The Swedish market for unsecured loans has frequently been attacked by media and government officials. Some actors have been accused of exploiting customers and charging inappropriately high interest rates. Despite the public interest very little academic work has been published on the topic. Therefore it is our purpose to investigate why the prices can differ so much between the different actors. Further, we also aim to conduct a market overview as a secondary purpose which will help us in reaching our primary purpose.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore and analyze the processes and efforts involved in rebuilding the war-torn state of Afghanistan. The examined period span from the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, to the elections in 2005. This period, commonly known as the Bonn-process, sets out the initial time for the reconstruction of the state.A theoretical framework, which considers the necessary mechanisms for successful state-building, will be used to analyze Afghanistan's re-building process. The mechanisms include the prerequisite of a stable security environment, emerging from a cease-fire, together with the development of a well-functioning economy, re-introduction of rule of law and rejuvenating civil society.The failure to establish a secure environment has had a devastating impact on all analyzed aspects of the re-building process. It is therefore crucial that the international society continuing to assists the Afghan government in its efforts to strengthen its capacity, in order to improve the security situation.

For the actors in the Swedish forest industry, it is important to have the ability to forecast the state in the privateforests. The information that comes out of the forecasts will be the base for the activities strategic direction.The aim in this exam is to survey what information that is present today as basis for forecast calculation, andeven to examine what other possibilities it might have in the future.From a limited geography and out of different time perspective forecast the felling potential in the privateforestry.With the word felling potential means regeneration felling and thinning. The exam will answer the questions:What information is needed to build a relevant forecast model?Is this information available today?Is there information to buy that would improve the forecast model?The result of this exam will be presented in form of a ”case study” showing the opportunities in the market tocreate a forecast calculation of felling potential in the private forestry within the Forest Owners’ AssociationMellanskogs wood-area Dalarna..

This Master?s thesis is an analysis of metaphors in relation to actors, and of discourses used in the copyright-debate in two major Swedish daily newspapers and one American: Göteborgs-Posten, Svenska Dagbladet and New York Times during the years 2001-2006. We aim to answer the following questions: Which metaphors were being used in the copyright-debate to create the archetypal villain, hero, winner and loser in editorials, debate and letters to the editor in the three newspapers? Which discourses did those metaphors relate or conform to? Which similarities or differences could be found when comparing the two countries? newspapers regarding representations and constructions of villains, heroes, winners and losers in the copyright-debate? Firstly we distinguished who the actors in the debate were, following parts of Theo van Leeuwen?s actors? analysis. Secondly we distinguished which metaphors were being used to describe the actors as either villains, heroes, winners or losers.

This thesis has aimed to study steering process and institutionalization in the context of educational policy work. This has been conducted by using empirical material from the political decision-making process that preceded the implementation of a new national program on how principals should be educated and certified. By using an aggregated theoretical point of view containing new institutionalism and traditional Swedish curriculum theory, the process was analyzed from different perspectives. The results depict a process that contained several actors who tried to shape the principal education program differently. From the theoretical perspectives, the decision-making process could be understood as an act of both self-interest as well as trust in their own beliefs and cultural values.

Many theories describe failed states as potential threats to international security due to the breeding ground they constitute for transnational terrorism. Ken Menkhaus believes however that transnational terrorists are dependent on a state for their own protection in order to be able to operate.This essay seeks out the relevance in Ken Menkhaus? theory which states that transnational terrorists rather exploit corrupted states than operate in countries where there is a state collapse. His theory will be applied on a case study on post-Libya after Gadhafi?s fall.

AbstractCities are once again becoming the locus of economic, social and political processes. The effect of these processes on the city is two-fold: one one hand they threaten to fragment and dislocate the city and the actors within them, on the other hand they give actors within cities new opportunities to react and mobilize resources towards different strategies of integration. The latter gives rise to what Patrick Le Galès calls the collective actor-city. The aim of this thesis is to explore the notion of the city as a collective actor in a swedish context by utilizing Le Galès theory of european cities as collective actors in an abductive case study on the city of Malmoe. By utilizing Le Galès five dimensions that make up a collective actor I analyze interviews conducted with city officals aswell as documents produced from the city wide plan of action Welfare for everybody.

