Deliberative politics offers a new and exiting way of overcoming the problems that the western democracy of today is facing. A lot of research in the most recent years have had the goal to replace the representative democracy with a decision-making frame built on decentralization and deliberation. The goal for this essay is to create a framework for local decision-making, based on deliberativ norms, that could work as a complement to the representative democracy instead of replacing it.During the recent years the so-called "brukarråd"; councils for the most common users of one special public service, has been a new way for the local government to get in direct contact with those who are most affected by changes and developments in the specific area of the public administration. In this essay I argue for that these councils should be designed so that they could house deliberative processes.After creating a model for the possible way of designing the "brukarråd" I compare the framework with the system that exists today. In this way there is a possibility to point out if there is a way to deepen the democracy within the already existing system..

This is a study concern high school student?s view of religion and their religiosity. I dispensed a questionnaire to 124 high school students studying comparative religion in a large high school in Sweden, with the students from different socio-economic backgrounds. The result I came up with is that traditional religion activities have decreased, religion has not disappeared but taken other shapes than before. And I also came up to with the result that more than half of them who answered the survey likes the subject and there are tendencies by them who doesn?t like the high school subject religion that they live in a non-religious family.The study concerns following aspects: sociology, youth, human needs, religion, spirituality and individualization..

This thesis compares political participation by the public through the Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman (PO) and the German Petitions Committee of the Bundestag (PC). Through studies of literature and statistics I examine how citizens can participate through the institutions, how frequently they do and the likelihood of sparking a debate while participating.Using media theories as well as theories of participatory and representative democracy I study how citizens can use these institutions for purposes of control and proposition.Both institutions deal with complaints but the PC also deals with propositions for legislation, making the institution more versatile. The PO deals with more cases than the PC and has more far-reaching competences and areas of inspection, although neither institution has binding decisions. Thus the direct advantage for citizens using the institutions is the chance of reaching out to media and the public through freedom of information laws and the German online petition forum.The PC to a larger extent fits the representative model while the PO in some respects is more a legal than a political institution, being managed by lawyers instead of MPs. Neither institution meets the ideals of participatory politics although the German official petition is closer to it..

The consumer society exploits the earth?s resources more than the earth itself has capability to produce. This over-consumption causes a mass production of products, which mean that more greenhouse gases are being emitted to the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why the earth?s temperature is rising, where the result of it is worldwide disasters.

Man spends most part of the day at work and is therefore influenced by it?s ambience. That?s why it?s important that the environment at work is health promoting and can function as a supportive environment. The purpose of this study was to describe job satisfaction among employees and to analyse a possible connection between job satisfaction and employees experiences of SOC.

This master thesis has been performed at Vattenfall Power Consultant in Gothenburg and Trollhättan for Vattenfall Vattenkraft. In this report vacuum circuit breaker in small-scale hydropower stations with the rated power 4 MVA and below has been studied. Models of the stations are modeled and analyzed in PSCAD/EMTDC to study the high voltage transients that are created after current chopping with vacuum circuit breaker. Vacuum circuit breaker may chop the current before it reaches zero value, which means that high voltage transients can be created. The equipment of the stations can be destroyed by high voltage transients.The purpose of this thesis is to examine the use of vacuum circuit breaker in small-scale hydropower stations and the risk for high voltage transients from current chopping.According to the results there is a risk of high voltage transients after current chopping with small synchronous generators in stations with the operating voltages 0.4 kV and 3.6 kV.

According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

The aim of this master thesis is to find out if young people and librarians think that reference groups can support public libraries to meet the needs of young people, and if the reference groups, which the librarians describe, differentiates from the young peoples requirements. I have made a qualitative study with a questionnaire to six librarians who have experience from reference groups and ten interviews with teenagers. The result showed that young people have many interests and needs which can be met from the library. The teenagers were positive to the library and many of them showed interest in having more influence on the library. Many would like to join a reference group, but on the condition that they would be offered real influence.

Man spends most part of the day at work and is therefore influenced by it?s ambience. That?s why it?s important that the environment at work is health promoting and can function as a supportive environment. The purpose of this study was to describe job satisfaction among employees and to analyse a possible connection between job satisfaction and employees experiences of SOC.

There are a lot of different sounds in our sound saturated time. Noise is an unwishable soundand a high sound level can give short- or lingering problems for both children and adults.The purpose was to find out if and in that case why children and the activity at the pre-schoolaffects by a high soundlevel. Another purpose was to examine what the effects would be if thepedagogues set about the work to get a good sound environment at pre-school.The investigation was accomplished in shape of qualitative interwievs where six pedagoguesfrom different pre-schools answered questions about a high soundlevel.All of them have been educated to hearing pilotes.The result of this investigation shows that some pre-schools have a high sound levels but notall of them. In those cases where there is a high soundlevel are there often too many childrenat the same place on the same time. That makes the soundlevel even higher and both childrenand adults are getting tired.By improving the sound environment at the pre-school both children and adults often gets abetter activity.Keywords: high soundlevel, hearingpilot, noise, affects on children..

In large organizations one can often find middle managers at several different levels within a company. Middle managers regularly experience their positions as complicated as they have both superiors as well as subordinates? to please. We have chosen to refer to this problem as ?the middle-management dilemma?.

Local politicians are key actors in the democratic system and their ideas concerning democracy plays a central role in local democratic politics. The study's point of departure is the notion that local politicians are dependent of coherence between practice and theory concerning democracy and in the study of their ideas we acquire knowledge about the democratic practice.This study examines the local politicians? view of Swedish democracy and explores the logic of the discourse that makes statements concerning democracy possible. Twenty local politicians have been interviewed and from the material a discourse have been established through the use of formulation of problems and cause, nodal points and chains of analogy which is compared with democratic ideals.The study comes to the conclusion that a hegemonic discourse exists, in which central nodal points are representative and listening. The idea of the representative system is hegemonic and is based in the liberal democratic ideal although the view of the citizens rather can be traced to the radical, communitarian and deliberative ideal.

The discussion about high culture and popular culture in our society has been going on for decades. In few places is it as loud as within culture journalism and the critics? society, where the question of what is good taste and what is dumb entertainment constantly gets brought to the surface. Film is a particularly vulnerable area, since it is such a universally appealing and rather young medium. In America and England several studies have been performed of the reviewing society and reveiwers? use of high and low art-discourse in their writing.

The purpose of this study was to investigate if preferences for high- and low context communication differed significantly between individuals from individualistic and collectivistic cultures, living in a multicultural environment. A quantitative survey was used as method and the survey was answered by 150 students at Jönköping University and Uppsala University. Two self-assessment scales, obtained from previous studies were used to measure the degree of the two cultural dimensions and communication styles. Two multiple regression analyzes were performed to investigate the connection between collectivist cultures preference for high context communication and individualistic cultures preference for low context communication, that has been found in previous studies. Two ANOVAs were also performed to investigate differences in communication style depending on sex and length of stay in Sweden.

The purpose of this report is to collect, compile and complement the scientific and experience based knowledge concerning high pressure fire fighting today. The goal is to produce a decision data for the Rescue Service concerning the use of high pressure systems for fire fighting. Focus is on hose reel high pressure systems but other systems are discussed too. The report begins by describing the technical properties of the different systems. Then the fire fighting properties are evaluated, including manoeuvrability and safety for users.