This thesis is intended to respond to the extent to which South African textbooks on the subject of history is linked to the governmental policy documents and whether they are producing and reproducing national identity. The two textbooks are aimed at students in grade 10. Both books were produced in 2008 but published by different publishers.The essay is based on Norman Faircloughs critical discourse theory which has been supplemented by Michael Billings theory Banal Nationalism, which assumes that it is the national words that remind us daily of our homeland that is producing and reproducing national identity.  The survey shows that both textbooks are closely tied to the government policy document for the teaching of history. The textbooks refer to the policy, both explicitly and implicitly. The two textbooks reproduce a common national identity in South Africa based on the discussions taking place in society.

AbstractPaper in political science, C-level, by Lars A Roos, spring semester 2007. Tutor: Susan Marton. ?Policy networks and Nord Stream.?The purpose of this paper is to examine how the government and interest groups have been working together to commonly prevent the building of a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. To do this, a comprehensive question how does the government and the involved interest groups work together in policy networks? has been broken down to three more specific questions: (1) Can the cooperation between the government and the interest groups be placed within the frame of a issue network or a policy community? (2) Has the cooperation between the government and the interest groups contributed to new tools for the government to prevent the gas pipeline? (3) If the answer is yes to the second question then, which are these new tools?My examination is a case study of the policy network that exists around the Swedish actors in the case of the Baltic Sea gas pipeline.

The Swedish road transport sector relies almost completely on fossil fuels. In 2007, as much as 96 percent of the total sales of fuels was made up of petrol and diesel, while at the same time the share of total emissions of greenhouse gases in Sweden that came from road transports amounted to close to 30 per cent. Sweden is by no means worse off than any other European country in these respects. In order to address the questions of high oil dependence and CO2 emissions the European Commission has proposed a reinforcement of the legislative framework, with a 10 percent minimum for the market share of biofuels in 2020. Furthermore, the proposed target is binding for the member states, unlike the current voluntary target of 5.75 percent by 2010. More than doubling the usage of biofuels in only a bit more than a decade will most likely not be possible without policy interventions.

In this essay i argue that there are three different variables that may be able to control the outcome of certain foreign policy choices. These three variables are External Threats, government division and public opinion. The Essay also tries to identify former president Bush motives behind the 2003 Iraqi War. It is partly argued that the three variables had a certain amount of influence on Bush decision making process. But the main focus lies on the motives behind the attack.

The concept of the work-first principle (arbetslinjen) might be considered old, but still serves as the main principle as well as an instrument in the Swedish labour market and social policy today. The original idea was that work and willingness to work was to be rewarded, especially due to a common opposition against the passive receipt of grants. The general definition of work, today, is that it is something desirable that should be achieved and that unemployed primarily will be offered training or work rather than grants and subsidies. When the Moderate party re-launched themselves as Sweden's "workers' party of today", in the beginning of the 2000's, the concept was brought back into the spotlight. In the elections of 2006 and 2010, the labour market was widely debated and become a controversial issue, with the concept of the work-first principle playing a major role.The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and problematize how the concept was presented and explained in the nationwide newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet during the 2010 elections, this in order to increase the understanding of the concept?s contemporary definition and policy implications.

Sustainable development is a concept that has been interpreted in a multitude of ways in different contexts. This essay argues that the discourse of "ecological modernization" has strongly influenced the way in which the concept of ?sustainability? has been constructed in Swedish environmental policy. This interpretation of the concept of sustainability offers the possibility of combining economic growth with ecological sustainability which stands in contrast to the assumptions of Deep Ecology and Green Theory. The aim of this essay is to explore how the concept of sustainability is being formulated in environmental policy both on a national level and in the city of Malmö.Considering these issues in a specific context, this essay focuses on city planning that is as an important instrument to promote urban sustainability both on national and local levels.

Begreppet medarbetarskap är långt ifrån ett välkänt uttryck idag. Det handlar om medarbetarens förhållningssätt till sin arbetsgivare, till sitt arbete och till sina kollegor. Syftet med denna uppsats är för det första att få mer kunskap om begreppets innebörd. För det andra är syftet att få kunskap om hur medarbetare i en kommunal verksamhet uppfattar och praktiserar medarbetarskap utefter en kommunal policy. För det tredje är syftet att ge förslag till hur medarbetarna i undersökningen fortsättningsvis kan bidra till att uppnå ett gott medarbetarskap.

