Since the Maastricht Treaty the European Parliament has gained competence in the decision-making process and the Parliament is today one of two decision-making institution, next to the Ministers of Council. In this study the main focus has been to shed light over the negotiation culture within the European Parliament, which up till now has been a neglected research area. This is of great significance because the internal negotiations in the European Parliament decide the external negotiation position with the other institutions.After face-to-face interviews with MEP:s and assistants I have been able to identify certain characteristics to create an understanding of the negotiation culture in Europe's elected Parliament. The negotiations are oriented towards a problems-solving approach and the prevailing apprehension is consensus-based negotiations instead of the existence of political blocks. The committees are stronger than the European party groups, which further encourage negotiation.

This thesis aims to analyze the similarities and differences in how identity is constructed by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament regarding the Polish membership and the potential Turkish membership of the European Union. The construction of identity is analyzed through a social constructivist perspective where identity is constructed by distinguishing ?us? from ?them?. The research metod used is a qualitative text analysis. The arguments of identity are taken from the Commission?s and the Council?s documents, as well as from the debates of the European Parliament.

The main purpose of this study is to examine if variations in voter turnout for the European Parliament elections in each member state is affected by the rate of national party polarization on the EU-dimension of party politics. The theoretical background assumes that a high level of polarization generates higher voter turnout since more alternatives are presented to the electorate. This makes it easier for the electorate to find a party that represents their preferences. This will, in turn, increase the likelihood that they will participate in the election.This study uses a research design based on a quantitative analysis with data from each member state, except those with compulsory voting, in the European Parliament elections of 2004 and 2009. The results of the analysis indicate a relationship between high levels of party polarization and lower turnout in the European Parliament election.

A qualitative document analysis is used to answer the aim of this thesis that is to find out if the relation between the European Union and Belarus has changed from confrontational to reparational in between the two parliamentary elections that was held in the country in the years of 2004 and 2008. The study focuses on debates from the European parliament in association to the elections in Belarus to see if the rhetoric used in the debates have changed. It is found that the rhetoric used in the European parliament after the 2004 election in Belarus are extremely confrontational and the members of the debate expresses their thoughts of Belarus in a rather harsh way. It has also been found that the rhetoric used in the European parliament after the 2008 election in Belarus are more diplomatic and have the tendencies of a warmer relation to Belarus although there are still some confrontational views among the members..

This Bachelor?s thesis examines and describes the governmental cultural policy in Sweden. The relation between the state and the market in society is in focus. Earlier research is used to describe the development of cultural policy in Sweden after the world war two until today. Two governmental bills are examined and described, one from 1974 and one from 2009.

The aim of this thesis is to ascertain if women are discriminated in the European Parliament, and if so, how it is expressed. Our hypothesis is that female members of the parliament suffer a kind of double discrimination. The European Parliament consists of roughly one third women, but nevertheless the discrimination does not end there. According to our hypothesis women do not have the same opportunity to influence as their male colleagues, hence the double discrimination.The results of this thesis show that women are discriminated, mainly by not gaining access to the European Union's important issues, whilst the female dominated issues are scheduled on late evening and at the end of a session week. Another unsatisfactory issue was that even though half of the reports were given by women, they only received one third of the references to their reports while men received two thirds of the references.

The study seeks knowledge about the Swedish euro-scepticism and about the work of the Swedish euro-sceptical Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). How do they work in an environment where the norm is to have a positive attitude towards a future federal state of Europe? How do they regard their own situation and possibilities to make a change?The study includes a debate on today's Swedish euro-scepticism as background. My finding about the MEPs? work is that their way of acting in the European Parliament does not distinguish from other MEPs? in large.

Written declarations in the European Parliament have not been given muchattention in the field of political science. The scope of this Master's thesis is toexamine whether symbolic politics are present in written declarations and howthis may show. In this study, the aspects of symbolic politics of writtendeclarations of the sixth parliamentary term are examined using a taxonomy foridentifying symbolic politics developed by Peter Santesson-Wilson. Thetaxonomy is applied on 15 written declarations, all adopted by the EuropeanParliament, dealing with a variety of EU-related issues, ranging from July 2004 toJuly 2008.The main findings of the study show that symbolic politics is a presentphenomenon in nearly all written declarations (13 out of 15 cases) subject to thisstudy.In the final chapter of this study inter alia symbolic politics as a deliberateaction is discussed in the view of written declarations. Irrespective of this, onecould say that symbolic politics are institutionalised in the European Parliament,at least when it comes to written declarations..

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the target to convert the Swedish military aviation industry towards working within the civilian sector was planned and implemented parallel to the target of building a world-class military aircraft. A number of Government bills have been studied, bills directly connected to the JAS-project as well as bills dealing with civilian project ?s for the military aviation industry. The first group includes bills dealing with the JAS-project ?s role in the overarcing defence policy, as well as the Government ?s bill specifying the guidelines for the JAS-project.

While this summary is written in English, the paper published is written in Swedish.The paper concerns itself with the legal status of electronic transport records in a Swedish context. The main question asked is whether rules for bills of lading should be applied to electronic transport records, or if they should be treated according to general rules. A secondary question is asked; partially to help put the main question into context and partially to see whether the different legal regimes will lead to different solutions to an issue. This second question is if electronic transport records can effect the transfer of property (sv. sakrätt).

This paper deals with the legal situation surrounding the legal statutory portion. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the statutory portions function in our society, does the rule fit into today?s society? To carry out this study, the authors analyzed the legal situation accordingly to the legal dogmatic method. Emphasis has been placed especially on laws but also non-government bills and doctrine.The statutory portion was introduced in the Swedish system, as early as in the 17th century. Its primary purpose then was to ensure a heritage to the descendants? heirs.

This thesis aims at studying the development of the party cohesion in the Swedish national parliament, riksdagen, after the introduction of preference voting in the election of 1998. The party cohesion has been measured during parliamentary sessions before and after the reform. The result of the cohesion during each of the sessions has then been compared towards each other. The cohesion was measured between the members of parliament viewed as a whole, and within the party groups during the different sessions. The research method being used has been a quantified statistical voting analysis, making the comparisons of party cohesion during the different parliamentary sessions as easy as possible.

This is a thesis on the Intranet use in the European Parliament. We investigated the use from a multilingual point of view, but also from a communication perspective. What we wanted to know was how a multilingual group, with presumably different computer skills, in the organisation handle the Intranet information. What are the positive and negative effects of a multilingual information exchange over an Intranet? To find out, we sent a questionnaire as an e-mail attachment to all members of a chosen committee and their assistants.

The purpose of this study was to investigate which kind of arguments that were used during the debate before the law of sexual services was introduced in Sweden. The study refers to the debate which was in the Swedish parliament The study has been structured the arguments in different categories.  The study has not found other researchers about the debate in the Swedish parliament. The study has just found several studies about the prostitution problem in general. The method for this study has been idea centered content analysis.

The purpose of this thesis is, through both a quantitative and qualitative study, to map out how the interaction appears between the established parties and the radical right-wing party, the Sweden Democrat?s (SD) and their core issue ? immigration in the Swedish parliament. By applying analytical dimensions on the parliamentary protocols regarding the immigration issue between the years of 2010-2012 this study will get an insight on how the argumentation concerning immigration has developed since their entrance into the Swedish parliament in 2010. The result shows that SD, through the rejection treatment of the established parties, fulfilled the three conditions which accordingly to the study's theoretical framework are crucial for the party's future success. In the established parties? reception of SD regarding immigration, SD is, to a large extent, left unchallenged as the established parties rather focus on integration instead of challenge SD in the immigration issue.