AbstractUniversity of Växjö, School of Social SciencesCourse: PO 5363, Political Science 41-60Title: US and UN, cooperation or conflict?Author: Charlotta BjuvlingSupervisor: Lennart BergfeldtDate: Autumn 2007The international society changed a great deal after the end of the cold war. It gave the United Nations a new oppertunity to act after the deadlock during the war, and it gave the United States a new hegemone role in the world politics. The aim of this paper is to investigate wheter the United States foreign policy action have been accordence to a realistic way of thinking since the end of the cold war. I will do this with the help of my research questions:? Have the United States followed the guidelines of the United Nations in their foreign policy?? Are there signs that show of a change, either towards more or less cooperation between United Nations and the United States?To answer these questions I will use the theories realism and Hedley Bulls concepts of fairness and his ideas of an international system in his book ?An Anarchical Society?.

In 1998 Sweden accepted the Treaty of Amsterdam which contained a development of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) towards a European security and defense policy (ESDP). This thesis aims at studying the decision making process behind the Swedish foreign policy decision to further develop its security policy within the European Union. The purpose is to explain which factors and conditions that did affect and influence the Swedish foreign policy decision. The research applies foreign policy analysis, a theoretical perspective that analyzes both domestic and international conditions using different levels of analysis. The research methods being used has been qualitative as well as quantitative, complemented by interviews, since the research is a process tracing case study.The thesis conclusion is that the Swedish decision is explained by several factors.

With the increased significance of information technology (IT) in today?s society the term ?electronic democracy? (e-democracy) has gained much importance within the democracy theory. Naturally, there are several competing views on how the technology should be used for democratic purpose. One aspect of this is the somewhat revitalized claim for direct democracy in accordance with the hypothetical opportunity to finally realize it as a democratic system. The ideal of direct democracy combined with the almost total credence in the potential of technology constitute the idea of a ?push-button democracy?.

When foreign children first arrive to Sweden, the first contact they get with the local society is through primary school. Therefore, the primary school have the fundamental role to attend the foreign and their families.The teacher plan for primary schools (Lpfö98) make it very clear that children with foreign background are given the full support in their development in a multicultural society. The aim of this report is to investigate how two pre-school teachers and one school counselors? work with these newly arrived children in preschool to support their integration in the preschool.As the role of the primary school is so vital for children with foreign background in this new society, I would therefore like to take the opportunity to explore and show how meaningful the role is of teachers to integrate these children into the Swedish primary schools.In this report, the theory part is treated based on integration and on the schools suspension to multicultural backgrounds. For this report, I even stress the support of the primary school and how they meet the foreign children and their families.

The Swedish rules for marrying in Sweden are different for swedish citizens and foreigners. A swedish citizen has to have permission from"Länsstyrelsen"to marry before the age of 18 but a foreigner may marry without permission at an age of 15, unless a higher age is required by the foreign law. The main question in this essay is if the swedish international law concerning the age of marriage is compatible with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and/or the Swedish Constitution. The comparison is based on mainly two questions: Primarily the Swedish international law is discussed concerning which marrying age is good for the child. Thereafter it is discussed whether it is discriminating to have different marrying ages for swedish and foreign citizens.

The subsidiary company of Swedish Match AB called Intermatch Sweden AB has submitted a claim to RegR for them to change the notification of SRN, regarding the company?s settlement of foreign tax. To make the matter clear Intermatch Sweden AB has pointed out that they consider deductions for depreciations not to have an effect on the foreign income when the amount to settle is calculated. The intention with this study is to analyse the legal situation regarding how the level of the settlement is affected by the consolidated costs. Such as additional depreciations regulated in the law ?Settlements of foreign tax?.

There is a lot of research made on second language (L2) learning (Jesney, 2004). However the relationship between foreign accent, intelligibility and acoustics within pronunciation tutoring is quite an unresearched area (Thorén, 2008). The aim of the study was to analyze how a course in Swedish pronunciation affected foreign accent, intelligibility and acoustics among L2-learners of Swedish. A total of 41 people participated in the study: 16 L2-learners, 4 native Swedish speakers consisting a control group and 21 perceptual assessors with Swedish as native language. The L2-learners foreign accent and intelligibility were rated by the listeners before and after a course in Swedish pronunciation on an eight-point Likert-scale.

The overall purpose of this essay was to provide a better understanding of the importance of discretion for social workers in direct social services. To answer the purpose three questions were formulated: (1) How do social workers define and describe their discretion and their ability to independently accomplish their work? (2) How do social workers experience that workplace organization, policies and economic conditions interact with their discretion and (3) How do social workers experience that the interaction with the client can affect how they use their discretion in the individual case? The method used was qualitative interviews. The theoretical framework was Michael Lipskys (1980) Street-level bureaucracy and the four themes organization, professional role, skills and interaction.The results showed that the respondents, although they did not consider themselves to be affected by the economy still adapted to budget restrictions when they said that they were cost conscious in their work. This adjustment to budget framework could possibly be what made them not feel limited in their work.

