The overall purpose with this thesis has been to study the strategic development of the Swedish Green Party, Miljöpartiet de Gröna. From its first appearance in the Swedish parliament 1988 to its decision to cooperate with the Social Democrats and the Left Party in 1998, the Greens has gone from a radical antiparty to a pragmatic support party. The analysis has concentrated towards identifying the causal factors behind this strategic move made by the Greens, and to determine how this party change has affected the party's strategic goals. In order to do so, a qualitative case study has been conducted where an integrated theoretical approach has been used. By studying official statements and internal debates the thesis concludes that the strategic change made by the Greens was due to the evolvement of a new dominant coalition of within the party.

The aim of the study was to investigate how a community motivates and ensures the implementation of its values and how this document affected personnel of meaning, vision and daily operations. The study was based on semi-structured interviews, in which nine respondents were interviewed in a city in southern Sweden. Interviews dealt with three different themes, all concerned organization or set of values. The analysis was based partly on how organizations and institutions build up and maintain their legitimacy. The analysis was also explained by the new institutional theory and its concepts isomorphism.

AbstractOil rich states all over the world share a common feature. They are less likely than other states, depending on other resources, to be ruled democratically. In this essay Saudi Arabia has been studied with the purpose of trying to find which mechanisms that lie behind why oil rich states do not have institutions or Institutional change that promotes democracy.Saudi Arabia has the world's largest known reservoir of oil. The oil brings huge revenue each year to the Saudi Arabian government. Why have Saudi Arabia not developed democratically when their economic growth suggests that to be a natural step? Under the framework of historical institutionalism and path dependency theory, I have used process tracing trying to track the mechanisms behind Saudi Arabia's authoritarian rule down.

Sweden has had laws protecting nature for about a hundred years. In this paper the views of nature and the values that serve as a rationale for protective measures are analyzed as results of a social process characterized by the dialectic relationship between institutions and discourse. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to study this relationship and the discursive practices used by institutions, which reproduce or reshape views of nature that define the relationship between society and nature. Institutional design contributes to shaping discourse in the field of nature protection, while being originally shaped by discourse. In Sweden, the national park is an institution that reproduces a view of nature as the wild and untamed opposite of society, and the natural reserves reproduce a view of nature as holder of a multi-faceted set of values intertwined with society.

This study intends to explain the problem with the implementation of new Swedish accounting rules called K2. The rules are simplifications of the general accounting rules and the purpose is to make it easier for small companies to account. Despite this, few small companies have adopted the rules. This study seeks to explain the weak response to the K2-rules using institutional theory.The research objects of this study are Burger King, McDonald?s and two audits and accountants.

An ageing population calls for enlarged needs of care and treatments that is followed by an increased demand on social and medical care. Present organization and structure are not adjusted to these new requirements. Due to this fact, necessary alterations ought to be made between and within the different institutional and non-institutional care actors. This work should be settled locally. In this study, the aim was to describe "Chealth care nearby" as being a new standard of care as well as investigate its significance in the co-operation and collaboration between different care actors.

In order to achieve comparability, which is one of the fundamental principles of accounting, companies should be consistent concerning the accounting policies they use. Only under certain circumstances changes in accounting policies are allowed, and when there is a change in accounting policies, it is important that the change is reported in a way that assures that the financial reports still achieve comparability. The purpose of this thesis is to establish which rules and recommendations about changes in accounting policies that exist in Swedish and German law and what their meaning is. Further, the purpose is to compare these rules and recommendations and discuss their differences and similarities, advantages and disadvantages. Since publicly traded European companies will be obliged to prepare their consolidated accounts in conformity with International Accounting Standards (IAS) from 2005, I also describe the content of IAS 8 which deals with changes in accounting policies, and discuss what the consequences of this transition might be for Swedish and German publicly traded companies considering changes in accounting policies.

