In his recent article Professor of International Affairs Charles Kupchan claims that Party Politics has become increasingly important for American Foreign Policy since the end of the Cold War. This assertion makes it valuable to assess how the substance of the Foreign Policy differs between the two American parties in various cases and if this difference is characterized by consistency or by change. In this thesis I examine these Party positions in relation to the European Security Policy.In order to examine this I compare the positions of the Democratic and Republican Parties? policy concerning both the European Defence Community (EDC) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The purpose of this thesis is to examine the hypothesis that the Democratic Party to a higher extent than the Republican Party is more concerned to maintain good relations to Europe respectively EU.The results show that there are small indications that my hypothesis concerning the two parties is valid.

 IAS 40 allows two methods of valuation for investment properties, fair value model and cost model. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what drive property companies to disclose their investment properties at fair value. In order to understand their choice, we use accounting choice theory and the three factors this theory describes, information asymmetry, allowing opportunism and agency costs. To answer our purpose, we have from a qualitative approach performed semi-structured interviews with respondents from five of the largest listed property companies in Sweden. The results suggest that firms have chosen the method that is most effective in the valuation of investment properties.

Large-scale land investments is not a new phenomenon, but increasing prices on food and agrofuels have inflated prices on land and has led to an enhanced interest in landinvestments from a range of different actors. The ProSavana project in the Nacala corridor in the Nampula province, northern Mozambique is a large-scale land investment with the purpose of establishing intensive commercial agriculture and is planned to be implemented this year (2013). The project is financed by Brazil and Japan in collaboration with the government of Mozambique. It is not quite clear how large-scale land investments affect the areas they are implemented in and how they can affect the possibilities for sustainable development in these areas. Both opportunities and problems can be observed within the social, economic and ecological dimensions of sustainable development.

This paper examines how individual social welfare officers argue about the conditions in foreign aid. The paper is a qualitative interview study there nine social welfare officers from four local governments have been interviewed.The results are divided into two areas. First, the client's responsibility over their own lives   and self-determination. These two areas are then analyzed separately.The analysis assumes an aletisk hermeneutics where the basis for the attribution of the result is Max Weber's vocation ethics and the more recent research about foreign aid.The conclusion of the study was that social workers believe that the client's responsibility for their own self-sufficiency outweighs supply. Financial assistance must be justified in order to be paid regardless of whether this causes rejection of application for financial aid..

The Swedish stock-market gives investors an opportunity to benefit from the global growth while financing companies invests and contributes to a socio-economic development. Parallel to the ownership of the funds also follows a responsibility as companies in the funds affect society and the environment. The growth of savings in funds, combined with an increased focus on sustainability has developed SRI (socially responsible investment). Therefore it is interesting to examine whether responsibility is an exception, which only concerns SRI-funds or a general principle, which includes the whole Swedish stock-market.The results of the survey makes it clear that all the Swedish major banks actively works to integrate sustainability within the respective bank's business to achieve a more sustainable financial system. Thus concludes the investigation that responsible investments are a general principle on the Swedish mutual stock-market.How responsibility is integrated in fund management differ between the banks.

AbstractThis thesis analyzes the Russian Foreign Policy Doctrine from a broad theoretical perspective, with the aim of describing and explaining the doctrine using a number of theoretical approaches. Russia's foreign policy has undergone substantial changes since Vladimir Putin became president in the year 2000, involving a radical shift in foreign policy objectives and thereby moving away from the more confrontational and distrusting policies which characterized the Boris Jeltsin regime. Putins doctrine, based on pragmatism and seeking partnership and collaboration with the West, can be described as a near revolutionary re-orientation of Russia's foreign policy guidelines, meaning a transformation of the country's self image which implies a rejection of great power status and a search for a new role in the international community.Our thesis has examined explanatory variables such as the domestic political situation in Russia, the contemporary international system and President Vladimir Putins system of beliefs in order to describe and explain the doctrine. Our results show that the doctrine is largely a product of Putins personality, values and beliefs, but also to a large extent a consequence of necessities, namely the poor Russian economy and the fact that the country no longer can withstand an all out conflict with the West involving an excessive arms race.Keywords: Vladimir Putin, pragmatism, realism, domestic politics, radical change..

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and understand the existing factors behind the selection of foreign newspapers in Swedish public libraries. We wanted to study this subject because the political situation in many countries is reflected in the newspapers and can cause difficulties in the selection process. Examples of this can be how to avoid newspapers with political propaganda and with censored content. Another reason for our interest in this subject is based on our prejudice that newspapers from other countries are important for people with foreign background. To answer the question we have conducted qualitative interviews with five persons who are responsible for the purchase of foreign newspapers at four libraries.

