Politicians attract their voters by promising more jobs and investment in education, health and social care. Against this background, I wonder how the situation of artists will be affected by the followingquestions:? What political views on the artist's position in society appeared in propositions of Socialdemokraterna and Moderaterna?? In what way did these propositions influence the conditions of artists?? How have the artists of Värmland been affected by different (Socialdemokraterna and Moderaterna) cultural policies? With my investigation I find out more about the artists' conditions on a national level, but I also investigate the situation in Värmland. By examining policy proposals and reports, I learn more about the issues. I also conduct a survey and three in-depth interviews to obtain opinions from various sources.The respondents are the cultural departments of Värmland and representatives from cultural organizations.What is clear from my research is that politicians differ on some issues, especially those relating to commercialism and artist salaries.

Groups that are often referred to as being dismissed in society in general is by some aspects also considered being so in political arenas. A recent compilation of existing research over structurally based objections of gaining power and positions within Swedish parliamentary politics highlight a lack of research considering whether sexual orientation could be such a discriminatory basis. Using a queer theoretical approach, and drawing on concepts such as heteronormativity and homophobia, the principal aim of this essay is to illuminate aspects of local parliamentary political areas where discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation become relevant. In order to do so six in-depth interviews with homosexual politicians have been conducted. Finding a queer potential in certain ideological parliamentary political environments that enable homosexual politicians to be open about their sexual orientation, it still relies upon the individual to be confident enough not to interpret the political context as homophobic and heteronormative..

This master thesis was written in the purpose to study how the location and access to computers in the physical realm of the public library reflects the undergoing changes in the public libraries role in Swedish society. This study is done in a form of a case study of three small public libraries. All of them were in the process of transforming both their physical and virtual space. The thesis focuses on where in the library the computers are placed and how their location interacts with the libraries main tasks. It also focuses on the analysis of the relationship between these two elements and how that relationship reflects the alteration of the public libraries place in society.

The aim of this thesis is to study how Denmark and the Danish people has been represented in the Swedish press and which images of them that appears. For this purpose I make use of discourse analysis and discourse theory. By analysing three cases were the debate about the Danish migration policy has been scrutinized in Swedish newspapers I seek to discover different ways of looking at the world. The study concentrates on the descriptions made by journalists and others who contribute to the debate in the media. The results show an image of the Danes as a people reluctant to foreigners and restrictive in their politics.

This report is a case study of ?citizen forums? in the municipality of Uppsala. These forums are arranged to make people participate more in local politics. The aim of this study is to find out if the opinions and the wishes coming from the citizens are later involved in the planning process etc made by the authorities. The aim is also to explain why or why not the opinions from the citizens are of any importance.My empirical data come from interviews that I have made with seven different respondents, both politicians and civil servants.

How stakeholders can influence EU in global environmental politics and what consequences and risks this brings are heavily debated. Some scholars argue that civil society are being disenfranchised from the global political arena while others seem to find them having influence in areas where they normally shouldn´t have any influence. In this this paper I will compare the Europan Union policy on GMOs with the process in producing the Water Framework Directive using an analytical framework to study the level of stakeholder influence. Following the framework I will use two types of data namely NGO participation and Goal attainment. The data once summarized will be analyzed by using the methods of process-tracing and counterfactual analysis.My conclusions regarding both cases are that stakeholders, most notably, were able to influence policymaking in EU by using the internal revisions and by networking in smaller partnerships.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..

Who runs the development? A comparative study of the construction of residential buildings in Nacka and Södertälje.The aim of this study is to identify actors involved in the initiation and implementation of residential house construction in two Swedish municipalities. This means who is taking initiative for new residential buildings, who affects the planning process, who finances these new buildings and who builds them. By exploring empiric material from the municipalities of Nacka and Södertälje, the above questions will be answered and by referring to pluralism, growth machine theory and regime theory a link to general theories of political science is made. The results found show that the analysed municipalities have quite different possibilities for acting and that these backgrounds are also important for which actors will take initiative for new residential buildings and which actors will be allowed to state their opinion during the planning process.

