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.

The purpose of this study is to, from the preschool teachers? point of view, deepen the knowledge about influential factors regarding a mandatory report from preschools to the Child Protective Agency (CPA) when suspecting child maltreatment and feeling uneasiness regarding the child. The purpose is also to furthermore investigate collaboration between preschools and the CPA in Hagfors municipality. The study has the following questions: How do preschools teachers handle their suspicions and uneasiness about a child being maltreated? Which factors can be influential on whether or not the suspicions are reported to the CPA? Which experiences do preschool teachers have of collaboration with the CPA?The study is based on qualitative methods in the formof individual interviews.

The aim of this thesis is to use the bibliometric method author cocitation analysis (ACA) and investigate the cognitive structure in a research field, which is called the intellectual base. The research field in this investigation is social psychology. The main question is: what is the nature of the cognitive structure, which contains of the intellectual base. This question is divided in two sub questions: ? Which are the most prominent authors in the research field? ? Which sub areas, based on groups of the most cocited authors in the research field, can be identified?An investigation with ACA is used to describe the general experience of consensus of later authors in a research field.

The purpose of this essay is to find out if liming with Ca(OH2) and CaO can reduce leachingof phosphorus from agricultural land and the problem with eutrophication. This purpose alsoincludes getting knowledge about how to make the phosphorus retained in the soil and beaccessible for the plants. This essay is supposed to show if more research is needed in thissubject. There has not been much research about this subject and therefore the amount ofmaterial to study is limited in this literature review. The research reports that have beenstudied have similar results.

In this thesis, the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) encoding scheme is investigated as a system for storing metadata about manuscript material and 18th century first prints in the Swedenborg Archives at the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. The aim of the study is to test the functionality of TEI as a metadata system in cataloguing a special collection. Some criteria of functionality are formulated, and examples of encoded catalogue entries are described and analysed. It is demonstrated how descriptive metadata have been registered within the TEI header, while structural metadata have been recorded within the text element of the TEI file. On the whole, TEI is considered to be a functional tool that matches the present purposes.

This study aims to identify the municipalities of Hallands? methods, guidelines and policies in integration concerning new arrivals of children and teenagers. Some of the new arrivals are under the power of Swedish Migration Board and some of them are by a contract handed over to the municipalities. The evaluation is based on Michael Lipskys street-level bureaucracy which puts its focus on the lower level of bureaucrats meeting with clients. The frame is Skolverkets guideline for education of new arrivals which is more or less a way towards a common policy.

Environmental issues and sustainable development is a high priority in today?s society and has received substantial attention lately. In the inaugural speech it is expressed that the goal for the IT?politics is a sustainable information society for everyone, which can be achieved by using IT to support sustainable growth. The Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications has developed a document which outlines three specific proposals on what the government should focus on during a three?year period (2008?2010) that with the use of IT will contribute to a sustainable society.

Gothenburg municipality has a lot of natural water. This paper enhances the function and importance of water in the city. It also deals with the problems of sewage water and flooding. Gothenburg has reached an advanced stage of water planning. By developing a Waterplan, the municipality highlight that water has an important position in the urban planning.

This thesis is a case study that examines what political decisions have been taken and how these policies have been implemented. Further this thesis discusses how legitimacy of local policy makers and implementors is affected. The subject studied have been the social service of Jönköping municipality and the intervention of safe-housing aimed at women who have been, or are subject to violence by person close to them. In our study we have examined local policy within the territory of the intervention and how this policy is implemented. A qualitative method with semi-structured interviews was used in combination with quantitative methods to examine protocols from the social welfare board and an action program named "Skydd och stöd för misshandlade kvinnor och deras barn? [Protection and support for abused women and their children].The purpose of this study has been to highlight how the social services implemented the local policy of safe-house accommodation in Jönköping municipality from the legitimacy and discretion perspectives.

Public participation is a key aspect in the planning of Swedish municipalities. It is probably the most important tool of them all in the planning towards a sustainable future within the cities and the municipalities as a whole. Participation from the public can take on several different forms. In this paper I focus to research and discuss in and around the usage of a web-based 3D platform called City Planner. The tool allows the user (the public) to view the municipalities planning in a fairly new (but quickly growing) environment.

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a further development of the Six Sigma draft to carry through preventing quality measures in developing and designing of new products and processes. With increasing demands on enterprises development processes to be more safety and faster the need of DFSS arise as a product, process and service development concept in the organisations. Design for Six Sigma aims to improve and structure the development process of an organisation and consider the application of the innovation problem solving. The concept aims to leave the structure of the traditional Six Sigma concept and instead, from an innovative perspective, search for new solutions to existing problems. The concept constitute of a toolbox with a lot of quality tools that are divided into phases in a development model.

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a further development of the Six Sigma draft to carry through preventing quality measures in developing and designing of new products and processes. With increasing demands on enterprises development processes to be more safety and faster the need of DFSS arise as a product, process and service development concept in the organisations. Design for Six Sigma aims to improve and structure the development process of an organisation and consider the application of the innovation problem solving. The concept aims to leave the structure of the traditional Six Sigma concept and instead, from an innovative perspective, search for new solutions to existing problems. The concept constitute of a toolbox with a lot of quality tools that are divided into phases in a development model.

Today equal representation between the genders in parliament is something to be desired. One way to reach the goal of equal representation is by using quotas. The purpose of the study is to research the lack of equality in elected institutions by using a perspective on qoutas.  The study also seeks to find answers to if using quotas is a good method according to gender studies. A text analysis is being used to find reasonable solutions to the study´s presented complivations.  By analyzing different texts about quotas some of the more common arguments in the discussion about using quotas in parliaments were highlighted. Some of the more frequent arguments to implement quotas are that it would be more just but also that women and men may have different interests, experiences and therefore equal representation would be a question of resources.

The thesis of this Masterpaper has been to analyse what tendencies there might be to distinguish structural alterations in the publishing business today and how they can be understood analytically. The following questions have helped form the principal opinions found in this essay: - What tendencies according to the alterations in publishing business is Piratförlaget representing? -What tendencies according to the alterations in publishing are the literary agents representing? What tendencies regarding the alterations in publishing are the electronic publishing and other techniques related to the publishing business representing? Participants, familiar with the publishing industry in various ways, have been interviewed. The main theory is based on facts from sociology of literature, although Faheys and Randalls Key Scenario, with its driving forces, also provided a great deal of help. In addition, to structure the dynamical publishing business, Peter Senges The Systems Iceberg Model was useful.

The title, ?You simply must own your classroom?, is taken from a quote from one of my informants.After review of earlier research on how teachers handle their leadership in the meeting with disturbing pupils and which strategies they use to solve problems in the classroom, interesting questions developed. What experiences do teachers have of disturbing situations in the classroom? Which strategies do they use to solve the problems? What kind of support do the teachers consider necessary in teaching? Are there any differences in teachers? experiences and strategies between the two selected schools? The study is supported by earlier research that deals with pupils? and teachers? perspective and strategies in different classroom cultures in terms of norm-breaking behaviour of pupils. The study is also supported by three different theoretical perspectives such as power structure, social order/disorder and support strategies.I conducted the study through interviews with sex teachers who work in the same municipality but in two separate schools.