This thesis examines the possible beneficial effects of a temporary cooperation between a national brand and a private brand. The main hypothesis suggests that if a national brand wants to make a category extension to a remote product category, it should be able to decrease its risk by affiliating itself with a private brand. The national brand should through such a brand alliance be able to borrow some of the flexible characteristics that a private brand possesses to increase its associations with the new category. The survey consisted of 800 questionnaires with different cooperations between a private brand (ICA) and two national brands (Tropicana and Bravo). These were handed out to students in the universities of Stockholm.

AbstractIn this essay I discuss narrative in the reconstruction of national identity. I discuss exclusion as a side effect in thick identities. That means that thick national identities always exclude another part. From this I´ve discussed the Swedish identity and its effects in the European co-operation. Identity is a discourse that reconstructs linguistically.

This essay examines upper secondary school pupils as well as the Swedish National Agency for Educations views on the education in subject of religion. How they describe its purpose, what content the topic should address, how the education should be implemented and what influence the pupils should have over their own studies. This to examine how the views of pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Education correlate and to analyze how it possibly can affect the pupil?s motivation. The survey is conducted by semi-forging tured interviews and text analysis in order to ascertain the pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Educations opinions on the issues.

This work studied the information flow and information handling among different parties. The study focused on how educational materials on national tests from The Swedish National Agency for Education is managed by school principals and teachers and how the information is passed on to students. The data material was based on observations and interviews at two different high schools. Six teachers and their classes and principals participated in the study. The Agency was also interviewed.

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the principal problem of the study of national self-images and by questioning the congruent existence of one in the case of Sweden. Through the use of qualitative method and semi-structured interviews the ambition of the study is to compare and to understand the national self-images portrayed in a major Swedish town, Stockholm and to that of a smaller town on the countryside, Sjöbo. A social constructionist approach in co-operation with key temporal and spasial dimensions are used to penetrate the interviews at hand. The main conclusions drawn from this study highlights the difficulties in addressing the concept of a congruent national self-image. Several major discrepancies appear in the analysed material, mainly in the past and the external dimensions, both from a regional approach, but also very much within the local entities themselves..

In this essay we have examined how social workers experience their positions as a public authority person in a society of democracy. As a public officer you have to follow rules and obey the law, which can be difficult if they don't agree with your personal opinion and values. In social work you work with people in a vulnerable situation and it may become extremely demanding to stand between the directions of established public administration and your own opinions. We have interviewed ten social workers working in social childcare division and analysed how they experience their situation at work. Our starting point is the critical theory of professor Lennart Lundquist about how democracy works in Swedish administrations.

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to analyse the basis of Russian diplomacy, and by doing that develop the analytical instruments available, in order to improve the comprehension between the parties in negotiations. Descriptions of the national characteristics of Soviet and Russian diplomacy are made by an analysis of memoairs and other examinations of their negotiating behaviour. To ensure the result of the characteristics two case studies of the non-nuclear proliferation negotiations are made, followed by a comparation between the Soviet and Russian diplomacy. From these results, I analyse the groundworks of russian diplomacy, using three theories about how ideology, national identity and prevailing self-image can affect the national negotiating behaviour. The results show that there have been changes in only some parts of the negotiating behaviour and that there is a need for all three theories to explain different parts of the complex system of Russian diplomacy which is based on the plurality of culture, ideology, language, ideology and history..

Essay in political science, D-level by Lisa Kringsberg, spring semester 2008.Tutor: Michele Micheletti.?Civil Society in Singapore? can it make democratization possible?The third wave of democratization and the end of the cold war has together increased the interest of the civil society as an impact on democratization. Singapore is a country which is higly-developt in both the socie-economic and economic field. Dispate this Singapore has not yet achieved to become a democratic state. The purpose of this essay is to study how the civil society can affect democracy in a country.

The purpose of our study was to investigate whether national adoptions could be an option within the childcare system in Sweden. We wanted to create an understanding of how the professionals agree to this. We have implemented a comprehensive literature review as well as a qualitative study, taking benefit of a phenomenological method of analysis. The result of our study shows that national adoptions cannot replace foster placements but be a good addition to foster homes. Adoption gives the children a more secure and stable life..

In the late 20th century there has been some changes in the public sector. These changes are described as New Public Management. When ideas from the private market is transferred to the public sector, for example to regard citizens as cus-tomer. Central in this paper is the use of term customer in the Swedish public sec-tor. There are two questions in the paper; which possibilities has a disappointed customer to effect the public sector, and what may happen with democracy, the common good, when the citizen becomes a customer?To answer the questions I study two different cases, Svedala kommun and the tax department, Skatteverket.

The globalisation of the world is believed by some to homogenise individuals from different national cultures. However, the values and norms of an individual are deeply rooted in their national culture and are therefore difficult to change. Since birth these values and norms are learnt through interaction with others within a specific national culture. The differences in values of a national culture are shown in the cornerstones of the nation. These cornerstones are language, aesthetics, religion and social institutions.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not there has been a change in the use of democratic values in textbooks in social science for classes 4-6. The focus lies on democratic values from two different theoretical perspectives, Dahl?s theory of democracy and Habermas deliberative democracy. The method used is a text analysis based on a model made by Lennart Hellspong. The material we?ve analysed consists of four textbooks in social science from different decades, with a range from 1981 until today.

Within the political science research it is common to examine the effects on the national parliaments caused by European integration. In this Bachelor Thesis the aim is instead to show what involvement of the national parliaments in the European Union implicates to the European integration process.The object of examination is the introduction of the parliaments as supervisors of draft legislative acts, this is also known as ?the Early Warning Mechanism?, through the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. An analysis of answers from the national parliaments in the tests of three pilot cases, conducted by the COSAC, is made with help of Institutional theory and an Europeanization perspective.The main findings show that the mechanism of early warning probably will not become an obstacle for continued European integration, but it could slow down the process in some areas. Most probably though is that the mechanism forces the national parliaments to adapt and to be better equipped to react at events taking place at the European level.

AbstractBackground: Countries can be seen as brands (nation brands) with brand values that transmitto the country?s products. Country-of-origin (COO), the brands nationality, links the productto an associative network of cultural shared national stereotypes. Through associating thebrand with a country or a region, the credibility of the brand can increase and strengthen thebrand. Therefore COO is used in marketing to position a brand.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how luxury fashion brands communicatetheir national identity through analyzing their advertising.

AbstractTitle: PR and Politics- the role of the PR consults in Swedish politics (PR och Politik ?PR konsulternas roll i svensk politik)Number of pages: 34Author: Andia GhafouriTutor: Peder Hård af SegerstadCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: HT 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science,Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: To study the PR functions role in Swedish politics and what role it plays for the democracy.Material/Method: Interviews with PR peopleMain results: That the PR people have the right kind of network and the knowledge about how to influence political decisions and the public opinion. Their methods could be criticized from a democratic point of view since they are professionals and their ability to bring up issues in to the public agenda is stronger than ordinary peoples? ability, which could be discussed if it is fair in a democratic society, that people who get paid have more power to change than those who don?t.Keywords: Public Relations, Communication, Politics, Democracy, Information, Networks.