This master?s paper first presents some of the principal theories and concepts developed by the poverty researchers Rowntree, Titmuss, Townsend, Sen and Lister. These theoretical frameworks are then related to two documents from the EU and Sweden concerning combating poverty and social exclusion, bearing on the establishment of the ?Year 2010 against Poverty?. Finally, I discuss the value in practice of these theories and policy documents, as regards reducing poverty in Europe.It has become clear in this investigation that the theories and concepts from earlier research are still relevant to the formulation of contemporary policy programmes, and that earlier research helps us to avoid old traps in fighting poverty.

The aim of this report is to examine the possibilities to use network theories to perform vulnerability analysis on complex networks. The scoop of this work is also to improve the possibilities to chart, analyze and present the vulnerability in a power grid. In this report it has been, using power outage statistics, possible to verify, that network theories can be used to evaluate the vulnerability of an infrastructure network. However further studies to establish values on how vulnerable a network is are needed..

The aim of our study was to increase the awareness of the importance of implementation when a policy document is widely introduced. We wanted to examine how a political decision was implemented on different levels in a social care administration. We also wanted to examine the discretion related to the decision on different levels in the organisation, and if the work is followed up. The theoretical frame of reference in our study is Vedung?s implementation model and Lipsky?s theory about street-level bureaucrats.

Since the introduction of the European citizenship in the Maastricht treaty, social rights havetaken a back seat to the economic and political elements. Nevertheless, over the past yearssocial issues have been increasingly included on the agenda following the universalrecognition of challenges resulting from further economic integration and demographicchange. The extensive research on European social policy so far tend to focus on initiativesput forward by the European Commission, and offers little to explain the multitude of lines ofreasoning on how far EU social policy should be taken or why it still remains one of the leastdeveloped policy areas. By examining plenary debates in the European Parliament concerningfamily policy, this Bachelor thesis aims to describe the complex of problems connected to afurther development of the social dimension of the European citizenship.The analysis finds that the most imminent problems impeding an expansion of the EU familypolicy lie not only in the many clashes of opinions between advocates of the various existingwelfare models, but also in the conflicts of interests and the different levels of ambitionbetween EU institutions - most notably the Commission and the European Parliament..

This thesis is a comparative analysis of language policy in the Post-Soviet states Ukraine and Kazakhstan, wherein the states are seen as rational actors using language as an instrument in the nation-building process. With a take-off point in an underframe of theories on the nation, national identity, instrumentalism, power and the particular role of language in the nation-building process, this thesis shows that language is a key instrument used by the two states.The Ukrainian and Kazakhian language policies create and put across a certain image of the nation, by emphasising the titular languages as symbols of the new states. The line of argument in the language policy is a balance act between large-scale promotion of titular languages and a careful and inclusive attitude towards the Russian language. The biggest differences are that Ukraine, compared to Kazakhstan, has a more comprehensive and consequent language policy with a deeply rooted historic rhetoric. The most obvious instruments of the states in language policy is censuses, corpus-planning and the state choosing one official language..

This Bachelor's thesis examines and describes the ideas and ideological traits surrounding the public library within the governmental cultural policy. The Bachelor's thesis demonstrates how the public library ? even though its relevance in the modern society has shifted over time ? has maintained a connection to the governmental cultural policy and has therefore been shaped by the ideological changes in the political sphere as a whole. The main issues are: Which ideas concerning the public library's functions are expressed in the governmental cultural policy? Which ideological tendencies can be identified in the national cultural policy? Which ideas concerning the public library can be extracted through the found ideological tendencies? The method used in order to study the governmental bill is an ideology analysis based on a framework created by Dorte Skot-Hansen.

Syftet med denna undersökning har varit att titta på hur uppfattningar kring sociala medier ser ut på en mediekoncern i Östergötland samt hur sociala medier används. Vi har även studerat behovet av en policy som kan vägleda användningen av sociala medier och vad denna i så fall bör innehålla. Detta har undersökts genom åtta djupgående intervjuer samt en mindre enkät.Resultatet visar att det råder en positiv syn kring sociala medier men även en viss skepticism. Användningen av sociala medier skiljer sig åt mellan olika verksamhetsområden och organisationskulturen spelar en avgörande roll. Ett dilemma som har framkommit är svårigheten att hantera balansen mellan arbetsliv och privatliv.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the relation between different kinds ofremedial teaching models, not specifically addressed to pupils with physicaldisabilities, in the Swedish school context, and to describe and analyze theobjectives related to each model. Research focus was held on professionaldescriptions of school related problems and arguments for different kind of models,but also on objectives formulated in Swedish school policy. As theoretical toolswere used discourse analysis and interpretive policy analysis. The concept ofalienation as it appears throughout Foucault?s work was also used to understand howdifferent knowledge fields as education, special education, psychology and medicinedivide themselves from each other.

