Since the end of the Cold War, foreign aid donors have been using political conditionality to promote human rights, democracy and good governance in recipient countries. This phenomenon has been analyzed and criticized, but mainly from a strictly empirical point of view. In this paper, the legitimacy of political conditionality is analyzed through a normative perspective based on the extrinsic value of efficiency. If the political conditions don?t result in a democratic development, including respect of human rights and good governance, they can not be justified.With at theoretical focus on the donors, based on the unequal relationship between donor and recipient, I am examining the donors? possibility and supposed will to use political conditions in development cooperation.

The aging population is a challenge for Europe and there must be cooperation between EU member states to join the challenge to meet. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the EU's ability to influence older people's health, based on experiences from a selection of European officials and on a review of the EU's common strategies. The authors studied and problematize the implementation of the strategies that the EU has negotiated for the work against the elderly poor health, with a view of member countries have different conditions. Using qualitative methods, we have collected and processed statements from targeted interviews and publications by a range of European policies. The material was then analyzed from implementation theory and organizational theory, and based on results of previous research. The result shows that the EU is developing common strategies and coordination methods to the aforementioned challenge to meet. The results also show that the differences existing between Member States causes implementation difficulties of the common strategies. The study states ultimately decide that there should be common strategies to facilitate the work of Member States when it comes to countering the elderly poor health.

The aim of this essay is to examine the ambivalence that I consider work of solidarity carried out from majority position to be associated with, and whether it makes sense to understand the relationship between majorities and minorities involved in this work by using the concepts of race and whiteness. Through Ruth Frankenbergs work on white women and race I consider whiteness to be a racialized position, and through Sara Ahmeds phenomenology of whiteness, which describes racialization as made through the orientation of bodies, I investigate how this racialized position is shaped and maintained by the solidarity work. The study is based on qualitative interviews with four White women engaged in two organizations that works on integration of female immigrants through creating jobs in a cooperative and through educating in national and familial democracy. The work of solidarity told of by the interviewees seems to produce racialized notions about immigrated people of color, which acts as a counterpart to the whiteness that the interviewees themselves possess. At the same time, the work also challenge this binary division, especially by incorporating the non-white women in what in this essay is called "the white world"..

The overall purpose with this thesis has been to study the strategic development of the Swedish Green Party, Miljöpartiet de Gröna. From its first appearance in the Swedish parliament 1988 to its decision to cooperate with the Social Democrats and the Left Party in 1998, the Greens has gone from a radical antiparty to a pragmatic support party. The analysis has concentrated towards identifying the causal factors behind this strategic move made by the Greens, and to determine how this party change has affected the party's strategic goals. In order to do so, a qualitative case study has been conducted where an integrated theoretical approach has been used. By studying official statements and internal debates the thesis concludes that the strategic change made by the Greens was due to the evolvement of a new dominant coalition of within the party.

The aim of this study was to investigate how four families in the Stockholm area reason, what kind of preconception they have and what their horizon of expectations is when they make the choice between sending their children to the profile class of municipal/free schools and sending them to the general classes in those schools. The main research questions asked were:What kind of preconception do the parents have about profile classes?What reasons do the interviewed parents have to send their children to a profile class?What are the interviewed parent?s expectations of the profile class choice?The study is built on qualitative interviews with the parents of the families. The empirical data has been analyzed using a framework of theories drawing on the theory of reproduction, the forms of social capital, the ideas created from the word profile and elite and the horizon of expectations. The results show that the parents of the families have a similar degree of preconception about profile classes.

In this essay we strive to examine how the social work in Sweden will be affected if the Swedish welfare model goes through fundamental changes. The study illuminates the close connection between the Swedish collective bargaining model and the Swedish welfare system. The questions we present in this essay, and hopefully answer satisfactory, are: is the Swedish welfare model subject to thorough changes? How will such a change alter the social work in Sweden?, is the Swedish collective bargaining model in a state of modification? Would a modification in the collective bargaining model have effects on the Swedish welfare model?We have used a qualitative method in collecting empirical material. We interviewed three representatives, who worked for Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, IF Metall and The Swedish Municipal Workers respectively.