This thesis aims to study brand change, which can be of interest since a brand during its lifetime can be expected to meet a lifecycle consisting of five phases; innovation, introduction, growth, maturity and recession. In order to avoid the recession phase and the sales decline that follows there is a need for a change of the brand.In order to study brand change, theoretical framework is compared to two real world cases that have gone through an active change.The conceptions of positioning, repositioning and revitalization are clarified. Positioning deals with how brands are located in customer?s minds as well as on the real market. Repositioning implies a change of the current position and is also often a move towards a new market segment.

The number of people with another culture isincreasing in Sweden. This change in society bringsconsequences in health care that has not any methodsto manage. The Muslim woman?s meeting with thehealth care is one of those areas. The aim with thisstudy was to describe the nurses meeting with femaleMuslim patient.

This essay aims to examine Martha Nussbaum's proposal for a classical defense of reform in liberal education and her critique of utility thinking in higher education. I want to explore how Nussbaum uses history to create an ethical alternative that cultivates both moral and intellectual virtues, which she considers to be crucial for the survival of democracy. In examining Nussbaum's use of Aristotle, I focus on her work as a proposal for institutional implementation of an Aristotelian epistemology and the cultivation of the individual as an ethical political subject. This study highlights the epistemological, educational and political ideas that form the basis of Nussbaum's ideals. I intend, however, to go beyond a contextualizing reading and thus establish a dialogue with a radical intersubjectivity to respond to Nussbaum's ambitions to recognize human vulnerabilities as assets for reason.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the institutional effectiveness of the environmental institutions Helcom and the Mediterranean regime, by using Haas, Levy and Keohane's "the three Cs"; governmental concern, contractual environment, political and administrative capacity. The method used is a comparative analysis.This study takes into consideration the specific structural and economic factors that are prevailing in each region where the environmental regime operates. This study also takes into account the influence of the European Union as a factor that affects the environmental progress.By focusing the study on the line of conduct concerning hazardous substances by respectively regime this study shows that the institutional effectiveness is fulfilled in neither Helcom nor the Mediterranean Regime, although Helcom has been more successful. The lack of state capacity is the most restraining factor for both developing countries and countries in the transition towards being developed, to achieve a good environmental status of the sea. This study also shows that the European Union sometimes has a greater impact on the environmental progress in states, rather than the environmental regime in countries that were/are aspiring members, thus showing the ineffectiveness of the regime..

Changes in the environment are affecting the world market, and pressures from several stakeholders? are forcing different enterprises to adjust to the current situation. Farmers? difficult working conditions and environmental impacts of the conventional cotton production in India have been highlighted. The small-scale production that is characterising India?s cotton farmers implies an insufficient competition power.

Global climate change is one of the greatest challenges in our history. As the average temperature is rising due to anthropogenic emissions, impacts such as floods, droughts and hurricanes, affect the lives of millions of people. Though the least developed countries are least responsible for emissions, they are the worst affected. This thesis focuses on environmental justice in the adaptation discourse. By outlining the adaptation discourse from the United Framework Convention on Climate Change principles, to the Marrakesh Accords, via the Kyotoprotocol my ambition is to analyse how environmental justice has been interpreted in relation to the adaptation discourse.

Social policy has now received an increased attention in the European Union. The European welfare states experience a high level of unemployment, which the EU now tries to handle through the European Employment Strategy (EES). The core of this essay is whether the welfare institutions of the European member states are integrating through an institutionalization process or not. Within the EU four different types of welfare models can be identified: the Scandinavian, the Continental, the Southern and the Anglo-Saxon. The welfare models differ in the institutional settings e.g.

AbstractSince democracy was developed in the ancient Greece it has come to be used within a small city state, within the national state and as today used within a bigger perspective. After the end of the second world war political leaders wanted to make sure that there would never be a war between European countries again. Now, about 60 years later this type of cooperation now involves 27 of the European countries and goes under the name of the Euroapean Union. This means that democracy is no longer used just within the nation state, but within a big organisation that is responsible for almost 500 million Europeans lives. This also means that the European Union need to make some institutional reforms to be able to handle all the future challenges.