AbstractTitle: The first thing I do when I wake up is to log on to Facebook. A study regarding how users of Social Networks experiences the User Generated production. (Det första jag gör när jag vaknar är att logga in på Facebook. En studie om hur användare av de sociala nätverken upplever den användargenererande produktionen.)Number of pages: 37 (39 including enclosures) Author: Per MagnussonTutor: Christian ChristensenCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Fall semester 2010University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityAim: The ambition with this essay is to examine how the online users of social networks experience the development of the Internet towards Web 2.0, and the enormous User Generated Content emerging from it. How do we receive User Generated Content from other people, and particularly what do we think about our own production.Material/Method: In order to obtain a deeper understanding of the attitudes and perceptions amongst people regarding this subject I used qualitative interviews with 9 people.

This essays overarching aim is to contribute to the theoretical discussion of transformation processes that are shaping the urban landscapes and further to problematize contemporary planning discourses in Sweden. Drawing on the concept of Foucault?s heterotopia and actor-network theory for spatial analysis, the paper seeks to analyze the complex urban landscape transformation process as an emergent property of human and non-human actor-networks seeking to transform and order space. With the district of Rosenlund in Gothenburg as a starting point, this thesis intends to examine how the cultural infrastructure - used by the residents and visitors of the city - are related to the city's planning and development processes. The case study is based on a boat (Rio Rio) in Rosenlund canal that is defined as a cultural infrastructure.

This study aims at contributing to the studies of political implementation. The theory of implementation claims that local implementation that meets the demands of national policies is close to none existing. By examining the implementation of industrial policy in two Swedish municipalities that differs in location, prosperity and political believes I am putting the theory to the test. If the test were to show that the implementation is rather well executed in these two cases, where the risk of failure is great, the questions about whether the theory is valid or not will rise.By interviewing the two local government employees in charge of the work with industrial policy, and studying their strategic documents I got my answers. This by looking at their work but also their attitudes towards the national policy in terms of understanding the policy, being able to work with it, and wanting to work with it.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze the importance of networking and relationships in the music industry. We also want to see whether these factors have any impact on the Swedish music exports.These musings have led to the formulation of the following question; -          How can the musiclabels in the music industry make use of networks and relationships to strengthen the Swedish music exports to the U.S. and make it more efficient? The essay is written with a qualitative method with an abductive perspective. That?s because our research question has demanded that we get a deeper view of the subject to be able to answer it.The empirical data is collected through telephone or email interviews.

The aim of this study is to explore local cultural policy documents in the municipality of Gothenburg Sweden, and, more specifically, to investigate the concepts of cultural planning and instrumental cultural policy. Cultural planning is in this thesis seen as a result of an instrumental view of cultural policy. The theoretical framework consists of the theories of Danish cultural policy researcher Dorte Skot-Hansen. She describes cultural policy in urban areas as founded in motives such as economy, social issues, entertaining and enlightenment. A qualitative text analysis is performed in order to see if the purpose of the cultural policies is to focus on cultural planning as formulated in the document Kulturpolitisk strategi ? version 1.0, adopted by the city council in 1998.

AbstractEssay in political science, C-level, by Bo-Josef Eriksson, spring semester 2007Tutor: Susan Marton?Universal morality - does it exist? - A case study of small states foreign policy?The purpose of this essay is to examine how well does realism stand of against idealism when the focus of the study is on small states foreign policy? The essay takes it?s starting point at the debate between the two theories of international relations (IR). Realism is the theory that has had the most impact on the study of IR since the second world war. Idealism has been it?s greatest opponent and the debate is still active even up til this day.My case study of Danmarks foreign aid policy constitutes a worst critical case scenario for realism and therfore my assumptions were that idealism would be the theory that could explain the core-elements of the Danish foregin aid.

Fenomenet med nationella riskbedömningar är relativt nytt i Europa. Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap överlämnade den allra första nationella riskbedömningen till regeringen år 2013. Syftet i uppsatsen är att undersöka om man genom ett policy transfer-perspektiv på nationella riskbedömningar kan se några indikatorer som hindrar policy transfer inom riskområdet. En första, översiktlig undersökning görs genom att jämföra de risker man lyfter fram i sju europeiska nationella riskbedömningar för att se om man kan tyda något mönster. Uppsatsen tog avstamp ur antagandet att geografisk närhet och liknande interna förutsättningar kunde tänkas innebära att man även har en liknande syn på risker som länder i ens närområde.