ABSTRACTThe EU as a normative power in Belarus ? a critical caseBy Anna JohnssonUniversity of VäxjöSchool of Social SciencesSpring semester 2007The European Union?s identity is a much debated topic. Some say it?s a unique actor in the international arena because of the different tools it has at its disposal. Ian Manners claims that the EU is what he calls a normative power.

During the last years a discussion has emerged around problems with Swedish state boards trying to influence the public opinion and even political bodies through different kind of information efforts. Several observers inside and outside the academy have studied how state boards increasingly use information as an instrument and also how political bodies increasingly have given such instructions to state boards. This essay put those studies into the context of both information political history and previous theoretical interpretations in that field of research.The analytical tool consists of four ideal typical ways ('state opinions') to arrange relations between the state and the citizen. Some critics focus on problems with too much political steering and how political majorities uses state boards to spread ideological propaganda. Others highlight problems with autonomy and bureaucratic organizations taking initiatives by themselves to spread normative information.

This is a study concerning the conventions surrounding death and it´s rituals during the latter half ofthe 21th century. The study´s main material is the official magazine of SBF - Sweden´s funeral association ? Memento. By studying the undertaker and the self-image of his services at an intervalof years from 1945 to 2005, one is able to notice certain changes of values concerning what afuneral, a chest and a tombstone really is ? or rather how the meaning of these symbols of death slowly shifts from the ?dignity? of death towards the self-expression of the individual.In the 1940´s towards the 80´s, there is much talk of giving the dead a ?dignified? funeral and burial, and this is how the undertaker defends himself against public critique of his or her´sprofession´s ?trade with death?.

EU is an organization that has expanded really fast during the last years. When you read about different EU membership processes you notice that some processes have been much faster than others. Spontaneously you think that this depends om that some countries have not been fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria. However, during the last decennium some scientists have written articles about motives that have affected the membership processes. The basic problem in my essay is how we are supposed to understand a membership process? Since I was interested in if I could see the same inconsistent behavior pattern in other membership processes I chose to study Turkey and Croatia.

Den 1 Mars 2006 ersattes den gamla UtlL (1989:529) av en ny UtlL (2005:716) med stora förändringar i instans- och processordningen. De grundläggande kraven på denna var att öppenheten i asylprocessen skulle öka, att de sökande skulle ges ökade möjligheter till muntlig förhandling vid överklagande av asyl- och medborgarskapsärenden, att processen skulle bestå av en tvåpartsprocess och att instans- och processordningen skulle utformas så att kraven på skyndsam handläggning uppfylldes.I denna uppsats har rättssäkerheten för den asylsökande vid prövning av dess asylärende i den nya instans- och processordningen undersökts. Huvudfrågan lyder som följer; säkerställs rättssäkerheten i Sverige för skyddssökande vid prövning av asylärenden i den nya instans- och processordningen?Utredning i den här uppsatsen leder till slutsatsen att rättssäkerheten i svensk asylrätt är beroende av att rådande rättsprinciper moderniseras. Offentlighetsprincipen måste tydligare särskiljas från sekretessen.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the Swedish municipal welfare system, in their capacity as discourse makers, construct Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in the relationships of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people. A discourse analysis of their official plans of action regarding IPV and the information directed towards their citizens through their webpages showed that the discourse surrounding IPV revealed a gender dichotomy, where the victim was mainly constructed as being female and the perpetrator as male. As a consequence of this, gay and bisexual men were rendered invisible from the discourse surrounding victims of IPV, although they could be included in the construction of perpetrators of it. Lesbian and bisexual women were often included in the understanding of victims of IPV, but in the discourse surrounding perpetrators of it they were made invisible. The discourse about IPV also excluded the experiences and vulnerability of people who identify as being transgendered.

