The overall aim is to examine how the European Union Water Framework Directive has affected the local water management in the catchment Märstaån situated in the eastern part of the lake Mälaren river basin, Sweden. The first part of the study gives an historical overview of the area with focus on how the old agricultural landscape was handling the nutrient load from farming activities by means of different kinds of wetlands. By using the concept of the procedural landscape, introduced by Torsten Hägerstrand , together with historical maps with dates starting from the 17th century, the pre-modern landscape is analyzed.  The second part is an investigation, based on qualitative data, on how the different actors in the catchment area work together to secure the water quality for the Märstaån river. The analysis shows that the Märstaån catchment river systems are mostly unchanged in the rural areas.  The exception is the mainstream section of the Märstaån river running partly underground today and the Halmsjöbäcken river that is heavily affected by the Arlanda airport situated within the catchment area.

Abstract Title:                       Grades at Primary School ? A study of local politicians' arguments in                       connection with the division into grades at Swedish primary schools.Author:                       Annie LinderUniversity of KalmarC-essay in Social StudiesAutumn 2011 The study aims to investigate local politicians' decisions since municipalities took overSwedish primary education in 1990/91. The arguments put forward in support of how stages are organised have been studied, likewise whether municipalities have acted rationally when making their decisions.Six municipalities are included in the survey. They were divided into three educational categories: lower, middle and high level schools; previous and recent schools and F9 schools with pre-schools and primary schools integrated.Minutes from politicians' and civil servants' meetings have been studied and categorised according to arguments for and against. The most common supportive arguments are about economy and organisation, others concern school premises, trends and the wish for a comprehensive compulsory school.

Ever since Lipsky wrote about street-level bureaucrats in 1980 the main belief has been that certain characteristics of their jobs make it exceptionally difficult to severely reduce their discretion. However, discretion comes at a price and if public servants abuse their power the legitimacy of government is at risk and ultimately even the democracy.This thesis address this question by analysing the Swedish employment service which in the beginning of 2001 started a project called ?Af Sverige? trying to improve internal rule of law. By comparing two local and fairly equal jobcentres and how the street-level bureaucrats within use their discretion, I seek to find support for my hypotheses that organizing local jobcentres according to the principles of machine bureaucracy plays a significant part in reducing discretion.My findings show that a jobcentre characterised by strict rules, few units, good communications and a forthright manager who delegates formal power to the employees results in a stricter and more uniform application of regulations among the street-level bureaucrats. My conclusion is therefore unambiguous.

This essay is based on a mission from Anna Schibli, Director of Tourism at Solliden Palace. The thesis aims to investigate the image that Solliden Palace has, and the picture that local and regional tourist offices have of the Sollidens Castle brand and what position Solliden include in these markets. A total of six in-depth interviews with tourist offices, at local and regional level, has been carried out and an initial in-depth interview with Anna Schibli of Solliden Palace. The responses of the respondents have since been interpreted and processed based on an inductive approach, in order to interpret the image that Solliden Palace has. Scientific papers have been studied and analyzed in order to generate an explanation and understanding of the research area.

My aim in this essay is to analyze how the female body is represented in Swedish working class literature. I have compared four different novels all of which contain a female bathing scene: the opening chapter of Moa Martinsons Kvinnor och äppelträd (1933) , the opening chapter of Ivar Lo-Johanssons Bara en mor (1939) and a scene each in Glasfåglarna (1996) and Mosippan (1998), both written by Elsie Johansson. The bathing scenes suggest three key issues: modernisation, urbanisation and above all women´s sexual politics. Though there were several issues facing the feminist movement in Sweden in the 1930, the question of a woman?s right to her body was one that united the movement, regardless of class..

Abstract Title:                       Grades at Primary School ? A study of local politicians' arguments in                       connection with the division into grades at Swedish primary schools.Author:                       Annie LinderUniversity of KalmarC-essay in Social StudiesAutumn 2011 The study aims to investigate local politicians' decisions since municipalities took overSwedish primary education in 1990/91. The arguments put forward in support of how stages are organised have been studied, likewise whether municipalities have acted rationally when making their decisions.Six municipalities are included in the survey. They were divided into three educational categories: lower, middle and high level schools; previous and recent schools and F9 schools with pre-schools and primary schools integrated.Minutes from politicians' and civil servants' meetings have been studied and categorised according to arguments for and against. The most common supportive arguments are about economy and organisation, others concern school premises, trends and the wish for a comprehensive compulsory school.

