The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.

The fact that we apprehend certain phenomena as more convenient than others generate questions about what constitute and decide what we think of as normal and appropriate. The aim of this thesis is to explore the immense conception of power and authority through a narrower approach that focuses on the EU.With this in mind I examine the penetration of the neo-liberal ideology in the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe to see if there are any implications for hegemony. This is achieved through a discourse analysis which is strengthened with empirical cases of EU policies.The result of the discourse analysis of selected parts of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe reveals that there are in fact tendencies which indicate that our society and reality is dominated by a neo-liberal hegemonic discourse. Subsequently the contemporary discourse broadly infiltrates the entire European Union, and therefore also its member states..

Nation building is vital in post-war states to bring the people that have been at war together. To restore peace in a state, many different actors need to work together to bring stability, safety, and advancement to a new nation. There are several methods of nation building, and this thesis evolves around three of them. This is a qualitative study where three theories on nation building are used to analyze the development of nation building, and the obstacles Bosnia and Herzegovina still has to reach a national identity. Several studies are used in this thesis to show how the development has evolved in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This paper is about drug prevention. In my paper the aim is to examine when, where and how the drug prevention work, by law, is being realized, on local levels, in school and municipality, towards youth.My central questions are among others: What does it imply, how the municipality and school value the drug prevention work?, Which prevention programs do the municipality and school use? and Does the drug prevention work give any results? The method I've been using is qualitative interviews and studies of literature and research.The main results I gained with my studie are, that the work of politicians is not in phase with the development in society. And in spite of the fact that drug prevention programs are used, the young ones are using drugs and alcohol more than ever..

Changes in the labour market combined with an increased media coverage of managers, have resulted in the rise of a new human due diligence industry. The use of background checks has lately become increasingly popular on the Swedish market and many companies use it as an evaluation tool when recruiting. This study investigates differences in the background screening procedure for recruitment to executive management positions and lower level positions. It also aims to answer why background checks are conducted, using a cultural and a functional perspective. The report takes an abductive approach and data has primarily been gathered through a survey directed to large Swedish companies.

The aim of this study was to understand how evaluations are implemented and used in procured nursing homes for elderly. Our methodological approach consisted of a single-case study research. The case in this study was Växjö municipality. Three procured nursing homes for elderly were chosen in the municipality as examples of implementation and use of evaluation. The method for retrieving empirical data and the analyzing of it was based on triangulation.

What role should science play in democracy? Political scientists often assume that it is possible to demarcate between ?instrumental? and ?moral? knowledge, and argue that citizens and/or politicians should use their moral knowledge to agree upon political goals and then apply the instrumental knowledge of scientists to achieve them. This straightforward view is challenged by writers in science studies, who identify three major problems in the use of science in democracy: uncertainty, risk and hidden values. They suggest that these problems could be solved through citizen participation.In this essay I perform an analysis of the internal logic of their suggestion. Is it likely that citizen participation enhances the democratic decision making process so as to reduce the problems? The internal analysis shows that it is rational to advocate citizen participation by reasons of legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how librarians andteachers work together and with the help of other researchtry to understand what influences this cooperation. The studyis based on the following questions:1. These two professional groups have differentprofessional identities and work in two differentprofessional cultures. How does this affect theircooperation?2.

The purpose of this essay was to examine teenager's views on violence among young people.Our main questions were: What kind of views on violence among young people do teenager's have? What do teenager's think about what causes violence among young people? In what way does scientific knowledge confirm young people's views about what causes violence among young people?To answer these questions we designed a questionnaire which we distributed in three 8th grade classes. We also interviewed five teenagers about violence among young people, to get a deeper knowledge about their views.The results of this study show that the teenagers think that violence among young people has increased and that the violence mostly appears between different groups of young people. The teenagers also think violence among young people as a phenomena due to different kind of reasons..

Symbolic resources transform in to social power and material resources through the educational system. This entails that all students should have equal access to it.The essay compares Swedish didactics in ?immigrant? and ?white? schools, all situated in socio-economically underprivileged areas, analysing interviews with eight Swedish teachers about their didactics regarding restricted and elaborated language code.Understanding teacher?s work in the class room requires attention to the intersections between race and class, and of both to the distribution of symbolic resources in general.The essay finds that the practice of the? immigrant? school teachers differs from the ?white? school teachers?. The former are active, providing intellectual tools, scaffolding and driving force while the later choose a more passive attitude, letting students decide for themselves what to do and what goals to reach. Consequently ?white? schools allow the reproduction of unequal distribution of symbolic resources while practice in immigrant schools aim to compensate for disadvantages.Practice seems to win legitimacy by different sets of conceptualisations.

Detta är en studie av ungdomars syn på diskriminering. Syftet med vår undersökning är att undersöka vad ungdomar anser att diskriminering är. Tidigare forskning visar att diskrimineringsbegreppet kan vara svårt att definiera och att ungdomar inte har kunskap om begreppets fulla innebörd. Våra kvalitativa intervjuer med sex ungdomar visar att diskrimineringsbegreppet är svårt att definiera och att deras definition av diskriminering stämmer överens med delar av barn- och elevskyddslagen. Med hjälp av teorier om intersektionalitet kan vi se att ungdomarna inte har tillräckliga kunskaper om vad diskriminering är och detta medför att de inte vet sina eller andras rättigheter inför barn- och elevskyddslagen..

The state of Israel is known as the only democracy in the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to examine if there is aspects in the Israelis society that can be questioned in terms of liberal democracy.Areas of concerns in the study are the Israeli official policy's concerning inclusion and exclusion of their citizens in areas of property owning, personal status and the duty of military service.The results show that the Israeli society distinguishes their citizens in these areas by their ethnic origin, in favour for the Jewish population. The law prohibits changes in the states Jewish character. One clear example how this is presented is that a Jew is prohibited to marry a non-Jew. The results show also that this official policy by the Israeli state violates important principles of liberal democracy.

This master?s thesis deals with the development of the Swedish library catalogue. The thesis primarily has two purposes. Firstly, it describes how the Swedish library catalogue has developed from its first appearance until today. As the Swedish library sector is very extensive the authors have chosen a few catalogues which they have studied more thoroughly.

The aim of the essay was to describe what some young Swedish and Spanish people had to say about alcohol cultures. Some of the questions asked were: How are the alcohol cultures in Sweden and Spain described? What are the differences, and where do they come from? What would an ideal alcohol culture look like? The investigation also had a comparing angle, as I was interested in what the people valued in their own culture and in the others´. The result was that there hardly exist a perfect alcohol culture, but that the stricter Sweden as well as the liberal Spain both have positive and negative aspects. Differences in politics and culture seem to create variations in a society´s drinking customs.

Att företag tar fram kärnvärden som ett sätt att ge de anställda riktlinjer för hur de ska agera inom företaget blir allt mer vanligt, men fyller dessa kärnvärden till fullo den funktion i företaget som de är framtagna för? Syftet med denna studie har varit att ge en bild av hur ett specifikt företag, i denna studie Peab, arbetar med att förmedla sina kärnvärden och hur de anställda uppfattar och förhåller sig till dessa värden. För att få fram viktig bakgrundsinformation gjordes det en dokumentgranskning av det material som har tillhandahållits från Peab gällande deras kärnvärden och hur de arbetar med att förmedla dessa. I denna studie har en kvalitativ ansats valts och det genomfördes sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med två olika yrkeskategorier inom företaget, som i denna studie benämns som chefer och yrkesarbetare. Studiens resultat visar att den information som ges kontinuerligt till Peabs medarbetare skiljer sig åt beroende på vilken av de två ovannämnda yrkeskategorierna de anställda tillhör.