Politicians Week in Visby has since the late 1960s developed to be a fairly unique concept in Swedish politics, which even in recent years has begun to be exported to other countries in Europe. Curiosity and interest around the arrangement of activities and actors have in the past decade become increasingly both nationally and internationally. The purpose of this study has therefore been to find out how ?Almedalsveckan? as a political arrangement emerged and developed. The question that the study mainly tries to answer is how ?Almedalsveckan? became a concept of the open democratic meeting between politicians, citizens, journalists and various organizations in the Swedish society.

This study focuses on young adults with mild mental retardation and how their early adult life is a few years after leaving high school. They have grown up in a society where the view on mentally disabled has undergone big changes. Political decisions regarding handicapped, laws, official principles and social reforms have been dominated by the prinziple of normalization.The purpose has been to describe how the young adults themselves experience their life. The questions were: How is the every day life for young adults with mild mental retardation? Do they have asset to community support in order to reach as normal life as possible? How satisfied are they with their life?The investigation is a quality study through interviews with four young adults and their parents.

This masters thesis is a study of official political documents in order to discuss privatisation and the Swedish public libraries. In the 1990s public libraries became placed on contractors, and that was said to be one form of privatisation. The main issue for this study concerns driving forces and obstacles for privatisation of public libraries. Another issue concerns advantages and risks. We will also discuss how the future of public libraries will be in this context.

The appointing of Swedish governmental officials has gone through a dramatic change the last nine years. The tradition of officials appointed due to their political experience has been traded against the appointing of experts. In this study I ask questions about this new way of appointing representatives effects how these officials interpret their role. An official that who has never been in the party before appointed, obviously cannot consider the principal of party. With the theoretical approach of normative representation theory (representational style) I perform case studies that shows some change.

The relationship between free trade and the environment is often considered conflicting and the debates surrounding it are infected. My thesis deal with this conflict and how environmental concerns are integrated in three regional free trade agreements, North American Free Trade Agreement, The common market of the southern cone (MERCOSUR) and Southern African Development Community (SADC). I point out how the organizations differ from each other in this respect and I present a possible explanation to why they differ. The explanation is founded on the theory of the environmental Kuznets curve and that environmental concerns will depend on which level of development the member states in the organizations have. To judge and rank the organizations I have composed a model based on a pre-existing description of the trade and environment conflict.

The aim of this study has been to, through a couple of chosen theories, examine in what way Japan as a nation can be said to have dealt with its dark past - concerning their crimes of war just before and during World War II. To do so, I have placed two chosen war crimes, namely the Nanjing Massacre and the matter of the Comfort Women, in the context of remembrance and commemorating of war, through different kinds of aspects. Those aspects are: the textbook conflict, official apologies, ruthless/unnecessary comments, and visits and commemorations at the Yasukuni shrine.I have found during this study that the nation of Japan has not been able to generate a broadly accepted dominant cultural memory of the war. Henceforth a couple of rival cultural memories are competing and becoming an issue of national division rather than national unity. I have come to the knowledge that there are both domestic and international political factors at play, resulting in this division..

This essay aims to explore continuity in water centric cult within the period of the Christianization of Scandinavia (ca 800-1100 AD) and to understand the changing of symbolism of water in pre-Christian cult and early Christian religion. It has previously been thought that Christian priests took over the old holy wells and renamed them after saint, all to ease the pagan people into a Christian lifestyle. But archaeological evidence shows that the cult at these wells, and other water centric sites, where almost completely abandoned a few hundred years before the Christians came to Scandinavia. The Christians should not have felt the need to transform this tradition since it was only practiced in a very small and supposedly private scale. On the contrary, religious activities at these wells seems to increase with the new religion and perhaps this is explained by Christianity itself.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the term equableness in the Swedish elementary school with a take-off point in the free school reform from 1992. This essay starts with the political background of the terms equableness and freedom of choice and the official governmental guidelines. Research from Bo Malmberg and Gabriel Sahlgren act as a framework for the whole essay as their theories are tested. The main problem is presented as the question: is the debated concern regarding a lowered equableness since 1992 justifiable? Both researchers define equableness as a difference in grades but undertake a collective versus a more individual approach.