When communications traffic increasingly turned into data, IP telephony became a disruptive technology for the telecommunication business. IP telephony was a hot topic when voice over IP services started to become available to consumers in the 1990s. The new technology changed the rules of the game and many new actors entered the market.The purpose of this study is to describe, study, and analyze how the business models of the Swedish telecom sector developed in the middle of the 2000s. The study is delimited to the Swedish consumer market for telephony.The study is built mainly upon deep interviews with 24 prominent persons in the telecom sector in 2006. To aid understanding, two telecom companies that have been chosen to represent different kinds of actors are described and analyzed more closely.

Introduction: Dental health globally is not equally distributed as shown by caries prevalence is higher in areas with more immigration outside Scandinavia and Western Europe and areas with lower socioeconomic status. To reduce the health inequalities in Borås, a dental health project was made in five kindergartens in the district Hässleholmen. Purpose: The purpose of the survey was, by interviews with the actors involved (teachers, children, parents and the public dental service) find out the views of the project, and whether the project is relevant and should continue. Method: The method used was qualitative interviews with the actors involved in dental health project. A total of 21 interviews were then consolidated by a qualitative content analysis.

This thesis has aimed to study steering process and institutionalization in the context of educational policy work. This has been conducted by using empirical material from the political decision-making process that preceded the implementation of a new national program on how principals should be educated and certified. By using an aggregated theoretical point of view containing new institutionalism and traditional Swedish curriculum theory, the process was analyzed from different perspectives. The results depict a process that contained several actors who tried to shape the principal education program differently. From the theoretical perspectives, the decision-making process could be understood as an act of both self-interest as well as trust in their own beliefs and cultural values.

Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Brodsky is a key figure in Soviet Russian literature. Expelled from the USSR in 1972, he became a US citizen in 1977 and Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991. In this essay, I have sought to examine the state of exile perceived in Brodsky?s poems. Using Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky?s concept of defamiliarization, I have strived to illuminate the formal composition of this state ? its technique.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the role of regional development planning concerning a regional perspective of green structure and to reflect on its future role. The target group of the study is foremost practitioners but also students of regional planning and development. Three questions are examined. 1) What view concerning green structure has the regional planning body of Stockholm County Council (RTK) communicated through the years? 2) Has this view contributed to generating a common understanding concerning green structure among the actors in the county? 3) Has this common understanding been referred to by actors in discussions concerning how this green structure should develop? The empirical material consists of documents from rtk, the County Administrative Board, the municipalities of the county, a network of ngo:s, as well as interviews with representatives from the above mentioned organizations.

Abstract:The old established description gunboat diplomacy has in modern time changed to a broader and more nuanced definition called maritime diplomacy. But what is maritime diplomacy and how is it described? This essay analyses the theories from the Englishman James Cable and the American Edward Luttwak. Both Cable and Luttwak represent nations which have a global security interests and deploy their maritime forces worldwide. The foundation for their theories is power politics.

Solid State Drives (SSD) blir idag allt vanligare som lagringsmedium och håller på att bli ett alternativ till magnetiska hårddiskar. Denna studie+ har undersökt hur man på bästa sätt kan utnjytta SSDer i en MySQL-databas. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av experiment där prestandamätningar gjordes för att få en klar bild på i vilken konfiguration av SSDs som ger bäst prestanda i MySQL. Mätverktygen som användes var sql-bench och mysqlslap.   Resultaten visar att en databas på en enskild SSD presterar lika bra som en databas med  SSD-cache  under  majoriteten  av  mätningarna  och  visar  bättre  resultat  än resterande konfigurationerna som var en databas på hårddisk och transaktionsloggen på en SSD. .

Background: Health economic evaluations are becoming an increasingly important means of analysing which care alternative resource utilisation is the most cost effective. It is a new topic in the medical device industry that causes much uncertainty and unstructured use of the actors involved.Study questions: Why is it difficult to develop, implement and disseminate this standardized health economic evaluation models in medical technology? Is there a possibility to standardize health economic evaluations within the medical device industry?Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the standardization issues for health economic evaluations within the medical device industry.Method: A qualitative approach was used in the form of interviews with five actors that are active or have a connection to the medical device industry. The data collection consists of journals, reports, Internet searches and literature among other things.Conclusion: It is possible to standardize, but with certain restrictions such as the county council's budget, influence of industry-specific factors, lack of knowledge and the important interaction between actors..