This study, which was conducted in Sweden, was based on four qualitative semi-structured interviews. The aim of this study was to create an understanding of how a municipality designs the sanction for youth offenders called ?youth service? based on the law that establishes the existence of such a sentence. We interviewed social workers that work at the department of youth service in the municipality of Gothenburg, who exclusively deal with youth offenders? sentenced to youth service as their job assignment.

This Master?s thesis explores and describes the beliefs, values and norms in a selection of five Swedish municipal cultural policy documents approved 2005-2007. The comprehensive question is: Which ideological traits characterize cultural policy in the chosen Municipalities as communicated in their respective cultural policy vision document? The method used is ideology analysis. Ideal types based on a model by Dorte Skot-Hansen are used as a conceptual framework, illustrating three different rationalities in relation to cultural policy: the humanistic, the sociological and the market oriented.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate why the two Swedish Municipalities of Frykerud and Östmark were the only Municipalities in Värmland that were forcibly merged by the state during the ?Municipality block reform? of 1971, and whether local identities played a role in the resistance against this reform.     The study is designed as a comparative case study and builds on both history and political science to analyze the topic from a broader perspective. Based on the research situation three theoretical theses have been formulated, the durability of which will be tested in the analysis part of the essay.    The study notes that Frykeruds resistance against the ?Municipality block reform? started when the reform prevented a planned retirement home construction in the municipality. In the analytical part of the essay, the author discusses how the discontent can be interpreted as symptomatic of bourgeois centralization resistance, as well as being due to the fact that traditional, local self-government as a political subject was perceived as threatened.

The purpose with the work is to study Fortums activities with hydro power plants, dams and reservoirs mainly in a premise jurisdictional perspective and to show how GIS would be a helpful tool for the future.A great deal of the information that the Generation Hydro-division at Fortum are managing have a spatial element. That means that it is possible to spatially join this information to a geographical polygon, line or point. This information is today gathered from several different sources, such as files, paper maps and digital data of several kinds. A Geographic Information System (GIS), as and aid besides the ordinary tools should be an effective support in the everyday work with questions of a premise jurisdictional nature.The goal of this work is to account for how to organize, present and analyse geographic information. We will show how to link from the map to traditional tools such as calculation- and register programs.

The subject of this thesis is to ascertain the task of the public library in Swedish society today according to the employer, that is the State and the Municipalities, and according to the public library itself. The thesis also tries to establish as to what extent these different actors share the same view of the task. To this purpose I have studied the library law, the target reports of municipal authorities and public libraries, and made interviews with public library representatives during the autumn of 2001. The particular consideration of this paper is whether the task is being described in active, culture making terms or in passive, service functionary terms. Initially, I describe the task according to the library law.

Recent years there has been discussed how the critical situation in the housing market threatens the Stockholm region's growth. The thesis objective is to examine whether there is a scientific link between the lack of housing supply and growth. The thesis also intends to identify solutions for increased housing construction, for instance by examining the conditions for a greater regional perspective and influence on the region's housing supply. The thesis empirical study is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Government, Municipalities and the housing industry.In Sweden, research on the relationship between housing shortages and growth has not been conducted to that extent it can be said to exist scientific evidence regarding the growth threat. However, in Britain and the U.S, empirical studies show that a lack of housing supply has hindered growth through negative impact on countries' gross domestic product.

This thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between municipal policy for housing supply and the planning of new housing in Sweden. Through a case study of Göteborg municipality and a comparative content analysis of Göteborgs policy for housing supply and a number of plans featuring housing the analysis seeks to investigate the effect of policy for housing supply as a tool for securing the demand for housing in the Swedish Municipalities. The thesis also seeks to discuss its findings using theory concerning the implementation of policy and the general planning situation for Swedish Municipalities today. The result of the analysis shows that most plans fail to regulate most of the content suggested in the policy for housing supply, particularly regarding aspects such as pricing, type of housing and type of ownership. The result also points towards a relationship regarding the prevalence of municipal land contracts and compatibility to policy for housing supply as well as a connection between how extensive the plans are in their proposed land use and their compatibility with policy for housing supply. Using theories of policy implementation and the municipal planning situation, possible explanations for the findings of the analysis could be a split in responsibility between the formulating and implementation of the policy for housing supply and its contents, a lack of resources of means for implementing or the prevalence of special interests when attempting to convert policy to plans..

