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.

In this study the semi structured interview method was used to explore what kind of knowledge one In State Authority: The Migration Board, and three Non Governmental Organisations: Red Cross, Save the Children and ISS- International Social Service have about the situation for separated children. Another purpose in this study was to explore if people who are close to the children are working for the best of the children and if their cases were treated with legal security. The result shows that the children?s cases are not treated with legal security and some of the children suffer psychologically from separations from the families and other children need new families because they were maltreated. The result also shows that there are signs that separated children are discriminated compared to children with a Swedish background..

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..

In this essay we try to find explanations as to why Denmark went to war, to-gether with the United States and other nations, against Iraq. We have exam-ined several factors which we believe to be the most important for Denmark`s decision to go to war. In particular, we have looked at Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his belief system, Denmark`s recent domestic policies especially the immigrations policies, relevant parts of Denmark`s past foreign policies and Denmark`s role within international organizations like UN, NATO and EU. Throughout the essay our attention is focused on Rasmussen as a main actor in forming and pushing through Denmark`s policies..

Nowadays naval units are participating in international missions, where new and in many cases tougher conditions will affect their propulsion. This essay deals with some of the now developed nanostructure coatings and gives a presentation of how the coatings could function on some exposed parts of the naval powertrain. The essay investigates the possibility that the coatings can be used as a protective layer that will reduce or prevent wear on selected parts of the naval powertrains. As a basis for the essay, nanotechnology is described, as well as different reasons that wear occurs and application techniques for coatings The conclusion is that nanostructured coatings can be applied and provide a much better result on hardness and wear resistance as of naval powertrains compared to micro-structural coatings, both for manufacturing and renovation. The essay presents a few examples of the military utility of the nanostructure coatings as well as suggestions for further research..

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.

This essay investigates the statements of Växjö municipality?s motives for some of its many environmental projects. The aim of the essay is to be theory-testing as to see how a municipality/city which promotes itself as being ?green? motivates its efforts in the environmental area. Växjö city promotes itself as ?The greenest city in Europe?, an award appointed to the city by BBC and other international media.

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.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att studera det växande behovet av International Human Resource Management (IHRM) i syfte att skapa förståelse för företagets interna resurser och hur dessa kan bidra till företagets utveckling. För att uppnå uppsatsens syfte har vi utformat följande huvudproblem; I vilken utsträckning kan ett företags strävan efter internationell framgång förstås genom dess ledare? För att besvara det formulerade huvudproblemet har vi valt att använda en kvalitativ ansats och tillämpat fallstudie som forskningsstrategi.Den teoretiska referensramen innefattar en beskrivning av olika etableringsstrategier och medföljande ledarpositioner samt behandlar det resursbaserade synsättet vilket är relevant för vårt ämnesval och vår frågeställning. Vidare består av teorikapitlet av en deskription av IHRM och tillsättningsstrategier. Det empiriska kapitlet behandlar den information som tillhandahållits genom fallföretaget och dess informanter rörande ledarpositioner och efterfrågade kompetenser hos en internationell ledare.

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.