Background: From the beginning of the 60´s until the beginning of the 80´s the swedish local government has expand enourmously. The expansion didn´t lead to any discussions about how the local government should be controlled or organized. The local government should instead be organized and controlled as administrations. Lately it has became more usual to have these discussions about how local government should be controlled and organized. Nowadys it´s not unusual that local governments imitate private companies.

The focus on this essay is derived from an international and national dialogue for sustainable development. The recommendation from international level has been to find solutions for governments to implement strategies for sustainable development between local and regional level. This initiative is to improve and stimulate the dialogue between the local inhabitants, officials, entrepreneurs and stakeholders in the communities together with the authorities on the regional level. The purpose is to share knowledge and find ways to learn about the natural systems and how to co-operate in the work of preserving the natural resources and developing different processes for a sustainable development. Many scientists? today stress the importance that ecosystem resilience is promoted by biodiversity conservation and that we need to find solutions for local ecosystem management practices.This essay aims to find theoretical approaches and perspectives that can be used in a wider framework to study co-operative processes between the local (agent) and regional (structure) level.

For the past decades, culture has been given a role as a factor for local and regional development. But what is meant by development and in what ways culture can be of importance in this aspect can be unclear. This thesis examines the perception of the role for local and regional development of one specific cultural place and network ? the cultural cooperative Not Quite in Fengersfors, Sweden. I study the way the role as developer is expressed and interpreted in the discourse of the cultural workers who are members of the network and in the discourse of public cultural policy in the region Västra Götaland and in Åmål municipality.

This study aims to illustrate the Leader approach and analyze the work of collaboration development within Leader. The idea has also been to describe some of the difficulties that might be encountered in this type of development work. By highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of this approach we hope to enhance the chance that future work in similar projects can be implemented more easily. Leader is a tool and methodology used in the European Union (EU) for work on sustainable rural development and it has been used since 1991. The purpose of Leader is that by supporting rural projects they will gain social capital and development in the rural communities.

The purpose of this study is to examine some after-school teachers? perceptions about the outdoor stay at the after-school care centre in the schoolyard and in the leisure- environment.Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with the after-school teachers at five after-school care centres in the Stockholm area.In the theoretical part presents the leisure- governance and ongoing research on outdoor learning, research on the school playground and kindergarten local environment affects children in their development and learning, and after-school teachers? professional identity.The theoretical foundation is based on the phenomenographic approach.The questions are:? What is outdoor education according to the after-school teachers?? According to after-school teachers, what educational opportunities are provided by the schoolyard and the local environment?? How do the after-school teachers use the schoolyard and local environment?The result shows that outdoor education can be a knowledge invigorating complement to the indoor teaching and a way for the after-school centre to supplement the compulsory schoolday. The play outdoors can help to increase children's social development, creativity and imagination. The after-school teachers used the schoolyard and local environment for various purposes which may be due to different circumstances, knowledge and experience to carry out educational activities outdoors. But it may also depend on whether the after-school teacher focuses on the regular school day or in the afternoon at the after-school care centre..

The aim of this essay is to see how the IOGT, local politicians and the local newspaper acted in the city of Hedemora in Sweden in connection with the referendum held in 1922 whether or not to ban the use of alcoholic beverages. To accomplish this I have examined protocols from local IOGT-groups, the town council and the local newspaper Södra Dalarnes tidning. I find that the local IOGT not only worked with the issue of alcohol but served as an institution that deepened democracy and education in the local community through discussions, study circles and applying pressure on local politicians. The locally elected bodies in turn were generally in favour of the good work the IOGT did, although not always overwhelmingly so. Many of the local politicians that handled the issues of alcohol were themselves active members in organisations promoting absolutism.

This thesis deals with local identity and the workplace. We have taken part of stories dealing with local identity and the workplace, by using a qualitative method. We interviewed eleven men working at the same company. The group contained of men from urban areas as well as rural areas. The data from our interviews have been applied to theories of local identity and social theories by sociologists such as Durkheim, Simmel and Tönnies.

The essay on ?The revival of the countryside ? a multitalent in landproduction.? focuses on local and regional development within agriculture, foodprocessing and tourism.Due to great changes in society, the inhabitants in rural areas are forced to find alternative occupations. Using history as a tool to build up the future is a main factor in rural development. Apart from this it involves cooperation, resources, cultural heritage and values, entrepreneurship and innovation, economic vitality, and an understanding of markets and marketing. They all contribute to a region`s ability to benefit from rural development..