I wrote this essay with the aim to explore, understand and get some insights into what it is that effects the possibilities to plan for ecological sustainability and make it happen. There is no clear definition of sustainable development but world top meetings and reports have developed goals and strategies. I will present some of the theory at hand but most of this essay is based on six interviews with planners at local governments from around the country. Several of the local governments are using the goals issued by the state government by putting them into their large scale plans. During the interviews some obstacles were identified, like a lack of resourses, disadvantaging powerstruktures, conflicts with marketeconomy and simply different meenings about what ecological sustainability is in practice. My method of getting information through interviews and documenting them by taking notes had, as all methods, it?s weakneses.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze success factors in the integration of students with special needs in regular schools. This will be done through the case study of a nine year old autistic student in a small town public school ? a fairly representative case for the Swedish school system. The data collection methods used in the paper are; three participant observations of the student, and a qualitative interview with two of the student?s teachers.

The main purpose of this essay was to study the program "Nationellt stöd för kunskapsutveckling inom socialtjänsten" ("National support for knowledge development within the social services") from the National Board of Health and Welfare on the basis of how such a development, as represented by the program, could affect clients' possibilities to participation and influence within the social services.To respond to the purpose I used the following questions at issue:* How is client participation and client influence defined in the program?* What arguments for and/or against client participation and client influence are stated?* Which patterns and similarities/differences are possible to discern between the municipalities and universities that participated in the program when it comes to client participation and client influence?The study was conducted as a document analysis. I studied documents from the program both on a national and a local level. The essay uses empowerment theories and theories concerning client participation and client influence. The main conclusions were that on the national level the authors of the documents spoke with caution about their view on client participation and client influence and expressed that it had to be balanced against the rights of the citizens and the social workers for example.

In an effort to strengthen democracy in the union, the EU in 2005 took a new approach to communications policy to reach out to the citizens. The strategic document "Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate" was accompanied by two other documents, and the three of them were the core of this policy. Both democracy and communications work means at EU level a higher complexity than in the nation-state arena. Objective of this study is to examine how the implementation of Plan D has turned out in a democracy renewal perspective. To achieve that answers are sought to questions concerning the goals of Plan D, how they are still present today, what happened in practice regarding the efforts that are highlighted, and how the substance of the activities can be judged from a democratic theory perspective.

The purpose of this essay is to study how feminists portray themselves and their opinions about gender issues and other political matters in popular feminist blogs. The blogs that are studied are Lady Dahmer, Fanny Åström, Hanapee and Genusfolket. The overall essay questions are: How does the feminist bloggers present themselves? Which subjects are discussed in the feminist blogs? Which rhetorical devices does the feminist bloggers use? The theories that are used to answer the essay questions are the four spheres where there are inequality between the sexes, theories about third wave feminism, the rhetorical concepts ethos, logos and pathos and the SPADER-model for writing good argumentation. A descriptive method is used to study how the bloggers present themselves, a quantitative content analysis is used to count which subjects the bloggers write about and a qualitative rhetorical text analysis is used to study the rhetorical devices the bloggers use.The result shows that the two bloggers Lady Dahmer and Fanny Åström describe themselves with provocative words while the other blogs have more neutral descriptions.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some information aspects of decision-making in Swedish municipal committees. Which are the information needs and how do they emerge? How is the needed information sought and received and which are the sources? How do the members of the committees use information when making decisions? To answer these questions qualitative interviews were conducted with four politicians (two chairpersons representing the political majority and two vice-chairpersons representing the opposition) and three officials in a municipality with a population of about 50 000. The politicians were interviewed in capacity of decision-makers, whereas the officials from the local administration are of interest through their decision-supportive role, which includes providing of reports and other information. The examination indicates that even if the conditions to some extent differ between the committees, the administration is highly influential: Notions and proposals about action may come from inhabitants, organizations, politicians etc., but are handled by the administration, which often is the problem formulating actor, through which the informational needs nearly always are canalized.

Today most people are in agreement that the media industry is in crisis. Many newsrooms cut down on staff. At the same time the PR industry is growing. We wanted to research if this could affect the unbiased and independent news in our news media today. Today's newsrooms receive a lot of press releases every day.

This study investigates the curriculum for English in Gymnasium class 10 in Baden-Württemberg, Germany and compares it with the Swedish curriculum for English 5. A special focus it put on the politics that decide how the curriculum is written. The German and Swedish curricula for English are quite different, although they have some main points in common. The study includes a textual analysis and observations of English classes. Furthermore, nine teachers of English in Germany are interviewed about their views of the curriculum.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between urban transformation and the occupation movement in Sweden, aiming to identify the movement's characteristics and comprehend its changes over time. By analyzing qualitative material collected from occupants active within a span from the 1980 to the present, we examine how the occupation movement has evolved. We investigate the motivations behind the movement, the lifestyle of occupants, and their potential gains to get a better understanding of the culture. We explore the prefigurative politics of the resistance where occupant activists create alternative lifestyles aligned with their desired future, bypassing the wait for broader societal changes. Finally we inquire the current possibilities of creating and defending meaningful urban spaces and social scenes..