This thesis treats the normative power of the European Union and its affect on Macedonia. The main purpose has been to look closer with the use of the application of Ian Manners theory of normative power on the Macedonian case. The focus will be to answer the following questions: Does the European Union act as a normative power in relation to Macedonia, if so, how are these values diffused? Has there been any effect of the spreading of these values? Based on six interviews and the available material of European Union strategies for the Macedonian membership I have attempted to understand to what extent the European Union?s normative power has had an influence in Macedonia. The result of my analysis is confirmation of the European Union as a normative power in Macedonia and the understanding of the methods of application..

The middle ages is a time in our history that is often used as a frame when portraying fantasy on tv. HBOs immensely popular series Game of Thrones could easily be counted as one of these. But to what extent does the creators of the series approach the history of our world while creating their own? The aim of this essay is to analyse a number of characters from the tv- series out of gender- and their place in the social structure and then compare the findings with the image of the middle ages that is given in academic research. By analysing the two released seasons of Game of Thrones the study has shown that there are many similarities between the fictional world and the actual world but that it also differs through choices made by the creators of the series. .

In June 2013 a debate concerning the consumers? right to a label of origin on food packages was held in the Swedish parliament (www, Riksdagen, 2014). The debate was sparked by some food scandals where labelling was falsely used, claiming something that was not true ? the horse-meat scandal, frozen strawberries infected by Hepatitis A, pork sold as beef, etc. These cases were not only wrong in terms of food safety, but also fraudulent and threating consumers? right to fair origin labelling.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the usage of and attitudes towards electronic books among graduate and PhD students at Karlstad University. The main questions are: How do graduate and PhD students use electronic books? To what extent are electronic books used compared to printed books? To find the answers, a user study was carried out at Karlstad University library. The results show that a majority of the respondents are aware of the possibility to use electronic books but prefer to use printed ones if they have to choose. Many respondents also complained about difficulties reading a text on the computer screen.

Children and adolescents without a parent, or other representative, annually come to seek asylum in Sweden. In the work with unaccompanied children there are many actors who have different responsibilities and interaction between these actors is essential to meet the unaccompanied children?s needs. Our purpose with this study was to generate knowledge for professionals for a possible development in the receipt of unaccompanied children. We have conducted a qualitative study, through interviews with eight professionals.

Abstract"Citizen Influence, Forms and Effects - A study of the Resistance Concerning the Establishment of a Juvenile Detention Center in Kristinehamn 2005-2007"Political Science, Johan Utter This essay circles around the concepts of citizenship and the questions if and how citizens in the modern democracy can influence and effect the political decisions made by the governing body on the local level. This is done by the means of a case-study concerning the establishment of an institutional facility for convicted youths in Kristinehamn. The planning of this facility and especially its planned location in Sunneberg aroused a significant negative response from the citizens, demanding a better alternative for the location.The proposition resulted in heavy protests from the citizens as the planned location was viewed as an important recreation area, where the citizens could experience nature first hand, close to the centre of town. As a result, some citizens living close to the planned location, formed a network called "Bevara Sunneberg", whose purpose was to influence the decision-makers and make the citizen?s voices heard.

This essay presents a comparative study of the Swedish articles of war of year 1621 and 1683 which aims to, through analysis, assess the extent of the development in Swedish army legislature during the 17th century and to derive the likely underlying causes for this development. The study is in large comprised by a detailed comparison of the two collections of articles of war in order to determine the practical changes to the legislature that occurred between the years that they came into force..

This work deals with the introductory course for immigrants (Introduktionskurs för invandrare ? IVIK) in the Swedish municipalities. I have studied how the participants in this education are brought into a Swedish understanding of religion, both in the formal SO (social studies) and when it comes to informal transferring of values.I have interviewed teachers and school leaders, interviews which I have then analysed.To understand the educational environment, I have used Antonio Gramsci´s theory of hegemony, as I perceive it, as well as Michel Foucault´s ideas of power and knowledge.I have found that fostering into a ?Swedish? view on religion appears in the education, implicitly as well as explicitly, though the informants tend to have an ambivalent opinion as to how this should be carried out, and to which extent..

The purpose of this study is to establish how a few youngsters have experienced their time in contact families and which, if any, significance their respective ?contact families? has for them today. The study aims to determine the life situation in the youth?s families at the time support through ?contact families? was initiated and the youths? own view of the reasons for this support. We also want to shed light on the meaning that the contact families had on the youth; considering both positive as well as negative meaning.

The purpose of this thesis was to ease the implement of an upcoming intranet for a target group who had used the previous system to an unwanted low extent. After qualitative and quantitative studies I found that the users of the current intranet thought it was hard to navigate and did not understand neither the relevance of it in their own work nor knew which information it contained.Since I did not have access to the new system by the time of the making of this thesis I concentrated on rectifying possible problems with the new system regarding the relevance and the contained information. With basis in a number of theories I produced an information brochure, whose object was to inform about the content and to convince the target group of the relevance and utility of the new intranet. .

This Bachelor?s thesis elucidates the subject of Swedish migration to New Zealand in 1871. Drawing on the work of Anthony Grigg, who has assessed the public opinions regarding the arrival of Scandinavians in 1871-1876, this study aims to highlight the image of Sweden and Swedes conveyed in New Zealand at this time. Through a hermeneutic engagement with newspapers of the day, it is concluded that Swedes in general were being portrayed as industrious, thrifty and well suited for the forestry labour expected of them. It is also shown, however, that Swedes and Sweden to a limited extent were being associated with notorious drinking habits and inferior intellectual abilities.

The aim of this thesis is to get an idea of how service companies set their prices. The method used was a case study approach, which was conducted at three real estate companies. The study showed that when setting their prices, the main aspect is their own costs. However, we have found that several other aspects play a big role when setting prices on services in real estate business such as individual customer behaviour and market competition. We have also found that the real estate companies charge very similar prices.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the potential presence of a relationship between the quality of corporate financial disclosure and the volatility in stock price in the Swedish market. This was carried out by investigating the hypothesis that an accurate annual report with high information quality results in a decrease in volatility. Previous studies have been done with this approach and in some cases the above stated hypothesis was found to be true. Thus, in the absence of a perfect efficient market the level of information quality may to some extent explain the volatility in stock price. However, the result of our study gave no evidence in support of this hypothesis.

Abstract The increased focus on social capital theory has made its way into labour economics. This has led to the creation of a vast literature about the use of networks and informal search methods in the labour-market, a literature that to some extent also deals with immigrants search behaviour and their relatively high unemployment rate. Characteristic for the literature in the area is the lack of analysis of actual networks. Which types of contacts do these networks contain; how are the networks used in the labour-market; and which type of network generates a high amount of social capital. These questions are important for the general understanding of how social capital functions, within the labour-market, but also for the understanding of how immigrants use their networks in order to find themselves jobs.

This thesis uses ten years of data to examine the underlying drivers behind changes in the taxi price, specifically we look at the relationship between the taxi price and changes in the underlying costs. We use a two-step error correction framework to investigate how changes in costs affect prices in the long run as well as in the short run. We also study if the price adjustment process is asymmetric. Furthermore, we examine if price discrimination exists on the taxi market in Stockholm. We find that in the long run the pass-through effect is almost complete, whereas in the short run prices are considerably less sensitive to cost changes.