According to the theory of environmental Kuznets curve there is a relationship between carbon emissions and GDP. The relationship has an inverted U-shape. Carbon emissions rise initially and then decreases once a certain level of GDP is obtained.This essay interprets earlier studies in the field of environmental economics and uses public choice to seek answer on how the population acts on aggregate level. This essay analyses 115 countries in cross-sectional data. The analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and GDP that is increasing at first and then decreases for a certain level of GDP.

This comparative case study, which is based on a most similar system design,investigates why the Chávez government has attained a lower degree of democracy than the Kirchner and the Lula governments. In order to develop asupplementary theory about why governments in general achieve various degrees of democracy I compare these governments and examine what policies that differ them and why. My results show that these governments? policies differ concerning the rule of law, militarization, and negotiations with economic groups and anti-regime parts of civil society. I have found numerous answers to why some of these governments (and governments in general) have democratic policies within these four areas and why some do not.

This thesis aims to examine when democratic consolidation took place in Costa Rica from a maximalistic perspective. The hypothesis is that it?s likely that the democracy was not consolidated as early as 1953 which would be the case if applying a minimalistic perspective. Linz and Stepan?s theory about democratic consolidation has been chosen as the theoretical framework of the thesis and the research has been conducted by using a qualitative text analysis.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan?s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy.

Information is one of the organization's essential resources, and as such it needs strategic management. The authors use the information audit, which was developed by Orna 1999 and Henczel 2000 as a tool to evaluate how well an organization's information activities connect to its mission, goals, and objectives, to evaluate the municipal politicians' information support in Härryda municipality. The decision situations met by politicians often are complex; they are ambiguous and unstructured, with a high level of uncertainty. Human information sources meet needs arising in this kind of decision situations best. Since most of the politicians work full-time besides being politicians, Härryda municipality has to substitute the human sources by textual ones composed of highly summarized information.

In this thesis I examine the development and expansion of judicial power in Sweden. The concept of judicial review is defined and related to democratic theory, and the various forms of judicial review in use in Sweden are explained. The main focus is on the political and scientific discussion concerning judicial review since the mid 1970s. It is shown that judicial review so far has been used only to a limited extent and that the number of court cases has remained quite stable over time. The main cause of judicialization seems to be the supremacy of EU law following the Swedish EU membership in 1995 and the inclusion of the European Convention on Human Rights into Swedish law.

The aim of this study is to identify factors, which decide wheter you choose to commute with bicycle to work in the winterseason. The study is conducted in Umea, in the norhtern part of Sweden. The study is based on 509 answers from a webbased survey, conducted on municipal employees. The study has investigated which factors that affect different commuting groups from a gender perspective. The groups, which has been compared is motorists, wintercyclist and summercyclists.

We are currently in the midst of the current information revolution and it is increasinglyimportant to allocate and utilize the resources spent on IT. To accomplish this, one solutioncould be to work together with IT. For municipalities, this can be a complicated process whenyou are dependent on the resources that are given and subject to laws regarding procurement,this places great demands on the Swedish municipalities.One solution could be to work collaboratively with IT across municipal borders, this studyexamines the advantages and disadvantages of this. The study was conducted using interviewand survey of various municipalities in the Gothenburg region. The study shows that there isjoint work across municipal boundaries but that communication sometimes fails, this provesamong other things that some communities feel they have a partnership with a municipality,while the other sees that they have no partnership.With the results from the study are discussed and problematized the current conditions thatexist between the municipalities today, and how they could change.

The members of the OECD have agreed on giving aid assistance to developingcountries in a way of promoting their own capacity of handling the challengeof poverty and development. The members also cooperate and coordinate theiraid to recipient countries in the purpose of giving as effective assistance aspossible. The aid from these countries is often intended to human rights,democracy and has a humanitarian idea. This is the way from the OECDcountries. The Chinese way of giving aid mostly aimed at the industry of therecipient to promote the economic growth to lift the country out of poverty.The Chinese way do not aim or intend their aid at promoting human rights ordemocracy, often just industry and infrastructure.

Title: What is important knowledge in social studies- An analyse of opinions among teachers in social studiesThe aim of this paper is to increase the awareness about how teachers in Social studies think about goals and substance in the subject. I also want to get a picture about what kinds of problems teacher?s experiences when teaching Social studies. My expectations told me that Social studies are complex to teach, because it derives from several university disciplines such as Political science, Economics, Sociology, Law and Geography, which I believe makes the subject harder to define and what to give priority to. Finally, I want to increase the awareness, if it seems to be any fundamental essence in Social studies as a subject.To achieve my goals with this paper I have studied relevant literature about Social studies.

                                                  AbstractThe development of our society has in many ways changed the relationships between the political parties and the citizens. Fewer citizens are active in political parties, which has contributed to the fact that we see a form of catch-all effect and a development of parties that organizes more in forms of professional organisations. This paper has made a research of modells of democratic ideals and values between leaders and party-members in political parties in the local area. The purpose has been to show how these ideals and values can reflect back on the political development. The result shows that the development has created a form of catch-all effect and a professionalism in the parties.

AbstractTitle: A democratic organisation - one click away? A quantitative content analysis which studies the potential of democratic communication through intranet use.Authors: Stina Gabrielsson and Jill Johansson VennelinPurpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is potential for democratic communication within the NGOs through intranet use.Key questions to be answered were: To what extent is authority versus members represented on the intranet Klick?s discussion forum? What/which communication-related functions out of social function, knowledge transferring and debate are featured in the posts published on the intranet Klick?s discussion forum? Are deliberative discussions being practiced in the discussion forumthreads on the intranet Klick? The thesis is based on the theory of deliberative democracy. In order to substantiate the theory has theoretical perspectives concerning participation and involvement also been applied. These perspectives are derived from organizational theory and internal communication.Method/Material: This study consists of a quantitative content analysis of the 477 posts and the 129 discussion threads available on the NGO RFSU?s intranet Klick the 29th of november 2012.Main results: The results show that 63, 4 percent of those who were active in the discussionforum represented the category authority, while the category members were formed by 36, 6 percent.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to examine how the religious education is implemented in junior and grammar school. As a base for my examination I used two private schools and two municipal schools. My main goal was to get a better view of the content of the education, the treatment of the students and the conditions for the students to get a greater understanding and respect for others? religious beliefs and opinions through education. To reach this goal I did interviews and field studies which means that the paper has a qualitative approach.The examination showed clearly that the private schools spend a lot more education time on their respective religions while the municipal schools have a more comprehensive education.

This bachelor thesis aim to highlight the values that form the basis for the formulation of the municipal local activity support to sports clubs. Key questions was, what are the criteria for the distribution of support, what are the conditions for the support in the municipalities, and what thoughts on development of the local sports club are behind these criteria. The study is based on one policy document from each municipality and 15 interviews that revealed a large spread in mindset and resources between the municipalities, but also similarities in the supports criteria and evaluation work. 14 out of 15 municipalities distribute the support, but the conditions are different. One interesting result the study shows is how little some municipalities really know about the money that goes out to the clubs.

AbstractSince the Act Regarding Support and Service to Certain Functionally Handicapped Persons (LSS) were introduced in 1994, social care and service have increased inSweden(SFS 1993:387). The implementation of the act has caused many changes and also progress within the social care system. One main change is the division between public (provided by the municipalities) and private care providers. This division has led to many questions about how leadership is organized within different public and private organizations.The purpose of this study is to investigate differences between leader?s experiences of their role and working conditions within private and public assistance care for disabled.