This paper investigates how Swedish upper secondary school students relate to the financial support available from the Swedish state of education. It also looks at the attitudes of such students to the new CSN[1]truancy rules as they apply to school politics.Is there a difference in students? attitude to these truancy rules and does that difference depend on the students? socio-economic standard, whether they come from a wealthy background or a marginalised society or whether they are ethnic Swedish? Does this in any way affect the attitudes of the students?This financial support is only paid to those students who do not skip school. If they lose their right to this contribution because of truancy, their parents will also forfeit the right to the financial subsidies to which they may be entitled. Naturally, this may affect students in different ways, depending on what kind of financial situation their family is in.Do some students go to school out of their own financial interest or out of that of their parents? Through focus-group interviews, students have expressed their opinions, told about their experiences and stated their attitudes with regards to these matters.

The following thesis in library- and information science is a qualitative, comparative analysis of the relationship between the minority populations in Sweden and Finland and the library. The objective with the thesis is to investigate how the state is working to promote minority groups at the library and what lead to today?s situation. The investigation starts, as regards time, with the European charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which was published 1992 and ends with the establishment of the Swedish library law 2014. The method that is used will be a comparative analysis that aims to compare Sweden and Finland.

During Sweden's economic crisis in the early 1990s a governmental committe of prominent economic and political experts were gathered to produce an analysis of and suggestions to the solution of that crisis. The committe produced a report that became widely commented in the media and in parliment. The report anc the reception of it gives us insights in how the boundaries between social science and politics are created an how new fields of expertise is added to a science. This thesis uses a constructivist approach to explore how the techniques of the economic science were made into credible means of knowöedge production outside of the field where it traditionally holds epistemological authority. Working from the assumption that language does things to the objects that it describes I claim that the episode investigated in this thesis was shaped by the committee's ability to define the economic crissi and thus making it into a knowable object.

In this thesis I have used post-colonial theory to analyze the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group located in Xinjiang province in the Northwest of China, and their identity shaping process in relation to the dominating Han Chinese. I have analyzed the possibilities to use the power perspectives in post-colonial theory, especially Edward Said's Orientalism and the creation of the Other in a new context, where the main focus is on the Uyghurs through the eyes of Han Chinese. I have argued that Han Chinese, with colonial tendencies, have created two generalizing pictures of the Uyghurs; one romantic picture to use as an exotic tourist attraction and one threatening picture that portray Uyghurs as Islamic terrorists to win support in international politics. The thesis is a qualitative single case study with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding for the Uyghurs as well as examine possibilities of widening the analyze areas for post-colonialism. My conclusion is that the power perspectives in post-colonial theory are usable implements also for non-western contexts and in this case function as a way to understand the identity shaping process for the Uyghurs and their relation to Han Chinese..

According to many scholars America's soft power is in decline, a power resource whose importance has been increasing in world politics. This makes it interesting to examine if there is a difference between how Democratic and Republican administrations wield their soft power.This thesis is a hypothesis-testing study and the purpose is to test the hypothesis that Democratic administrations, to a greater extent than Republican, can create, utilize and defend soft power. My thesis is based on Joseph Nye's theory of soft power and the focus of this study is the aspects of the foreign policy resources. In order to measure this concept I have made my own operationalization where five different indicators serve as my guidance. I use the method of least likely-cases to select and motivate the administrations being tested, which gives me a comparative study of the Democratic administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton and the Republican administration of George H.

Den 8 augusti 1995 tog USA:s president Bill Clinton ett beslut att försöka skapa fred i Bosnien. Beslutet skulle komma att ha betydelse för USA:s fortsatta roll i europeisk politik efter kalla kriget. Vi argumenterar för hur beslutet kan ses som ett strategiskt val men också för hur självständiga organisationers möjligheter och begränsningar samt viljestarka individer gjorde beslutet möjligt.Vi använder oss av Graham Allisons tre modeller: rational actor, organizational behavior och governmental politics för att analysera Clintons beslut. Tillsammans med tillgänglig kritik av dessa modeller hittar vi både för- och nackdelar med Allisons ansatser i fallet Bosnien och kommer fram till att modellernas interrelation både underlättar och försvårar vårt fall. Vi hittar också svårigheter med att använda modell 1 i en unipolär värld.Slutsatsen är att alla tre modellerna krävs för att fullständigt förstå varför USA agerade som de gjorde i slutfasen av Bosnienkriget..

In this research paper I have interpreted and analysed how it is possible for a Radical Right Populist Party such as FPÖ (The Freedom Party) to obtain electoral success in the end of the last millennium. In 1999 they were elected into the national legislative parliament with 26.9% of the votes and participated in the Shüssel government from February 2000. I believe this is an extreme case study and my method is the so called Disciplined-configurative case study. I?ve conducted this study by using earlier published research and than dividing these old theories into to three analytical categories.

