The purpose of this essay is to present, from a theoretical framwork about regional democracy, possible methods to handle the regional democratic problems in Östergötland in Sweden and to investigate the opinion of the political parties regarding this issue. Both the national and the local/regional level are investigated. The contents of the essay is based on literature studies and interviews of politicians in Östergötland. Regional democratic problems that is discussed are the political responsibility and the power distribution between the political actors on the regional level. A solution of the problem could be to organize the regional society structure in accordance with one of the following organization models"Statligt regionalt ansvar","Kommuner i samverkan"or"Regionalt folkstyre".

Local politicians are key actors in the democratic system and their ideas concerning democracy plays a central role in local democratic politics. The study's point of departure is the notion that local politicians are dependent of coherence between practice and theory concerning democracy and in the study of their ideas we acquire knowledge about the democratic practice.This study examines the local politicians? view of Swedish democracy and explores the logic of the discourse that makes statements concerning democracy possible. Twenty local politicians have been interviewed and from the material a discourse have been established through the use of formulation of problems and cause, nodal points and chains of analogy which is compared with democratic ideals.The study comes to the conclusion that a hegemonic discourse exists, in which central nodal points are representative and listening. The idea of the representative system is hegemonic and is based in the liberal democratic ideal although the view of the citizens rather can be traced to the radical, communitarian and deliberative ideal.

The purpose of this article is to explore the technologies of government that are created within gender disorder assessments as an institution. I have done so by utilizing Norman Faircloughs discourse analysing instrument ?communicative action?, which focus on the social institution as relational.The material is strategically chosen by gathering texts from the Swedish state, the psychiatric clinics, NGO:s and by performing interviews with transsexual patients.When analysing the communication of the main agents, I have concluded that practices highly are a result of repeating text and speech inside the institution. The psychiatric assessments can also be seen as an illustration in changes in how citizens are governed in advanced liberal societies, where the role of the state has been gradually reduced in favour of other agents.I consider that the change illustrates an ?acting at a distance?-mentality where the patient is introduced to participate in the definition of the care in what I call ?negotiation as a technology?.

Many political reforms are currently implemented in the Swedish schools. The trend indicate that education in Sweden follows neo-liberal restructuring policy, that highlights assessment, marketization and surveillance in different aspects. According to the new curriculum LGR 11 the school head is the school's educational leader with responsibility for the school's results and development. The reforms put new demands on the school heads tasks, their responsibility and leadership. The aim of my research study is to investigate how the school heads experience andhandle this situation.

Jordbruket är något väldigt centralt i världen då jordbruket är det som försörjer oss med mat, en vara vi inte kan leva utan. Idag lever vissa delar av befolkningen på jorden i överflöd av jordbruksprodukter samtidigt som andra delar lever i svält. 1994 bildades en ny internationell handelsorganisation, World Trade Organization (WTO), som har till uppgift att liberalisera den internationella handeln och på så sätt förbättra förutsättningarna för handel mellan länder. En helt liberal handel innebär att alla länder konkurrerar på lika villkor på världsmarknaden. Detta ska ske genom att länderna reducerar sina handelshinder och öppnar sina inhemska marknader för omvärlden.

Bakgrund: Det finns olika uppfattningar om vad som definierar debatten om den politiskaekonomin. Frågan är i vilken riktning kausaliteten går, från normer till debatt och politik, frånförutsättningar till normer eller från politik till debatt och normer.Syfte: Mitt syfte är att undersöka i vilken riktning kausaliteten har gått angående debatten om denekonomiska politiken i Sverige genom att undersöka om den har tagit en mindre liberal riktningefter den ekonomiska krisen år 2008.Metod: Jag har undersökt krönikor och ledare i två svenska dagstidningar år 2006 och 2009 för attse om debatten har förändrats. För att analysera artiklarna har jag använt mig av fem kärnprinciperför den ekonomiska liberalismen som jag har konstruerat ett analysverktyg av.Resultat: Materialet jag undersökte gav ingen entydig bild om vilken riktning kausaliteten har. Vikan se vissa indikatorer på att både normer och ekonomiska förutsättningar styr hur debatten går dären av tidningarna ändrade tongången i debatten medan den andra stod oförändrad. Undersökningenbäddar dock för vidare forskning och metoden kan med fördel användas på ett större material ochäven på andra forum där den politiskt ekonomiska debatten förs..

Since criminality started to rise steeply in most western welfare states following the second world war the relationship between welfare support and criminality has been debated. For a period of time thought to be an effective preventive measure against crime welfare support has since from time to time come to be seen by some as ineffective and in some cases even as a contributing factor to the rise in crime. It remains a contested issue as new theories, such as social support theory, which is employed here, attempt to contribute to the understanding of what effects general welfare has on overall crime levels. As a connection which is relatively well-researched in the USA, altough still not yet fully understood, this study strives toward a better understanding by testing the relationship in a swedish context. The relationship might not function in the same way considering that the US is a fundamentally different welfare-regime than Sweden, liberal and social-democratic respectively.Untangling the relationship is attempted by employing a multivariate regressionanalysis on a crosssectional dataset consisting of data from 2012 covering 247 of Swedens total of 290 municipalities.

This essay is about the massive Iranian aid to Hezbollah and the Saudi Arabian, likewise, towards the Taliban. The main view is that the two countries aid respective aid to Hezbollah and the Taliban is/were not a gesture of goodwill but rather an economic method of getting influence and controlling the receiver. This view that is based on a theory called; economic statecraft. The economic statecraft theory is used in this paper to investigate why Iran?s influence towards Hezbollah has been successful while the Saudis ambitions with the Taliban have failed.

