The purpose of this thesis is to study the level of democracy within the European Union (EU). To do so the following issues were examined: How the EU works and the efforts it has made to improve levels of democracy; and the degree to which the EU fulfils the criteria set by Robert Dahl in his theory of polyarchy.The study is based on a qualitative text analysis. The focus of the analysis is documents released by the EU that can be connected to democracy, and human and fundamental rights. The theory of polyarchy proposed by Robert Dahl and Joseph Schumpeter?s theory of democracy are the principal theories applied.

This thesis investigates gender equality at a few Swedish elementary school libraries, and how school librarians at these libraries work with gender equality issues. It is a semi-structured interview study conducted with staff at seven elementary school libraries. Several policy documents state that the school should be a gender-equal environment, but previous research shows that there is still a lack of gender equality, and that staff often treat boys and girls differently. It also shows that boys and girls are often portrayed in a gender-stereotypical way in children?s literature.

AbstractThe ideas of adulthood, adolescence and childhood in Swedish law have a tendency to not be expressed or discussed. This thesis has focused on the preparatory work of the sexual offence-law to see whether it defines adulthood. This has been achieved by analyzing the documents related to this preparatory work. The thesis focused on two central questions: 1) Was the idea of adulthood an integral part of the discussions in the preparatory work 2) If so, then how was it defined and are there any contradictions in the definition. In addition, this work also evaluated the impact of this law and investigated whether the absolute protection intended by the government and the committee of sexual crime seek actually exists.The study shows that the concept of adulthood was not defined specifically in the preparatory work.

My purpose in this essay has been to gain an understanding of why we treat children differently and analyse the underlying causes. The method of choice was to reflect on some significant events that occurred at my preschool and to use relevant literature as a basis for analysing these events. Society is constantly changing and my focus has been on what happens to the children at preschool if we are not sensitive to this development. There is a need to highlight the underlying social and human values, in order to ensure that children are treated on equal terms. As educators we need to understand the impact of our lack of legal knowledge for children in the development of their understanding of their rights and obligations in a democratic society.

The purpose of this essay is to shed light upon the ecumenical work that has been done between the Church of Sweden and the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden. The recent years of work have led to a recommendation for a certain degree of fellowship to be established between those churches. This proposal as well as other documents are analysed in the essay from an ecclesio-logical point of view, to find out how the Church of Sweden looks upon itself in meeting another church.To structure the material, the essay has been subdivided into seven parts that is related to ecclesiology. In those seven chapters the positions of the Church of Sweden and the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden are given individually as well as in common. Questions like the im-portance of dioceses, local congregations or parishes and the national level are described.

The Swedish political organization is subject for the investigation of this thesis, with regard to the realization of universal human rights. There is a discrepancy between the Swedish state's international undertakings in legally binding treaties and theactualization of human rights by local authorities. The local authorities are ruled by a complex function of both national and local government. Of interest here, is the effect that these, and other organizational aspects, between the national and the local, have for the realization of human rights in local authorities. Also, the discrepancy between the national and the local is attempted to be understood.

The National Libraries task to save and preserve the national cultural heritage has turned to a new challenge in a digital world. The preservation of born-digital material for future use requires not only saving the digital object itself but also information about the object, preservation metadata. This is a relatively new issue and the library community has very little experience in this area. It has become evident that international cooperation is necessary to solve the task and that the development of international standards is of fundamental significance. This thesis investigates what has been done to meet the problems with the fast obsolescence of digital material with the focus on metadata.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the regulatory power, efficiency and impact of export control on Swedish arms export from the 1980s onwards, linked to the delegation of authority of permit license to the Inspectorate of Strategic Products in 1997. An increase in the administrative sector, based on a collective decision making process and established criteria and guidelines, aimed to strengthen the control of arms export to non-democratic and problematic states. In short, the aim of the study is to investigate and analyze whether there was a decrease in the arms export to problematic states or not. On one hand, it is reasonable to assume that the introduction of the new regulation entailed a more strict arms export policy. However, previous research has showed that regulations are sometimes not effective since incentives to breach these may be present.The study begins by examining the Swedish case and situation in terms of arms manufacturing and export, as well as the delegation of authority and legislation applied to the field over time.