The purpose of this study is to examine certain aspects of work with men who use violence in intimate relationships. In a Government bill in late 90s the Government presented its action plan on what is expected to be done in each municipality, but investigations show that the work is stationary. 46 percent of the men, who are in treatment, choose to cancel it. We wanted to find out how society will meet up with men who use violence in their intimate relationship and how to go about in the meeting. Those who lead us to the answers in this qualitative method are three social workers and a therapist who has the task of helping these men. The study is based on interviews from three Municipalities in southern Sweden, the Municipalities made ??as in between 30-60 000 residents and businesses are startups; theoldest has been in operation for five years.The results showed that they had chosen to put these activities under the sections of the Social Services but is counted as a separate project, as the driving force may apply for funding via the County Council.

The aim of this essay is to analyze how students are constituted as subjects in local curricula. The theoretical perspective is grounded in Michel Foucault?s notion of governmentality and power/knowledge and his critique of a sovereign subject. From this theoretical perspective I use Foucault?s concept of formation of objects and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe?s idea of subject positioning as tools for a discourse analysis.

The large number of surrendered and feral cats is a big animal welfare problem all over the world. Populations of feral cats arise through a large number of unwanted cats which can lead to surrender of these, through cats allowed to roam free outside which can lead to the owner losing these and through the reproduction that occurs amongst these surrendered or lost cats. One aim of this study is to give an account of this problem. It is however difficult to draw general conclusions about these populations of cats since studies all over the world has been carried out on different types of populations, during different conditions and different periods of time. The welfare of many of these cats is presumably low because they are exposed to risks as disease, starvation, climate, traffic, other animals and humans.

This thesis concerns how local governments use the concept sustainable development, and what the concept means. The concept of Agenda 21 and local Agenda 21 will also be discussed in this essay, because it's an instrument for local governments to specify their work towards sustainable development. I have interviewed civil servants in leading positions in the Municipalities? work with environmental questions and sustainable development. In the choice of method for this thesis, I use the qualitative method and for the interviews I chose the ?semi structure way of interviewing?.This thesis shows that local governments? implementation of sustainable development and Agenda 21 differ between the Municipalities.

The aim of the current study was to highlight the social service work with domestic violence against women. In this study, we examined whether there was a difference in the way the social service works and if their effort differ in terms of domestic violence. Moreover, this study investigated how social workers work to prevent future violence against victims also what method they use to find out the causes behind men?s violence against women.A total of four administrative officers were interviewed from two different Municipalities. All four officers were actively working with questions concerning domestic violence against women.

AbstractAs a young offender in Sweden today you can be sentenced to juvenile care within the social services. Within the juvenile care it may be an option for these young offenders to undergo an affect program. That is a collective name for several types of structured programs that can include everything from conversations to visits. The purpose of this study was to create an understanding of which arguments there are for why these affect programs for young offenders is being used in three Municipalities in southern Sweden. We authors found this interesting because of the lack of evidence for these affect programs.

The aim of the thesis is to study young peoples, defined as boys and girls between 14 and 16 years old, attitudes to library in two Municipalities. Notwithstanding the fact that young people, and children, often is given priority in library work, the reality often seems to be another. Attitudes are founded primarily in childhood and therefore it is of great importance to examine how young people regard libraries. Besides studying former research about young people and libraries that has been performed on library and information science, we also have been using concepts and theories from social science. We give a brief outline of youth research and its development and look at official records and legislation to see if and in what context young people are mentioned.

The Swedish population is getting older and more elderly will continue to be in need ofsupport from the community to meet their everyday lives. As the population gets olderdementia also increases the spread in the country. Because of this more people withdementia will be in need of help in their everyday lives. This will increase the demandson elderly care in the Municipalities where they have to offer good care. As moreindividuals suffering from dementia will be in need of help in their daily lives aid officers'encounters with people suffering from dementia and their relatives or any representativesbecome more common.The study had as objective to study aid officer's reasoning on the treatment of dementedindividuals in need of help.