The decisions for investment are forward-looking and the base of a long-term strategy. The research within investment have focused on diverse formulas which are used in financial assessment, which also should be complemented with qualitative evaluation. Consequently, the focus should not only be on the execution of the formulas. Less time have been spent on research concerning what actually initiates the investment proposals and affects the decision-making. This will be highlighted in this essay.

Our purpose with this essay is to find explanations to the genesis of the Swedish law against prostitution now in power, known as Sexköpslagen 1998:408. We enter deeply into the official reports behind the law. This Swedish law implies that in a sex trade a crime is committed only by the consumer, and not by the seller. Our essay will result in an analysis of what sexköpslagen is an expression for. Our assumption is that the so called ideology of (gender) equality in Sweden might be a part of the explanation to the genesis of sexköpslagen.

This thesis is about the bookmobile service in Sweden of today. The purpose is to examine how the staff motivate the existence of the bookmobile. Other purposes are to study the goals of the service, to describe ?daily life? of the bookmobile, examine the changes of the service during the years and discuss possible changes in the future. The study is based on interviews with thirteen staff members from six Swedish communities, of both rural and urban character.

The personnel policy program for the employees in studied municipality includes guidelines for the working environment, saying that health promoting activities is offered to all employees.                              Objective: To investigate how these activities were used and how the staff perceived the activities offered. The aim was also to find out how well the information about current health promotion efforts reached the staff.Method: A qualitative approach was used in the form of interviews. The sample consisted of municipal employees from seven different work sites.  A total of 12 women aged 32-52 years participated. The interviews were recorded and a hermeneutic theory was used to interpret the results.Results: The results showed that most informants used some form of fitness activity. In most cases health care-time was used for anything from walking to organized workouts. The great barrier was lack of information and lack of trained and dedicated health motivators. In several cases, informants had no knowledge about what a health motivator is supposed to do. The informants own suggestions for health promotion interventions included stress management and foot care.Conclusion: The survey showed that respondents were poorly informed about which wellness activities the municipality offered. The result could also be interpreted as a communication gap between the local authority, health motivators and the employees. A request for group activities was detected.  .

Civil disobedience constitutes an interesting ethical phenomena in the democraticstate since the people performing it consciously brakes laws and norms in societyfor purposes they themselves judge to be morally good and just. This thesisexamines whether the phenomena of civil disobedience is justifiable in ademocratic society.In this study civil disobedience is analyzed on two levels. First the problem isanalyzed on a theoretical level in relative to the three, by us established, values:respect for the law, the will of the majority and equality. Second, civildisobedience is analyzed on a more practical level where we test our theoreticalline of argument with the help of two example groups who engages in civildisobedience. The justification of civil disobedience is also analyzed through twoethical perspectives on acting, deontology and consequentialism.Our conclusion is that civil disobedience is justifiable on a theoretical level inrelative to the values we discuss.

The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

The subject of this master thesis is the school library and how we find its potential unutilized. We look at this problem in connection to the democratic assignment that the Swedish school has. The purpose is to elucidate what the democratic assignment consists of and to establish the role that the school library ought to have in this assignment. To describe the democratic assignment we examine and interpret the documents that regulate school and library activities today, including UNESCO/IFLA School Library Manifesto and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We use critical ideology analysis because we consider democracy to be a sort of ideology and have a critical view of how the school library is used or rather not used in school.

The purpose of this examination was to make a qualitative study focusing on children's influence from a gender perspective. The study is based on interviews. We wanted to investigate teachers' perception of children's influence in the preschool.Earlier research on children´s influence and gender has also helped us in the conclusion of this examination.The survey consists of ten interviews with teachers of varied work experience in the preschool. We also chose to interview teachers in other positions, since this is often the case in preschools today. From the result we can see that there are different levels of skill and awareness regarding the topic of children's influence from a gender perspective.

I boken Patterns of Democracy (1999) påvisar Arend Lijphart att tio institutionella variabler fångar variansen mellan majoritets- och konsensusdemokrati längs två separata dimensioner. Den första dimensionen ? exekutiv-partisystem ? behandlar fem olika arrangemang av den exekutiva makten, parti- och valsystem samt organiserade intressen. Den andra dimensionen ? enhetsstat-federalism ? behandlar den institutionella kontrasten mellan enhetsstat och federa-lism.