After a workshop in Kuopio held in June 2006, Interbull decided to go forward with the development of a system for beef international genetic evaluation and a three year project called Interbeef was launched in June 2007. The participating countries are so far limited to Europe and the only trait evaluated at present is adjusted weaning weight (weight at 200 days). The results from a first international genetic evaluation have been shared with the countries but are not yet official. The evaluation is based on data from purebred Charolais and Limousin. To achieve good estimates of proofs in an international context it is important that methods for data validation and model selection are implemented.

Den problembild som denna uppsats uppmärksammar är den att studenter vid Luleå tekniska universitet i hög utsträckning väljer att flytta från Luleå efter avslutade studier. Syftet med denna uppsats är att utvärdera Luleå kommuns policy gentemot studenterna vid Luleå tekniska universitet (LTU) för att dels undersöka om policyn grundas på migrationsteori, samt om målet med policyn uppnås. I uppsatsen kommer Vedungs interventionsteori att användas som redskap för att synligöra hur kommunens policy är tänkt att fungera. Vid undersökningen av hur policyn är konstruerad kommer Luleå kommuns policy, migrationsteori och studenters åsikter att sättas samman med interventionsteori som grund för att visa hur de olika delarna är tänkt att påverka varandra för att policyn ska få väntat resultat. Den metod som använts är dels en litteraturstudie angående ämnet migration för att undersöka vilka faktorer som påverkar människor att flytta eller stanna.

This study analyzes how the Swedish climate policy has changed during the years 1990-2008. Thisis done through a comparative analysis of three climate bills that were developed during this period.With a constructivist approach, and theories about discursive indicators and discursive fields,discursive changes in the bills' content are identified. The results show that changes have occurredin how the problem is described, how the issue is framed, which problem solutions that areadvocated, which legitimizing arguments and key concepts that are used and the extent of theknowledge that the bills are based upon. The conclusions drawn from the results describe adiscursive change between the bills in the form of a shift from a discourse that in a greater extentadvocates active policy responses, based on ethical arguments about fairness towards othercountries and caution towards the environment, to a discourse that more often favor market actionsbased on arguments about the economic viability of Sweden..

The essay?s main focus has been to investigate and analyze the political actions behind the 2015?s grade compromise; an agreement to introduce grades from the fourth year in primary school. Through a game-theory analysis, mainly based in Leif Lewin?s and Jörgen Herman's research on rationality in politics, this study examined the grade debate  during a fifteen year period. The primary task has thereby been to explain the grade compromise through game-theory.

Torstensson, Niklas (2012): Anledningar till olikheter mellan Svenska kommuners skolkvalitet (Causes behind the differences in Swedish municipality´s quality of school) Örebro University.This essay is an explorative case study that will compare four Swedish municipalities quality of local school system against the municipality ´s backgrounddata and a governing document: Skolplan. This study begins in a previous benchmarking study made by one of Sweden?s teachers unions Lärarförbundet. This is a statistical study that ranked the Swedish municipalities against each other?s according to their accomplishments in a number of areas related to their school systems.

I have done a study to see what perceptions held by two principals and four teachers, if adult behavior and attitudes towards each other will affect the climate between the students and put it in relation to the fundamental values of work and policy documents. I have also examined how they describe their work environment in their daily work and how they work to combat bullying.I have used qualitative interviews as a method to get answers to my questions. The interviews took place at two different schools, in which I interviewed a headmaster and two teachers at both schools. What emerged during the interviews were compiled and processed with aid based on previous research and theories which focus is in a social constructionist approach.The results as it shows in my study highlights a consensus among the interviewees that the personnel group working atmosphere affects the climate between the students and that there is a good understanding of the impact they have. The study also shows that the experience of their work climate affects by how the communication between management and staff looks likes and how many resources there are in the form of personnel.

Körskador i samband med skogsbruk är ett problem. År 2012 togs en branschgemensam policy fram, som innehöll definitioner och rekommendationer för undvikande av allvarliga körskador. Studier har visat att attityder, kunskap och samsyn är viktiga faktorer för att minska körskador. Målet var att belysa hur väl Skogssällskapets policy angående körskador har förmedlats från tjänstemän till maskinförare, samt att undersöka hur kommunikation kring, attityder till och samsyn om körskador ser ut hos maskinförare, produktionsledare och skogsförvaltare. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med 4 maskinförare och 5 tjänstemän. Sedan gjordes en kvantitativ undersökning genom en mejlenkät till 89 maskinförare, 15 produktionsledare och 34 skogsförvaltare, med total svarsfrekvens 36 %.