The aim of this essay is to study the development of democracy in the Halland province, with focus on participating measures. First and foremost to test earlier research about the causes of the development of democracy, which says that the work takes place with obvious variation between the municipalities and that it is caused by economic resources and experienced problems in the democracy. The purpose is also to conduct a general discussion about the conditions and effects of the development.Thus the method can be characterised as theory consuming because I as far as possible assume the method that has been used in earlier research. Still, my study is limited to the six municipalities of the Halland province and is therefore a study of few cases. One person in each municipality has been interviewed in order to collect a list of all the measures that have been carried out.

Sweden was transformed to a democratic industrial society in the late 19th century. Political influence had been bound to the four estates, nobles, clergy, burghers and farmers. The reforms of the 1860s moved Sweden towards political democracy with universal suffrage. At the national level a two-chamber parliament was established in 1866. Political power should now be a function of economic status.

The hypothesis of this study is that the local government act in Sweden 1862 was an instrument for the state to keep its´ political influence on the local level. It did not open for local self-government. The swedish historians Dahlkvist and Strandberg description of the Swedish local government act support this hypothesis, as does the analysis of political scientists Pettersson and Söderlind. The general opinion that the local government act opened for local self-government does still exist among many swedish historians.This study had two aims. The first was to investigate the actual extent of self-government in Borgvik, a small municipality in Sweden during the period 1861-1924.

The purpose of this thesis is to give an understanding of how grocery stores relate to local foods. Through a case study representatives for two groceries in Norrbotten have been interviewed regarding why they supply local foods, how they try to influence customers to buy this, and how they decide upon the assortment of local foods. The result shows that groceries supply local foods in order to supply a wide range of products and to mediate social responsibility, in order to create customer loyalty. Concerning how the groceries try to influence customers to buy local foods the result cannot give any clear-cut view. Instead it shows that a grocery that actively works to influence customers to buy local foods markets them in specific ways, while the opposite applies to a grocery that does not actively work for this.

The following essay aims at the interplay between regional och municipal growth work, and theway cultural heritage is used in growth work strategies. The main issue has been whether theregional strategies are followed up in the municipal strategies, which has been investigated bymeans of question which impact the region?s strategies has at the local level.The essay draws upon an instrumental perspective on cultural heritage and cultural environment,here defined as instruments in the national development and growth efforts. Three publicationsthat highlights potential roles of cultural heritage and cultural environment to act as instrumentsin the regional and municipal development and growth efforts has thereby been selected astheoretical models. These roles has further been summarized in a tabular form as a schematicdivision of main themes with sub-categories, used as a framework for deciphering the regionaland municipal strategies.A content analysis of available strategies at both regional and local levels have been used as amethod for investigating the issue, where the role of cultural heritage and cultural environment(as defined in the schematic table) has guided the reading.

Although being recognized as holding great cultural-historical significance by local officials, numerous parts of the functionalistic development along Friggagatan became demolished in 2008.This bachelor thesis have surveyed how the planning process proceeded through various municipal committees, and moreover, how different interest groups gathered around certain discursive attitudes. As a consequence of various paradigm shifts in society, e.g. that local government gradually are depending on private economic initiatives, there are to some extent a fear among politicians that cultural-historical demands can risk economic growth.Nevertheless, a building or a development are in fact bearing different value-perspectives, such as economic, functional and cultural-historical. Due to the fact that the heritage-sector has limited resources, in combination with sometimes vaguely and obsolete conservation documents, the sector have difficulties of responding common economic arguments, which leads that the real estate-owner gets total interpretative prerogative.However, despite a sometimes suspicious political attitude towards an improved conservation document, e.g. with continuously updates concerning a building?s technical and economic status, there are some political initiatives working towards it..

AbstractSince the 2006 election the country of Sweden is governed by four Liberal and Conservative parties. Parties that by cooperating maintain power in office and forms a so called coalition. A coalition that not only can be seen at the national but also at the local level. According to pervious research coalitions that holds control of the seats in the government at the national level tends to increase the total expenditures compared to other types of government formations. Can a similar connection be seen at the local level? This the fundamental issue of this essay.