AbstractAt the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 the nations stated that traditional environmental policies were not sufficient to handle the multidimensional challenges posed by sustainable development. Governments needed to broaden their political decision making procedures in order to coordinate and integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Therefore a new tool was introduced in Agenda 21, National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSDS). The aim of an NSDS would be to bring together actors from all parts of society to jointly reach a consensus on how to work towards the vision of a sustainable society. An NSDS would be seen as a strategic tool to help focus national policies for SD.

This thesis is based on the implementation of a bilateral rural development program in Burkina Faso. The main purpose of this study was to put the actual implementation process of a bilateral development program in view. This was done by investigating how two dominant perspectives in the implementation literature can explain what in fact happens during the realization of an aid program. A further aim of the thesis was to explore the limitations of these two dominant theories, in order to get a full understanding of the complexity of the realization of an aid program. Based on the implementation theory, this study shows that the realization of an aid program can be understood from three different angles.

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the principal problem of the study of national self-images and by questioning the congruent existence of one in the case of Sweden. Through the use of qualitative method and semi-structured interviews the ambition of the study is to compare and to understand the national self-images portrayed in a major Swedish town, Stockholm and to that of a smaller town on the countryside, Sjöbo. A social constructionist approach in co-operation with key temporal and spasial dimensions are used to penetrate the interviews at hand. The main conclusions drawn from this study highlights the difficulties in addressing the concept of a congruent national self-image. Several major discrepancies appear in the analysed material, mainly in the past and the external dimensions, both from a regional approach, but also very much within the local entities themselves..

During the past twenty years the immigration to Sweden has changed significantly. Earlier immigration mainly focused at filling the vacancies in the Swedish industry, today immigrants primarily come to Sweden as Refugees. This change of immigration combined with the restructuring of the Swedish industrial sector has resulted in great a deterioration of the chances for immigrants to gain entry to the Swedish labor market.This study aims at examining how the cooperation between authorities in the municipal of Hörby in Sweden fosters integration. The study primarily examines how the cooperation between authorities in a integration project can contribute to a better integration to the labor market.Through a qualitative study, five persons who occupy important roles in the project have been interviewed. The results of these interviews have been complemented by internal documents as well as extern material to validate the results.The most important findings that have been revealed are the importance of language in the process of gaining entrance to the Swedish labor market.

The aim of this paper is to spread some light over contract treatment from the perspective of the District Courts, Social Services and Probation Services, and understand the reason for local variation of the number of people sentenced to contractual treatment.Essential questions asked in this paper are; What advantages and disadvantages are known by the cooperating parties regarding contract treatment in comparison to prison? What parameters are considered when the cooperating parties decide upon contract treatment? What impact does the shared responsibility of cost have? What do the respondents think is the reason for the local variation?In order to answer the essential questions a qualitative and descriptive method has been used to highlight the main question of our study; What is the reason for the local variation in number of contract treatment sentences in Halmstad and Ystads district courts?The paper shows that the local variation between the Probation Services districts is dependent on the conditions to propose a contract treatment. In Halmstad it is not conditioned for the Probation Services to have a responsibility agreement with the Social Services to the same extent as for the Probation Services in Ystad..

Previous studies have shown that economic sanctions have adverse effects on the level of human rights in sanctioned countries. The focus of research on the effects in sanctioned countries has left the question of whether economic sanctions can have a regional effect on human rights levels in countries not sanctioned in the same region. Therefore, this essay has sought to investigate if economic sanctions aimed at an individual state have a regional effect on the level of human rights in countries not sanctioned within the same region. A previous study found that economic sanctions in Latin America positively affected the level of human rights in non-sanctioned countries within the same region. This essay has examined whether the same result can be found in a region with a different level of democracy.

AbstractIn the past decades the newspaper industry went through many changes but it has never had a problem of this kind. With the freedom the Internet brings us today and the wide range of information channels, the newspaper is for the first time seriously challenged.When the newspapers began to establish themselves on the internet they thought it was only to copy the content of the newspaper on to their webpage and the advertisers would come along. This move was not planed and had no vision. When the advertisers discovered Internets wide range of advertisement platforms they started to look for other places they could put their ads. This thesis is about the local newspapers ability to address the problem that the internet has created. I based my study on the following issues:Why has internet caused this problem for the newspapers?What are the prerequisites for local newspapers when they face challenges from the internet?How have the advertisers acted after the emergence of this challenge?To answer these questions I did qualitative interviews with different personalities within the newspaper industry, two local newspaper executives and two professors in media economics. In conclusion the result shows that there are different opinions regarding these questions and different views of how to solve them.

