The purpose of this research is to identify how E-NGO and forest stakeholders, in the study referred to as non-state actors, have influenced the EU timber regulation; through participation and lobbyism towards the decision- makers (policy makers) at EU and national level, to achieve adjustments in the legislative text. The study also examines the relationships between the forest stakeholders, the E-NGOs and the EU-institutions, regarding communication, cooperation, informal and formal consultation where interviews were accomplished with decision-makers from the EU-institutions, forest stakeholders, E-NGOS and representatives from Swedish authorities that participated under the development of the EUTR during the period of 2008-2013. The participation and lobbying from non-state actors have most likely affected the outcome of the regulation, through alterations in the legislative text and through influencing the EU-institutions. Several factors that have affected the efficiency and timing of the influence have been identified through interviews as well as various approaches to influence the decision makers. The findings of the study may be useful for forest related interest groups that are involved in decision-making procedures at EU-level and as substance and material for further research in the subject of forest policy making at supranational level..

ABSTRACTD Level Essay in Political Science, Autumn Semester 2008 by Mattias Andersson. Tutor: Alf Sundin. ?The Swedish Centre Party and Nuclear Power. A Study of Change in a Political Party?The aim of this essay is to examine the policy of the Swedish Centre Party on nuclear power.

This paper examines a long run macroeconomic dilemma. This dilemma states that given a real appreciation, i.e. a continuous increase in the real exchange rate, an economy has two options open with respect to inflation and nominal exchange rate. Either the economy chooses a fixed exchange rate- regime but has to allow for a rising inflation. Or the economy can choose an inflation targeting- regime, but then has to allow for an appreciating nominal exchange rate.

The aim of this study is to discuss the implementation of Swedish integration policy from the perspective that public officials, so called front-line bureaucrats, are the real creators of this policy. The concept of integration is far from unambigous; it can have different meanings depending on the theoretical perspective applied. This give topical interest to the question of how the concept is conceived on the national level versus the implementation level. I also aim to uncover how these front-line bureaucrats look upon their role as creators of integration policy. My material consists mainly of interviews with front-line bureauctrats.

While almost 23 percent of the students in the Swedish upper secondary school are foreigners, only a fraction of the school libraries? collections consists of literature written in other languages than Swedish or English. This study examines how five school librarians experience the task of working with literature composed in foreign languages in the multicultural and multilingual school of today. The results of the qualitative interviews are analyzed in relation to the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries are working by, and also in relation to the theoretical framework of sociocultural theory and the theories on second language acquisition developed by linguist Jim Cummins.The study shows that while multilingualism is discussed as an important matter in the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries work by, the librarians in this study largely view the question of foreign literature as peripheral. Most part of the librarians connects first language reading to leisure-time activities rather than curricular activities, and stresses that the Swedish language should be prioritized in Swedish schools.

This paper seeks to discern the political factors that determine the results of negotiations in international cooperation. On the one hand, it makes a contribution to the broader theoretical debate on international regimes by combining regime theory and theories on globalisation into an integrated framework for the analysis of international policy results, or in this case treaties (theoretical objective). More generally, globalisation theory will help us understand why it has become important to initiate international cooperation, and regime theory to elucidate how these international cooperations emerge. To many observers, it is the large transnational corporations of the rich North, which have done best out of free trade. Through the huge influence they wield over governments at the WTO (World Trade Organisation), these corporations have won the freedom to move around the globe without restriction, making use of cheap labour, and locating wherever they can best tap into the largest and most lucrative markets.

The aim of this paper is to describe and explain which policy instruments for human rights (HR) the United States and the European Union use towards Burma and to examine the priority given to HR in their respective foreign policy. From the results of an empirical analysis this paper seeks to analyze the US and the EU as powers in the international system and aims to explain their behavior from this theoretical perspective. From the theoretical approaches used I conclude that these actors act in different ways regarding the Burmese issue. This is partially due to the structure of the international system. Both actors primarily use different forms of diplomatic tools and sanctions to try to force change for HR in Burma.

With the increased significance of information technology (IT) in today?s society the term ?electronic democracy? (e-democracy) has gained much importance within the democracy theory. Naturally, there are several competing views on how the technology should be used for democratic purpose. One aspect of this is the somewhat revitalized claim for direct democracy in accordance with the hypothetical opportunity to finally realize it as a democratic system. The ideal of direct democracy combined with the almost total credence in the potential of technology constitute the idea of a ?push-button democracy?.