Through the collection and analysis of negotiations surrounding the gay magazine Destroyer, the intention of this paper is to identify norms of sexuality within a contemporary sex-radical discourse. These negotiations are collected from interviews with individuals whom, at the time of the inter-view, consider themselves or their politics sex-radical. In order to allow for a more general under-standing of the context in which these negotiations have come about, material about Swedish law is also included in this text, together with the interview material, and serves as a base for analysis through the application of Gayle Rubin?s theory on the hierarchical value system of sexuality.Following, are the main themes throughout the paper: The meaning of the context; Sexualized children; The possibility to (not) participate: differences of power; The decision whether or not to sell the publication and The position of the pedophile and crossgenerational love/sexuality within the LGBTQ community.Key words: sex radicalism, pornography, boy-love, kiddy porn, pedophilia, Destroyer, Gayle Rubin..

The main aim of this study is to examine the development policies of Sweden and the European Union from a postcolonial perspective. Sweden and the European Union are increasingly coming to be viewed as normative powers rather than military powers. So how does the colonial past of the western societies affect the policies of today? Are there any signs of the power structures of the past, and if so, how are these power structures manifested in the development policies of today? Since both Sweden and the European Union have come to be viewed as normative powers they are compared with each other to highlight their similarities and differences. The results of the study shows that both Sweden and the European Union can be seen as carriers of western values and interests.

I have studied how network in a broad sense can affect decision-making. The primary purpose is to see if the political initiative somewhere disappears when it comes to understand the relations between power, actors and politics. The study discuss in a theoretical area that concerns the reliability in neoinstitutionalism to use as an analytical instrument. Some criticism is given to the theoretical standpoint in the sense that there is no power perspective included in the theory. I include a discussion about a concept of power, which I include to the theory.

Since the early 1940s in Sweden, subsidies have been a recurring feature in housing politics.Throughout history, these have been used as a management measure to control theconstruction of housing and to promote the Swedish welfare state. The political parties aretoday disagreeing on how much responsibility the state should carry for citizens housing. Tosolve the conflict, the dwelling has to be defined. Is the dwelling to be considered a socialright, like education and healthcare or is the dwelling to be considered a product for the freemarket, driven by supply and demand?The positive population growth in Stockholm has lead to an increased demand for dwellings.The supply of dwellings has not been growing at the same rate, which has implied higherhousing prices and longer wait for rented apartments.

This thesis examines the relationship between recognition of prior learning and the aim to increase social and ethnical diversity in higher education. Recognition of prior learning is a result of educational politics aiming to broaden social and ethnical recruitment to higher education. By examining if recognition of prior learning rather can, and shall, be seen as part of what Pierre Bourdieu calls educational social reproduction I try to question whether it fulfils education policy goals or not. My results show that persons responsible for recognition of prior learning rather recognise knowledge from prior educational institutions than knowledge gained outside the educational system. Considering this, recognition of prior learning does not quite live up to the aims.

It often occurs that the spirit regarding the future as a conservator is rather pessimistic. Howcome that there are so few employed conservators, when the need for conservation obviouslyis big? What kind of changes is needed for a better status regarding the conservation?This thesis concerns the development of the field of conservation in Sweden. What havehappened, what will happen and, particularly, what should happen? The information wasgathered from literature studies and interviews during the spring of 2010.

This paper takes it points of departure in a gender equality perspective and the perceived paradox between the governmental labour market policy and family policy. The first policy area has the aim to put people to work, whereas the other introduces a reform, vårdnadsbidraget, that point in the opposite direction. Which are the problem representations within the two policy areas and are the problem representations concordant or contradictive? From a constructivist perspective, langue is closely related to power through defining and ascribing meaning to reality. Drawing on political documents, speeches and articles formulated within the government, this paper analyzes problem representations through the use of discourse analysis and feminist political theory.