The aim of this study is to get a better understanding of the Iranian regime. My theory is that the Iranian regime is a semi-dictatorship, based on the soul fact that semi-competetive elections take place. The main question this thesis tries to answer is what characterizes the political construction of the Iranian regime and by what means does it implement its political goals. In trying to answer this question the case of Iran is applied to four specific typologies being, semi-dictatorship, military rule, single party rule and personal rule. The aim has not been to categorically analyze if the Iranian regime matches one typology or the other perfectly, as this is seldom the case when it comes to typologies.After analysis of the four typologies, the conclusion is that the Iranian regime utilizes semi-competitive elections to give a guise of democracy, as is in line with a semi-dictatorship.

The following essay studies the change in the use of terminology pertaining to socioeconomic categorising in public political material, and how this relates to ideological changes in politics. The aim is to determine which expressions government commission reports have used after the Second World War to classify citizens in social and economic groups, and subsequently, to link the understanding of these terms to the development of Swedish welfare politics. Welfare politics in Sweden have experienced a transition in a liberal and economistic direction that is reflected in the commission reports? choices of words and phrases ? thus studying the altering terminology can increase understanding of the ideological change. My methodology is grounded in ideology critique where I examine how dominant ideology is reproduced in public political documents.

The purpose of this essay is to examine what literary heritage teachers communicate in the school subject Swedish at upper secondary school. The overall research question for this work is: Which authors and/or works are mentioned by the teachers in the school subject Swedish at upper secondary school? How well do these authors and/or works answer towards a multicultural perspective? Which factors affect teachers´ selections of texts? Based on this purpose and these research questions, the aim is to answer the didactic question of what.To accomplish the purpose of the study a quantitative method has been used. The survey was conducted in two medium-sized cities in central Sweden, and was answered by 17 teachers. The study shows that the teachers ascribe the Western and Swedish literature great importance.

AbstractTitle: How does Europeanization effect Swedish alcohol policy? .Titel: Hur påverkar Europeiseringen svensk alkoholpolitik?Minor Thesis in Political Science, January 2008Author : Markus GustafssonTutor : Lennart BergfeldtVäxjö UniversityThis essay will deal with the influence which Europeanization has on domestic politics. The case I have chosen is Swedish alcohol policy. Thus, the purpose is to explore whether observed changes in Swedish alcohol policy in the years 1993-2005 can be explained by Swedens´s membership in the European Union. To reach this purpose the following questions need to be answered:? What is europeanization?? How has Swedish alcohol policy changed from 1993 to 2005?? Is it possible to connect the changes in Swedish alcohol policy to a process of Europeanizationprocess?The method in this essay has been a qulitative study of litterature.

Förändringar i den svenska säkerhetspolitiken under 2000-talet har gjort att Försvarsmakten i större utsträckning bidrar med trupp till internationella fredsfrämjande insatser världen över. Dessa har endast varit i konfliktområden med så kallade irreguljära aktörer. Förändringarna har gått fort och det finns delar av Försvarsmakten som inte hunnit med i omställningen. Reglementen och doktriner är ett av dessa områden. Arbetet med doktrinerna har precis börjats men det finns idag inget arbete som påvisar hur relevanta doktrinerna är för den verksamhet som Försvarsmakten bedriver i internationella insatser idag.Syftet med uppsatsen är att börja fylla detta kunskapshål och undersöka i vilken grad Försvarsmaktens militärstrategiska doktrin är tillämpbar för irreguljära konflikter och besvara frågeställningen: Är Militärstrategisk doktrin relevant som vägledning för att lösa Försvarsmaktens uppgifter i irreguljära konflikter?I uppsatsen beskrivs irreguljära konflikters bakgrund och karaktär samt aspekter som anses viktiga för att insatser skall lyckas med att skapa fred i konflikterna.

This essay is about democracy and how a democracy index can be used as a tool to illustratethe gap between reality and ideal. The purpose of this study can be expressed by two researchquestions: Does the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) democracy index illustrate thedistance between reality and the ideal of democracy presented by Dahl? and Can the EIU'sdemocracy index be modified by a) internal adjustments and b) using the variables includedin World Economic Forum?s (WEF) equality index?By using a combination of theories (Dahl?s theory of democracy, Rawls theory of justice andchosen theories critical to liberal democracy) as an analytical framework the following twoquestions have been answered:1) Which of the variables included in the EIU's democracy index have the potential to capturethe level of political equality?2) Which of the variables included in the WEF?s equality index have the potential to capturethe degree of political equality?By using a quantitative method the study?s third and last question has been answered:3) How strong is the rank correlation between the EIU?s democracy index and the WEF?sequality index, that is; how strong is the rank correlation coefficient (rho)?The data presented by the WEF?s equality index indicate that women are systematicallydiscriminated against as a group. From a democratic perspective the EIU may need tomeasure inequalities at a group level in order to capture the lack of political equality betweenindividuals. By reformulating some of the EIU?s variables, by revising the EIU?s point systemand by using the variables included in the WEF's equality index to extend EIU?s democracyindex, the chances of capturing the gap between reality and the ideal of democracy presentedby Dahl would likely increase..

This paper intends to provide a better understanding of how to rebuild a crisis affected area and how to plan for the inhabitants of a wounded city. It will also examine the landscape architect's tasks in this work to provide a planning perspective. The discussion of reconstruction is significant because the insight and knowledge in the subject is needed in order to help nations after a disaster. Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital Sarajevo is a city recovering from a civil war where the city's situation was complicated by an ethnic conflict that has been segregating it. The restoration of the city's structure can free people from their tragedy and make them live again.