There are changes in Sweden's Foreign Policy, and Sweden is no longer a non-aligned and neutral nation. Sweden has expressed a willingness to actively participate in creating peace and stability in the world by giving and receiving military assistance in case of war, crisis or disaster. This is described as complete turnaround in Swedish policy compared to the neutrality and non-alignment during the Cold war.However new research shows that defence cooperation is not new in the Nordic region. Sweden cooperated secretly with Denmark and Norway, two NATO countries, about co-operative defence of Scandinavia during the Cold War.Is our historical picture wrong and what we perceive as new and revolutionized not particularly new? Is today's open Nordic defence cooperation a continuation of what was done in secret during the Cold War? The essay investigates and compares two different Swedish defence cooperation?s where one was previously secret and the other is open.

This study aims at contributing to the studies of political implementation. The theory of implementation claims that local implementation that meets the demands of national policies is close to none existing. By examining the implementation of industrial policy in two Swedish municipalities that differs in location, prosperity and political believes I am putting the theory to the test. If the test were to show that the implementation is rather well executed in these two cases, where the risk of failure is great, the questions about whether the theory is valid or not will rise.By interviewing the two local government employees in charge of the work with industrial policy, and studying their strategic documents I got my answers. This by looking at their work but also their attitudes towards the national policy in terms of understanding the policy, being able to work with it, and wanting to work with it.

The aim of this study is to explore local cultural policy documents in the municipality of Gothenburg Sweden, and, more specifically, to investigate the concepts of cultural planning and instrumental cultural policy. Cultural planning is in this thesis seen as a result of an instrumental view of cultural policy. The theoretical framework consists of the theories of Danish cultural policy researcher Dorte Skot-Hansen. She describes cultural policy in urban areas as founded in motives such as economy, social issues, entertaining and enlightenment. A qualitative text analysis is performed in order to see if the purpose of the cultural policies is to focus on cultural planning as formulated in the document Kulturpolitisk strategi ? version 1.0, adopted by the city council in 1998.

Fenomenet med nationella riskbedömningar är relativt nytt i Europa. Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap överlämnade den allra första nationella riskbedömningen till regeringen år 2013. Syftet i uppsatsen är att undersöka om man genom ett policy transfer-perspektiv på nationella riskbedömningar kan se några indikatorer som hindrar policy transfer inom riskområdet. En första, översiktlig undersökning görs genom att jämföra de risker man lyfter fram i sju europeiska nationella riskbedömningar för att se om man kan tyda något mönster. Uppsatsen tog avstamp ur antagandet att geografisk närhet och liknande interna förutsättningar kunde tänkas innebära att man även har en liknande syn på risker som länder i ens närområde.

The aim of this study is to analyse the Swedish state´s ambition in achieving equality among its citizens. By studying the new urban policy introduced by the government in 1998 from a theoretical perspective the purpose of this essay is to understand the ideational dimensions in this policy project, in regard to established understandings about equality.The theoretical framework on which this study is based consists of two different parts. The first presents dominating models on welfare states, mainly focusing on the socialdemocratic welfare state. The second introduces influential theoretical views on equality, primarily discussing universalism and a differentiated equality view. It also presents theoretical views on how to understand the relationship between the state an its citizens.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to study various views of sponsorship in relation to public libraries as found within three cultural policy documents. The main objective is to discover which ideas are considered relevant in the partnership between the Swedish retail chain, Åhléns, and the children?s public library, ?Room for Children? (Rum för Barn). In 2005, Åhléns provided SEK3.14 million in sponsorship to ?Room for Children? at Kulturhuset in Stockholm.

This essay revolves around partnerships established between local authorities and civil society to promote integration in segregated urban areas. The main focus is on who is active in formulating the local integration policy in these partnerships. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with representatives from the local public administration and from different parts of civil society in Rosengård and Södra innerstaden in Malmö. The conclusion is that local authorities to a large extent decide the content of integration policy. The authorities, in having the major responsibility of the integration projects, decide what parts of civil society to involve and what projects will promote integration.

