The Motor Group of the European Council was commissioned in the autumn of 1997 to prepare a proposal for a new European Bus and Coach Directive. In the beginning, most of the Member States did not have the accessibility requirements as their main concern; still a smaller network with actors from the National delegations from Britain, Germany and Sweden would influence the other National delegations in the Council group to finally agree to retain the requirement of accessibility of the Directive. Within the EU decision process, the European Disability movement acted as a strong player during the whole negotiation process using the proposal to a new Bus and Coach Directive as a tool to influence key actors to go towards a Directive with a strong approach for accessibility.Policy Transfer and Policy Transfer Network are used as analytical tools to understand and structure the transfer of the question of accessibility during the negotiation process. Actors understanding how the bureaucratic process works within the EU decision system have a chance to contributing for the changes in the directions they wishes for within a range of policy areas. The principal aim of the Directive was to guarantee the safety of passengers and to provide technical prescription in particular to wheelchair users.

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.

Learning from traumatic events: a comparative case study of governmental close protection policies in the aftermath of the murder of Olof Palme and Anna LindhViolent and threatful crimes against politicians are as despicable as any other crime acts against citizen. However, if politicians are targeted solely due to their position ? the act can seriously damage the state and central government.This paper compares reports of government commissions and investigations which were initiated after the murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986 and secretary of state Anna Lindh in 2003. The purpose is to analyse and compare the conclusions and distinguish the main arguments that led to those conclusions and decipher similarities and differences through the lens of Tom Christensen?s instrumental perspective as well as Peter May?s social policy learning theory.

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.

Abstract D Level Essay in Political Science, Spring Semester 2010 by Sangrid von Zedtwitz-Liebenstein. Tutor: Malin Stegmann McCallion. ?Democratic Accountability in Networks? The aim of this study is to highlight the problem of the democratic deficit in the private-public partnerships in Sweden. This is a comparative case study with four ideal types.

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the ideological trends and positioning of the Swedish liberal party with the Danish social liberal party. This paper also aims to analyze the reasons behind the trends. By examine the development in these two Nordic liberal sisterparties, this paper contributes to our understanding of why and how party change is initiated. The paper commences with an intuitive notion that the Swedish party has in fact, made a lurch towards the right, during the past ten to fifteen years while the Danish party has retained their social-liberal position in the centre of the Danish political spectrum. The questions then asked are: can this hypothesis be verified empirically? If so, how can this phenomenon of divergence, be explained?The method used in this thesis is process-tracing and the empirical material does to a large extent rely on interviews with central agents as they are specified in the theory of each party.

This thesis takes as its point of departure the Swedish governmental family policy and the debate on the proposed reform ?vårdnadsbidraget?. The supporters of the reform present it as something that will increase the freedom of choice for families and benefit the children, whereas the opponents warn for decreased equality and a return to the male breadwinner-model.From a constructivist perspective, language is closely related to power through defining and ascribing meaning to reality. By applying a feminist political theory on the debate within the Swedish national parliament 2007/2008 and conducting a discourse analysis, the aim of this paper is to analyse which concepts are used and how they construct to what makes a family within the political debate ? is there any difference or similarity between the view of the opponents and the supporters of ?vårdnadsbidraget??The main conclusion of this paper is that even though the political ideal and rhetorical concepts differ between the supporters and the opponents, they still constitute the heterosexual nuclear family as an obvious norm in family politics.

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.

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.

The aim of the thesis is to highlight external factors to explain why the EMU was created. The external factor considered here is the monetary policy of the United States, which often conflicted with European interests. The statistical data in the thesis, as well as previous research, show that even though the EU economically in many ways had become an equal partner of the US during the second half of the 20th century, the union still faced US influence and dependence.The results of the thesis can be explained with neorealist theories on power measured as an actor's distribution of capabilities and balancing of power. An actor that is equipped with the world's leading currency is more independent from others. Other actors, on the other hand, become increasingly dependent on the major currency and the policy of its owner.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to give the reader a picture of the experience of art and of its room in the public libraries, but above all to examine the phenomenon temporary art exhibitions in public libraries in the county of Östergötland. The study is limited to a specific activity of art, namely temporary exhibitions in libraries. Geographically, the investigation is limited to the public libraries and their branch libraries in Östergötland. Time concentrates on the present situation in 2000 and 2001. Methodologies are partly observations in some libraries, partly qualitative questionnaires to all primary libraries and their affiliates in Östergötland.