 6 in the European Convention on Human Rights. Furthermore, the aim was to, in cases where the remedy is determined to money, to clarify the indemnity rates that apply in determining the non-pecuniary damages. The starting point was a review of the European Court practice, domestic Swedish practice and relevant literature.The outcome of the review is that the remedies available to the individual?s disposal can be divided into two categories: primary and secondary remedies. Primary remedies mean compensation not consisting of money, and must be exhausted first.

Fältbiologer in Lund : A study on how the NGO Fältbiologerna has affected environmental politics in the municipality of LundThis paper examines, through interview and literary studies, if the environmental NGO Fältbiologerna has had any impact on the environmental politics of the municipality of Lund. The study is based on a case where Fältbiologerna were protesting against the establishment of two shopping centers near the outskirts of Lund.The study is inconclusive, but provides a few interesting questions for further studies in this subject..

The aim of this master´s thesis is to investigate how Aftonbladet/Sportbladet is describing the Swedish national men team in football during the European Championship years 1992, 2004 and 2008. Reading over 200 articles gave me an excellent overview of the differences and similarities between the three chosen periods. The theoretical framework has three key terms which circulates around the paper. The terms are discourse, stereotype and national identity. Several results are presented and discussed; some are included in this abstract.

This essay deals with the same task that utilitarians have tried to solve for a long time, what is happiness? In the eighteenth-century utilitarians suggested that happiness should be the base for social political decisions. But the lack of definition disposed so that GDP became the measurement of happiness, which proved to be wrong when the unhappiness continued to increase. More than two hundred years later scientists came up with a new definition of happiness and new ways to measure it. And during the last decade economists have taken the discussion to a higher level.So once again we?re dealing with the same old issue, if happiness ought to be the base of social political decisions.

The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.

This thesis has its focuson media portrayal of a large political institution; the European Union. Articles from two nations daily newspapers have been analyzed in order to examine how the European Union is described and framed for their readers. The newspapers that was chosen for this study and from which the material was collected, were the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet the American newspaper The New York Times. The material was taken from three periods of time, and by this the results did not only serve a presentiment on how the media reports about the subject, but also an idea over the media?s coverage character over time.

Every now and then new political ideas appear which creates debate. A current example of political debate is the one which concerns the creation of a feminist political party in Sweden -Feministiskt initiativ. Apparent in the current debate is that there are two existing conflicts of ideas present. The liberal thought of politics of ideas stands against feminism's demand for presence in the political life. And the other, the conflict which concerns the question of where a line between the public and the private spheres should be drawn.

Thirty years of gender equality politicsFrom women?s work to gender mainstreamingThis Bachelor thesis examines how the Swedish state has practiced gender equality as a political project during 1972 until 1999 through the budget bills, using a ?What?s the problem represented to be?? approach aiming to uncover which discourses policies are based on. The method also studies what assumptions underlie policy problems, what is left as unproblematic within the policies and what effects are produced by specific problem representations. A central question for the thesis is what has remained and changed within Swedish gender equality politics. The history of the Swedish welfare state is presented as a background on how gender equality policy has affected the everyday life of women and men.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the prospects for identifying and prosecuting individuals suspected of war crimes, within the process of exclusion from refugee status under article 1F(a) of the 1951 Refugee Convention, and using subsequent mechanisms for extradition or prosecution in international criminal law. A number of principles within human rights law and public international law have been advocated by the UNCHR and several human rights NGOs as necessary for a thorough application of the exclusion clauses; one that takes individual responsibility into account and upholds the aims and purposes of the exclusion clauses. There is a discussion as to whether specialised or accelerated exclusion procedures are justified for reasons of security and efficiency, or if they put the rights of the individual at risk and limit the opportunities for gathering information to support investigation and prosecution of the crime in question. Apart from the instruments of asylum law and procedure that have emerged within the EU harmonisation process, there are no general, binding rules on the procedural aspects of the exclusion clauses. One principle that regulates the consequences for the individual of exclusion from refugee status and decisions on extradition is, however, the principle of non-refoulement.

Until the 1st of January 2003 there were thirteen processed meat products provided with name protection in Sweden. These products had to contain a certain amount of meat and/or a certain amount of fat to be allowed to carry a recognized name. Among these thirteen products, one could find, for example, meat balls (köttbullar), liver pâté (leverpastej), and Falun sausage (Falukorv). While imports of these products started to increase, the system with name protection lost its ability to guarantee a certain quality for all products sold in Sweden and the legislation was removed on December 31st 2002. At the same time, a common definition of meat was adopted in the European Union.