Kulturens roll i samhällsutvecklingen är något som diskuteras allt mer intensivt. Idag kan en tendens där man använder kultur som verktyg för att uppnå utveckling urskiljas i kulturpolitiken både i Sverige och utomlands.Denna uppsats syftar till att studera och beskriva Region Hallands kulturpolitik, med fokus på att urskilja hur man använder kultur som verktyg för att uppnå regional utveckling. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten i studien utgörs av två kulturpolitiska modeller genom vilka jag undersöker hur kulturpolitiken har utvecklats de senaste åren, samt på vilket sätt kulturen integreras i andra samhällssektorer.Materialet i uppsatsen har inhämtats genom intervjuer med representanter för de sex största partierna i Region Halland, samt med regionens kulturchef. Dessa intervjuer har tillsammans med en del sekundära källor legat till grund för uppsatsens empiriska del.Det huvudsakliga resultatet i denna uppsats är att det råder en stor konsensus kring kulturpolitiken i Region Halland, oavsett partitillhörighet. Kulturen är på god väg att bli en fullständigt integrerad del i regionen, och den har stor betydelse för flera olika områden.

Recent years there has been discussed how the critical situation in the housing market threatens the Stockholm region's growth. The thesis objective is to examine whether there is a scientific link between the lack of housing supply and growth. The thesis also intends to identify solutions for increased housing construction, for instance by examining the conditions for a greater regional perspective and influence on the region's housing supply. The thesis empirical study is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Government, municipalities and the housing industry.In Sweden, research on the relationship between housing shortages and growth has not been conducted to that extent it can be said to exist scientific evidence regarding the growth threat. However, in Britain and the U.S, empirical studies show that a lack of housing supply has hindered growth through negative impact on countries' gross domestic product.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera kommunsammanläggningen i Sverige under åren 1963 ? 1974 utifrån ett Hästvedaperspektiv. Hästveda kommun tillsammans med flertalet andra småkommuner blev en del av det som kom att kallas Hässleholms kommun 1974. Uppsatsen utreder vilka reaktioner och diskussioner som fanns hos såväl kommunalfullmäktige och anställda i kommunhuset, men också hos invånarna i kommunen. Uppsatsen undersöker också om Hästveda kommun vid sammanläggningen hade några finansiella tillgångar kvar.Syftet är också att undersöka varför Hästveda gick med i just i det som skulle bli Hässleholms kommun och inte i någon annan närliggande kommun.Undersökningen är gjort utifrån protokoll, tidningsartiklar, insändare, intervjuer och krönikor..

This essay revolves around partnerships established between local authorities and civil society to promote integration in segregated urban areas. The main focus is on who is active in formulating the local integration policy in these partnerships. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with representatives from the local public administration and from different parts of civil society in Rosengård and Södra innerstaden in Malmö. The conclusion is that local authorities to a large extent decide the content of integration policy. The authorities, in having the major responsibility of the integration projects, decide what parts of civil society to involve and what projects will promote integration.

Through a case study, I wanted to find out what advantages and disadvantages local companies consider with scrum and what they think about its future. To find out what scrum is, I read the literature and scientific articles and then wrote surveys based on my thoughts. Further, I also wanted to find out if it?s possible to use scrum in a school environment and therefore I visited a high school class who used scrum in one of their projects. The result was good but could have been better as it requires more training of scrum to understand everything.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

Det här är en masteruppsats i fysisk planering med inriktning omvärldsanalys och strategiskt arbete i kommunal översiktlig planering. Uppsatsen undersöker hur kommuners omvärldsanalyser ser ut samt hur de utifrån dessa formulerar strategier. Vidare undersöker uppsatsen vilka huvuddragen i strategierna är samt vilka planeringsprojekt som kommunen menar ska bidra till att strategin uppnås. Med hjälp av kvalitativ innehållsanalys och semistrukturerade personliga intervjuer har två översiktsplaner och en fördjupad översiktsplan för Helsingborg, Malmö respektive Ystad undersökts. Uppsatsen åskådliggör ett tydligt generellt mönster för samtliga undersökta strategier; förtätning genom blandad bebyggelse, marknadsföring och regionförstoring genom gränsöverskridande samarbete..

The past years in Sweden has been infected by a discussion about immigration and immigrants, both spoken in politics and media. The aim of this essay is to study the attitude about immigrants in the third period of immigration in Sweden found in the local press. And also what image the press gave of immigrants. The study looks at Smålandsposten, which is a large local press in the Växjö area. During the period for this study was the attitude in the local press very negative. The studied articles in Smålandsposten shows a profound idea of a ?we? and ?them?.