The essay?s main focus has been to investigate and analyze the political actions behind the 2015?s grade compromise; an agreement to introduce grades from the fourth year in primary school. Through a game-theory analysis, mainly based in Leif Lewin?s and Jörgen Herman's research on rationality in politics, this study examined the grade debate  during a fifteen year period. The primary task has thereby been to explain the grade compromise through game-theory.

The aim of this study has been to, through a couple of chosen theories, examine in what way and for what purposes Japan has used its international aid system, How can the nation have been said to have implemented and acted in lines with the philosophies and principles set forth in the ODA declaration. What approaches, concerning positive and negative aid sanctions in the matters of aid to Cambodia and Burma, have been chosen and what have the motives for these choices been. What have been the determining factors of the outcome related to these sanctions - economic, political and/or matters of identity? I have found that a concern for possible decrease in economic profit and investment related areas, combined with a feared loss of political prestige and worsened diplomatic relations to the neighbouring countries in the Asian society, have come to overtrump the notion of advocating democracy, human rights, environmental and anti-militaristic issues..

The main purpose of our paper is to reconstruct the intervention logic of the Swedish government's proposal to introduce a tax deduction for homework help. Furthermore, we also intend to outline the perceived impacts of this tax deduction in the municipality of Linköping. Our material consists of the government bill regarding the tax deduction, the parliamentary debate which preceded it as well as interviews with key people in the municipality of Linköping. In our study and in the light of Matthew Clarke?s theory of neo-liberalism within education policy, we also ask ourselves if the intervention logic behind the tax deduction and its perceived effects can be seen as a manifestation of neo-liberalism.

Sustainable development has become the ideology of the twentieth first century. As an important concept and as a framework of political action, sustainable development can at this point be considered as the very symbol of a paradigm in the international debate over environmental issues and the threats of climate change. But what does the concept of sustainability actually suggest? This thesis uses discourse analysis in order to examine the Swedish learning for sustainable development as to three different discourses on the national arena: the government and the municipals of Piteå and Växjö respectively. When the study foremost concerns official policy documents that contain associations with the study area, the methodology used takes into consideration both language, signs, metaphors and so called story lines.

Sustainable development has become the ideology of the twentieth first century. As an important concept and as a framework of political action, sustainable development can at this point be considered as the very symbol of a paradigm in the international debate over environmental issues and the threats of climate change. But what does the concept of sustainability actually suggest? This thesis uses discourse analysis in order to examine the Swedish learning for sustainable development as to three different discourses on the national arena: the government and the municipals of Piteå and Växjö respectively. When the study foremost concerns official policy documents that contain associations with the study area, the methodology used takes into consideration both language, signs, metaphors and so called story lines.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the ways in which culture and cultural policy are being articulated in the process of Lund's application to become Sweden's European Cultural Capital of 2014.I have used Dorte Skot-Hansen's three cultural political rationalities: the humanistic-, the sociological- and the instrumental rationality, as well as and Jenny Johannisson's extension of those into three cultural-political discourses, as sensitizing concepts in my analysis. The questions raised are: How are the three rationalities/discourses articulated in the chosen central documents and in the process surrounding them? Which themes and arguments dominate the chosen documents?The main objects of my study have been four texts that have been produced in the applicationprocess: a Prestudy, a Plan of action, a Broschure and a Cultural policy. Along with them local political protocols, newspaper articles and other related material have been used. The research method applied was a qualitative eclectical textual analysis with emphasis on the content and on tracing the way the rationalities were expressed in the material.The rationalities were all found to be articulated in the four texts.

Public opinion can be shaped as well as transformed in a number of ways. Government authorities occasionally make use of public information campaigns to educate and steer the public. In this thesis the balance between public and private, the individual and the society is analysed in terms of dimensions of individualism and communitarianism. These dissimilar theories on how the society ought to be constructed can be used when analysing many different policy areas, however, they also pinpoint the controversies seen in the public debate regarding Swedish information policy. Based on this analysis an empirical study identifies what kind of knowledge the state wants the citizens to possess and public information campaigns can be problematic.

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the political debate on the education of newly arrived immigrant pupils at secondary school age. The following issues are under scrutiny:What are the goals, expressed by politicians during the examined periods, for the education of newly arrived pupils?What ideas about education and what educational ideals can be observed in the political debate on the education of newly arrived pupils?Has there been any change, during the examined period, in the policy debate on the education of newly arrived pupils?The research material consists of reports and statements of the Education Committee, as well as a number of parliamentary protocols. Two five-year periods, 1971-1975 and 2006-2010, are studied and compared. All in all, the material consists of 23 documents issued during these periods.