This thesis aim to advance the Liberal Integrovernmentalism (LIG) developed byAndrew Moravcsik in order to order to explain how the European Court of Justice (ECJ) can make de facto EU policies diverge from what was originally intended by the Member States. More specifically it describes how the Posting of Workers Directive, Directive 96/71/EC, originally was created to shield certain Member States and their respective systems of regulating the labour market from pressure arising from the posting of workers form low-wage countries inside the EU. However, through a series of cases in the ECJ the de facto policy of the directive has changed and it is now in itself a potential threat against these systems. The Member States now find themselves caught in a ?Joint-Decision Trap?, unable to rectify the situation even though their original agreement has been turned on its head.

This theory consuming thesis is concerned with why Iran's uranium enrichment has become a security issue, and will focus on the five most important and involved actors: China, Russia, Iran, the US and the UN. I will do this by using instruments of analysis such as securitization and strategic analysis. With these instruments I will examine different factors, such as deterrence, the action-reaction model and armament. Since, according to my opinion, security matters include more sectors than military I will also examine the political, societal and economic sectors. China and Russia have acted differently compared to the US in this matter and this thesis will highlight the factors that can explain the different actions made by these countries.

The aim of this study is through a policy analysis to illuminate the decisions that the EU has taken to respond to the terrorist attacks in the US, Madrid and London and through this analysis try to explain the problem of each decision and find out if these decisions might risk the individual rights of the European Union?s citizens.In order to reach this purpose the following questions are to be answered: In what way has the EU?s decision-making process, regarding its fight on terrorism, been affected by the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London? What consequences may the EU?s decisions against terrorism have on the individual rights?The method that has been used is qualitative studies of literature and the main material is overarching policy documents from the EU.The conclusions are that the bombings in Madrid and London have increased the speed of the decision-making process and more areas have been included in the union?s fight against terrorism. If individual rights are at risk by the union?s decisions there are reasons to be concerned. But my conclusion is that the European Union has to have strong and effective instruments to answer to the threat of terrorism..

Rikliga naturtillgångar och bördig jord gör Brasilien till ett land med mycket bra förutsättningar för jordbruk. Dess totala odlade area överskrids endast av Australien, Kina och USA. Under senare tid har landet genomgått flera betydande handelsliberaliseringar och övergått från importsubstitution till en mer exportorienterad policy. Från och med 1990-talet har Brasilien ökat sin export inom jordbrukssektorn och på senare tid har exporttillväxten varit så pass hög att den kan liknas vid en exportboom. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka Brasiliens senaste exportutveckling och dess komparativa fördelar i deras främsta exportprodukter inom jordbrukssektorn.

The Swedish security policy has changed from stressing neutrality to embrace co-operation within the EU and other organisations. New threats like terrorism, boarder-crossing criminality and natural disasters require new ways to deal with this type of problems to protect the society. Since the beginning of 21st century the high Russian economic growth has made it possible for the country to play an increasingly role as a superpower on the international political stage. In the same time the democratic development has been replaced by an autocratic rule which has obstructed the Russian- European relations. From a Swedish security policy view the Russian political development is of importance and the picture of Russian as a threat has changed from 1996 to 2008/09.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the discourses of concepts related to diversity and ethnicity in Swedish cultural policy. It focuses on how the society is presented in different contexts and how people with a different ethnic origin than the majority, are represented in the cultural policy of the Swedish State. The study is restricted to concern immigrants. Six governmental cultural policy documents, reaching over a time period of eight years 1995-2003 are examined as follows: Which key terms are used in the presentations? Which contexts and discourses can be distinguished? Have the discourses changed over the time period examined, and if so, how? The theoretical starting point in the thesis is the discourse perspective of Laclau and Mouffe.

The world is increasingly coalescing, ecologically, economically and culturally. Many problems can no longer be solved within the own state borders and the limitation of the territorial state is obvious. Jürgen Habermas means that a world domestic politic without a world government is what this progress need. Therefore it is important that national interests become less central and the solidarity between people is given priority in international relations. The focus of this thesis is therefore a critical discourse analysis of the current position of the internationalisation of Swedish security and defence policy.