The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

Liberal theorists typically argue that state action should not favor any particular conception of the good or meaningful life. On this view the defining characteristic of the liberal state is neutrality among rivaling ideas of the good. This thesis argues that state neutrality is impossible to maintain in practice. Two different versions of state neutrality; neutral justification and neutral aims, are used to analyze a wide range of political issues. It is concluded that far from being neutral, the liberal state favors individualistic and market oriented conceptions of the good life.

The investigation aims to clarify to what extent non-conscious thought has efficacy in e.g. decision making and also examine some aspects of the question whether decisions are caused by free will. This will be conducted through an analysis of new research pertaining to neuroscience, economics, the combination of the two within neuroeconomics; evolutionary theory and especially the new theory of Unconscious thought (Nordgren & Dijksterhuis 2006) which will enjoy special scrutiny due to its recentness in the scientific field. A decision strategy ought to put high-level conscious cognition to use where it's most effective and this is on a different level than the canonized one. Meta decision making is decision making pertaining to which decisions ought to be made consciously.

A central question is what view of communication is dominating in a municipality in the southern part of Sweden. The study deals with communication theory from two different perspectives; the view of transmission and the view of creation of meaning. Falkheimer and Heide (2003) claim that the view of transmission is one-way communication where the receivers apprehend passivly. In the view of creation of meaning the goal is to develop and strengthen the common notion that exists in a group. Empirical studies were done, that consisted of qualitative interviews with politicians, directors of the municipality, and principals from three childcare and school areas, and also from one upper secondary school.

The aim of this study is to investigate a number of social worker views on long -term drug abuse and how they feel that this group of individuals should be treated. Our purpose is also to examine these social worker discretion in terms of decision-making under the Socialtjänstlagen (SoL) and Lag om missbrukare i vissa fall (LVM ).We conducted two focus group interviews and assumed a number of open questions. Our empirical data have been categorized by the study's purpose and issues and by recurring themes in our individual stories.Our results shows that all social workers believe that one should always look at the big picture in estimates related to drug users. They also believe that the process of long -term addicts occasionally feels hopeless. Social workers felt that their room for maneuver in terms of decision-making was fairly limited.

The term ?social competence? is widely used by organizations in job advertisements, despite the problems of making a unified definition of it. The purpose of this study is to investigate which features the organizations require, why organizations require them and how the assessment is implemented for recruitment. To answer the purpose of this study, eight qualitative interviews conducted with recruiters from four different staffing agencies. Further a literature study was performed to define the concept of ?social competence? and its meaning, in order to later connect this to the result.

The intimate connection between autonomy and decision-making in applied health care, especially in various kinds of consent and refusal has taken center stage in medical ethics since the Salgo decision in 1957. Prior to that time, the physician?s supposedly moral duty to provide appropriate medical care typically surpassed the legal obligation to respect patient?s autonomy. The Salgo decision concluded that physicians have a legal duty to provide facts necessary for the patient to make an informed decision. "The doctor knows best" long ago was replaced with "The doctor proposes; the patient disposes." There is no legal obligation for the patient?s choice to be palatable to anyone, other than that patient himself/herself.

It is estimated that approximately 10 000 people are living in Sweden after having been rejected residence permit or asylum, meaning that they have to hide from the authorities while facing a risk of being deported by means of violence as they do not wish to leave voluntarily.For their existence, a vast number of people employed by the public administration can be expected to contribute to the wellbeing of the hidden people through their professions as bureaucrats.The bureaucrats can thereby be expected to be torn between different sets of value systems, roles and obligations towards the state and towards the hidden people.In this master thesis, I examine how five bureaucrats motivate their acting for the sake of the hidden people in terms of legitimacy, legality and morality in their administration, towards their ethic responsibilities and towards society as a whole.The results show that the bureaucrats see themselves as saviours of ethical values in an illegitimate administration where economic efficacy and arbitrary decision-making constantly transgresses The Human Rights, ratified by the Swedish Parliament..

The level of increased central government that we have experienced during the last decades in school, for the purpose of increasing equality and to adapt the Swedish school to a certain international standard, clearly shows that increased control scarcely leads to improvement.The aim of this paper is to examine whether teachers believe that national tests contribute to equivalent assessment and increased goal attainment. Furthermore the teachers? attitude towards and work with national tests is described. The paper is written from a school improvement perspective, where good examples from current research on what creates increased quality in school meaning increased goal attainment and equivalent assessment are related to research on school effectiveness and increased testing in schools. The study builds upon a quantitative survey among teachers in upper primary - and secondary school in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden.The result shows that the teachers have a somewhat more positive than negative attitude towards national tests, as a whole.

Not all payments that an employee receives are cash salary, but may also be salary benefits. It should not matter in which form an employee receives payment, taxation shall be equal despite the form of salary. Cash salary as well as salary in benefits are covered by a general rule in the Swedish Tax Law and shall therefore be taxed when they have a connection to the work performed. There are exemptions to the general rule as some benefits are tax free. In general, taxation shall be easy to foresee.   The legal rules that are treated in this thesis have a general meaning.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the narrative elements in three of the Swedish artist Karin Mamma Anderssons paintings and try to see what kind of stories that might be hidden in these paintings. I have chosen three different themes as tools for this study. They are: the meaning or the importance of the titles, painting as a medium and the narrative elements or components in the paintings. Furthermore I also use the semiotic method in my analysis based on the ideas of Roland Barthes combined with a feminist theoretical standpoint with a gender perspective. This means my study is based on the reception of these images and what kind of message they might carry.

AbstractIn the research made on the subject, homework, there are a lot of differences in the opinions regarding the meaning of homework/home assignments in the educational system today. Do they fill a purpose or do they only create social rifts and injustice.For my essay I chose to find out what attitude senior-level teachers have towards homework and what meaning it is considered to have on the students learning ability.My research is based on interviews with six senior-level teachers who all teach different subjects.The results showed that all of the interviewed teachers used some kind of home assignments in their teaching.Ultimately, the conclusion I reached is that the homework should be well prepared and given a lot of thought. The homework should also be interesting and meaningful to the students to promote the learning process..

The aim of this study was to deepen the knowledge about the meaning of being internationally adopted for individuals living in Sweden. Through group discussions with young adults data was retrieved, and then analysed with a qualitative phenomenological approach. The study revealed three main themes: 1) experiences of being Swedish, 2) experiences of ethnic origin, and 3) the interaction between the two aspects of the identity, how the internationally adopted individual integrate's his/her ethnical origin with his/her Swedish identity. With regards to previous studies about adoption and psychological theories the meaning of being internationally adopted in Sweden is discussed..

The aim of this study was to get a deeper understanding of how employees at NCC Construction Sverige AB experience health promotion activities. The purpose was to identify and uncover the process of meaning constitution concerning health promotion within each subjective individual. To achieve this deeper understanding the participants were asked to answer a carefully formulated phenomenological question in a self-report. The received reports where analysed according to the method of Meaning Constitution Analysis. The result showed that both office workers and construction workers exclusively refer health promotion to bodily functions even though there where some differences in type of activity they focused.

Following the implementation of IFRS with yearly impairment tests, the question of correlations and causalities between impairments and investors? decision making is gaining interest in academia. This essay will study the relationship between significant goodwill impairments, communicated on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm webpage between the years 2005-2009, and the impact those announcements have had on investors? decision making. Furthermore, the causality behind the impairments will be in focus.