When the Tsunami occurred on Boxing Day 2004 it caused a major stress upon the governmental agencies in not only the affected areas but also in states that had a large number of citizens in the affected area. The governmental agencies were not prepared for the demands from the citizenry in these countries to deal with rescue and crisis management in areas situated halfway around the globe. This thesis main purpose is to research what the causal mechanisms of Sweden?s and Finland?s crisis management were through the method of process tracing. Taking its theoretical stance in Allison?s & Zelikow?s three models of decision making, the thesis compares the course of events of the first two critical days in Sweden and Finland to establish what mistakes were made during this critical period.

The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

The purpose with the essay is to point out how the main differences of the Helsinkicommission, Helcom and Baltic 21 can be explained from a general perspective and with a specific focus on two of their ongoing projects: Baltic 21 Lighthouse projects and The Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Plan. And to investigate how the organisations them selves formulates the purpose of the two projects. This will be an indication on why environmental problems are handled with in a traditional matter although the rhetoric of the environmental politics is permeated by the concept of Sustainable Development.This dilemma is being treated from the theoretical approaches of Ecological Modernisation and Sustainable Development and linked to how these organisations actually carried out their work and how the historical heritage have a role to play in this complex of problems. The results of the essay shows that concrete differences exists in the way that the two organisations are constructed and how their ongoing projects are designed and formulated. These differences can be derived to the theoretical platforms Ecological Modernisation and Sustainable Development and be explained by in witch political context the organisations were created.

The United Nations is an important organization when it comes to international peace and security. Recent events in international politics, however, have brought about a widespread concern about the abilities of the organization. Powerful states have shosen to act outside of the organization to achieve their goals. They have furthermore a disproportionate influence on the decision-making body, the Security Council.The aim of this essay is to examine wheather UN can function productively as keeper of the international peace and security in the political climate of today, and to find out to what extent the powerful states harm the organization. I use a theoretical article, concerning states relations to international organisations, to analyse the acts of powerful states in UN.

Shelters and Nuclear weaponsA discourse analysis of the Swedish defense and civil defense debate during the Cold warSweden during the Cold War set into motion one of the world?slargest civil defense policies at the time, second only to neutral Switzerland. The governments expenditure was far greater per capita than both that of USA and Soviet Union and included massive evacuation plans for Stockholm and other large cities in Sweden, with the hopeful expectation to bring down the amount of people in each of them to 15000 in case of a foreign hostile nuclear attack. The policies included construction of shelters with room for 2,5 million of about 7 million citizens in total at the time along with gasmasks for the whole population. Not only this, Sweden was considered one of the biggest military powers of that time in relation to its size and population.

This paper examines the consequences of membership and participation in immigrant associations on individual immigrants? political integration and indirect political participation with reference to Swedish society. The theoretical underpinnings consist of a social structural outlook on social capital, combined with the Civic Voluntarism Model, both of which focus on the potential role of social networks for moving people into political action. After a presentation of parallel qualitative data over the experiences of individual members in a Finnish and Bosnian-Hercegovinian organisation, it is suggested that immigrant associations support the political integration of their members into the host society. Firstly, the case studies indicate that members of immigrant associations gain the opportunity to augment their civic skills, which is a significant prerequisite for political participation.

Objektet för min studie är Pow-Wow, en grupp som arbetar mot rasism och mobbning på en svensk grundskola. Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom en kvalitativ undersökning titta närmare på hur Pow-Wow, har startats, genomförts och utvecklats. Utgångspunkten är att liknande grupper som arbetar mot rasism är sällsynta i svenska skolor. Därför är det speciellt intressant att titta närmare på hur det kommer sig att Pow-Wow startades på skolan och varför verksamheten har kunnat överleva så länge. För att kunna besvara dessa frågor har jag intervjuat skolans nuvarande rektor, skolans före detta rektor, de två lärare som arbetar med Pow-Wow och en elev som var med under Pow-Wows första år.

The aim of this study is to provide an investigation of an ?old? political phenomenon that over the recent years has enjoyed a considerable revival across Europe. This study about nationalism is mainly based on empirical second hand source material from literature and articles providing us with both a historical as well as a contemporary insight in this ideology. This study shows us the complexity and the difficulties that the academia is facing regarding nationalism due to the dynamic nature of the ideology, in the sense that it simply means different things to different peoples in different cultures across different points in time. The study is conducted by using a phenomenological, qualitative and inductive method of gathering and interpreting information.  A handful of books have formed the foundation through the gathering of relevant empirical information, along with articles from both scientific publications as well as the mainstream media. The data have been studied and laid out to make key points regarding nationalism and the theory behind it clear for the reader.