This thesis aims to explain the emergence of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, and its institutional shaping, by using elements of Neofunctionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism.Using Neofunctionalism, the Common Foreign and Security Policy can be explained both as a side-effect of Europe's economic integration, and as a way to maintain the former and the European Union's position as an economic superpower. The institutional shaping is a result of lack of convergence between important national interests. Therefore it rests on a firm intergovernmental base, with rigorously limited use of supranational decision-making.For Liberal Intergovernmentalism, geopolitics and ideology, and to a certain level log-rolling, have played important roles. The reunification of Germany convinced France to form an alliance between the two countries. France, determined to achieve an economic and monetary union, thus offered Germany a political union, including a Common Foreign and Security Policy on intergovernmental terms.

In the social sciences, geopolitical theory is used in order to analyze states actions and commitments when it comes to foreign policy. This thesis develops a new understanding of geopolitical theory. Firstly, the development and application of geopolitical theory, from its foundations in the early twentieth century to contemporary geopolitical studies is discussed. Secondly a revised understanding of the variables integrated in the concept and how it can be operationalized as an analytical tool is presented and tested empirically.The critical assessment of the research field of geopolitical theory tells us that six different geopolitical perspectives have been considered the most influential (room, strategy, power projection, identity, affiliation and governance) when it comes to analyzing state action. This model is applied as an analytical tool and thus tested on a single case.

The aim of this paper is to try to explain how specific, foreign policy decisions are made, and why one state decides to use violence against another state. A qualitative method is used, and text and documents are analysed. The two theoretical points of departure are central within foreign policy analysis: realism´s theories on external threats and constructivism´s theories on ideas´ policy influence. The empirical case chosen is the US decision to use military violence against Iraq. The paper investigates whether the real threat from Saddam Hussein´s Iraq was the cause of the American military attacks, or whether the ideas of leading politicians in the USA were decisive for the decision to invade the country.

Identification and analysis of key success factors for an entrepreneurial firm to achieve leverage when establishing on a foreign market with a premium consumer product..

Sex equality law within the European Union is well developed and has since the Rome Treaty, given rise to several directives and other judicial acts on this matter of community law. The concepts of direct and indirect discrimination emerge from the general principles of Equal pay and Equal treatment and have been codified and amended several times until present.The lasts years, authors within the field of Equality Law has been pointing out that there is a common desire for simplification of discrimination law in Europe. The question has arisen whether this simplification could be implemented trough the introduction of a general justification defence for direct sex discrimination.The concept of direct sex discrimination - when a person of one gender is treated less favourably, on the grounds of gender, than a person of the other gender would be treated in similar circumstances - leaves no possibilities for such justification today. Indirect sex discrimination ? which arises from the equal application of neutral rules that shows an adverse impact on one group ? can be justified if the rule answers to true requirements of the job.Does the proposition that direct discrimination should be justified find support in the inconsistency of the present legislation? This paper will examine this and other questions concerning the wish for a general justification defence through studies of case law from the European Court of Justice as well as differing opinions from authors within the field of equality law..

Girls with foreign background is the group that is most left outside the sports movement in Sweden and the ones with the least sports habit. Sports assumed to provide an arena for integration that these girls are being left outside from. The Swedish sports movement has adapted the conditions for them as a way to encourage them to participate in sports, but there are still lots of girls with foreign background that stands outside the sports movement. One input that the Swedish National Association has done for children and young adults is to adopt the Drive-in-sport, which can work as an entrance to the sports movement. The aim of the study is therefore to investigate which barriers, motivators and requests girls in Sweden with foreign background have to participate in Drive-in-sports.

This essay tries to explain how Swedish donor organisations are working with democracy in foreign aid. Three case studies of Sida, LO-TCO Biståndsnämnd and Rädda Barnen aims to give an overview of Swedish donor organisations, their work with democracy aid, evaluation and the problems with foreign aid. With Carothers theory of democracy aiding I analyse the success of Swedish democracy promotion, how civil society contributes to democratizaion and how democracy is measured.I find that Swedish democracy aid overall is successful due to a wider perspective of the term democracy. When democracy involves human rights it gives the donor a possibility to work with democracy promotion in a more extensive area and especially in the civil society. The essay stresses the importance of being subjective when evaluating and that one have to focus on the definition of democracy in each specific case.