Många av dagens fredsfrämjande insatser genomförs i insatsområden som åtminstone vid en första anblick tycks vara av litet geopolitiskt eller ekonomiskt intresse för de intervenerande staterna. För svenskt vidkommande motiveras ibland Sveriges engagemang i exempelvis Afghanistan med att den terrorism och drogproduktion som härrör därifrån hotar och påverkar även människor i Sverige. Ytterligare en möjlig motivering har att göra med spridningsrisken; för att minska risken för spridning av en konflikt utanför det ursprungliga konfliktområdet intervenerar utomstående stater. Men vilken bild av den svenska statens motiv för att engagera Försvarsmakten i fredsfrämjande internationella insatser målas upp i riksdagsdebatten? Är argumenteringen rationell och visar de motiv som förs fram att Sverige faktiskt gynnas av att delta, eller grundar sig viljan att hjälpa till i att den svenska staten anser sig vara moraliskt förpliktigad att ingripa, om förmågan finns, då mänskliga rättigheter kränks? Föreliggande uppsats syftar till att klarlägga hur de två största, blockpolitiskt åtskilda riksdagspartierna motiverade besluten att deltaga i de internationella insatserna i Afghanistan och Libyen.

This study aimed to explore the perceived role and mandate of civil servants employed in municipalities in Kronoberg county. The study aimed to answer the question whether civil servants engaged in municipal economics have different perspectives on their mandate and role based on how said civil servants implement and manage policy tools available in Swedish municipalities. The study aimed to through policy tools theory explain how civil servants through four categories view the policy tools employed in the municipality. The study is based on the reasoning that policy tools influences exercise of authority that in turn influences view on policy tools. In order to study civil servants perspective on perceived mandate and role interviews were conducted with a sample of civil servants from each of the eight municipalities in Kronoberg county.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att underlätta för små och medelstora svenska företag som planerar en affärsetablering i Kina genom att ge ökad kunskap om vad en nätverksagent kan erbjuda samt vilka problem som är vanligt förekommande när företag vill etablera sig i Kina. Utöver detta syftar uppsatsen till att ge ett teoretiskt bidrag till nätverksagentens möjliga funktion vid foreign market entry Slutligen vill vi även bidra med eventuella rekommendationer till både företagen och nätverksagenterna om vad de kan behöva tänka på och förbättra för att lättare kunna uppnå sina mål..

Policy documents in the public library field, such as the library legislation, local political goals and intra-library plan documents, often include ambitious but ambiguous formulations. This two years master?s thesis examines the relationship between four policy documents and library practice in a local context. The theoretical framework is inspired by a sociocultural theory developed by the Swedish professor of pedagogical psychology Roger Säljö. The theory emphasizes the importance of context to learning and development.The thesis? method is a case study.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine ideas used to legitimate Swedish digital libraries, with a focus on the cultural heritage, their relation to cultural policy and an eventual crisis within the latter. Which ideas are linked to digitalisation? How do the arguments for creating digital libraries differ between central actors? How do the digital libraries relate to cultural policy and an eventual legitimacy crisis? These are the questions this thesis seeks to answer. The theoretical starting-point consists of a legitimacy discussion and its connection to Swedish cultural policy. The method used is idea analysis.

Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

This paper discuss the possibilities to transfer the Danish labour market policy, called flexicurity, to Sweden. There are two main purposes of this essay. The first purpose is to discuss the reasons why the Danish labour market policy could be interesting for Sweden. The second purpose is to investigate which obstacles that might occur during the transfer. For guidance I have used two startingpoints which highlights the Danish flexicurity's pros and cons.

During 2008 we experienced an expansion of large scale investments in foreign farmland. This increasing trend has become a political hot-spot, but there is not much research available within the field. Due to a lack of research it remains a vital task to outline the potential effects of this trend. Drawing on existing ideas from some of the main actors within the field, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The World Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the latest G8 summit on agriculture, four main purposes are set out for this paper. First, to outline some of the underlying mechanisms behind the trend is considered crucial for the understanding of the nature of these investments.