The Swedish pulp and paper industry meets higher demand for energy efficiencyi mprovements with increasing energy prices and changes in the Swedish renewable energy certificate system. One action of energy efficiency improvement is by using secondary heat, that otherwise would have been treated as waste heat, for use in a system with lower temperature demands. The aim of this Master´s thesis is to identify possible secondary heat sources in a typical Swedish pulp and paper mill and to investigate what economic benefits the secondary heat will provide when being used for pre heating of wood chips to a kraft digester.The Master´s thesis focuses on three secondary heat sources; dry warm air, warm water and moisture saturated warm air located inside the pulp or paper mill. Two types of kraft digesters are simulated within this study, a typical Scandinavian digester and a modern twin vessel steam phase digester.Due to quality aspects and low temperature level drying is the drying technology with dry warm air rejected. Using warm water in direct contact with wood chips increases the quantity of water to the evaporation plant and thus reduced pulp or paper production and is therefore also rejected.

This study is an attempt to shed light on the importance of fiction as a bridge between different cultures and traditions. The objective of this essay is threefold. First it explores the potentiality of fiction as a communication channel between different cultures, societies and social groups. Secondly, it studies the availability of foreign fiction in Swedish language. And thirdly it tries to approach and analyze the structures and mechanisms behind that availability.

The swedish national environmental goals have different policies and developments connected to them in order to achieve the goals on time, but the implementation of the different policies differ and is hard to evaluate compared to the theoretical background. With this thesis I have chosen to investigate the climate investment programmes results in Östersund compared to its goals with a case study. The different projects within the climate investment programme have reduced the emissions of CO2, but not in the amount that was anticipated and a lot of the projects were within projects that the municipality already was developing or doing. .

Immigrants and children of immigrants are statistically lumped together into a category of "person with foreign background". Blatte is a degrading and violating word when directed at immigrants by Swedes. The aim of my essay was to test to what extent the Swedish term "blatte" could be qualified as an ethnicity in the sense that young people with foreign background born between 1981 and 1984 living in a neighborhood with a high population of people with foreign backgrounds have another ethnicity, besides the Swedish and the "home country ethnicity" to find themselves and their identity in.My method consisted of interviewing six people between the ages of 21 and 24 with different ethnic backgrounds living in a limited area of Malmö, Sweden´s third biggest city. I tested my hypothesis of these people having a third ethnicity to relate to against three schools and from two out of three schools defending my hypothesis, my result is that blatte can not fully be seen as an ethnicity but definitely shows tendencies of becoming one in the future..

This thesis analyzes the expected profitability in land based wind power plants. The expected profitability is calculated on the basis of a wind power project in Vartofta, Falköping. The information required to calculate the expected outcome is then concentrated to this project, which is in this thesis called project Näs. In project Näs they plan to build three wind power plants, with each an effect of 2 MWh. These wind power plants are very capital intensive investments with a long and uncertain payback time.

Turkey has often been described as a cultural and geographical bridge between West and East. When the Islamic AKP came to power in Turkey 2002 many critics feared that the country was going to abandon its former Western allies and strengthen their relations with the Arab world instead. The criticism was intensified when the AKP increased Turkey?s bilateral relations with the Middle East and moved closer to former foe?s like Iran and Syria, at the same time as their long-time friendship with Israel experienced serious crisis. The aim and purpose of this thesis is to describe and explain the change in AKP?s foreign policy towards Israel.The research method is a combination of a qualitative text analysis of Turkey?s speeches in the UN General debate and Jakob Gustavsson?s model for explaining foreign policy change.The results show that the Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated after the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010, particularly regarding diplomatic relations and military agreements.

Uppsatsen undersöker om det finns ett samband mellan företags aktieutdelningar och investeringsverksamhet. Urvalet för studien är de 30 största företagen noterade på Nasdaq OMX Stockholm för perioden 2000-2012. Företagen har valts med hänsyn till börsvärde i syfte att utröna eventuella skillnader för företagsstorlek samt branschtillhörighet. Studien finner negativa signifikanta samband mellan utdelningsandelen och investeringsverksamheten för studiens små företag samt för företag inom industrisektorn..

The background of this study is the fact that it nowadays is more common to grow wheat after wheat. Usually we plow every autumn to remove the straw, and we wanted to study the effect of alternative methods to do it. We have done this experiment to answer the question if no tillage is better than conventional plowing. The results of the field experiment indicate that there is a link between plant establishment and the choice of equipment, but also a higher weed pressure in experimental plots with only ground tillage. The equipments which left much straw on the top of the ground the problems with fungi were more severe.