The Swedish political organization is subject for the investigation of this thesis, with regard to the realization of universal human rights. There is a discrepancy between the Swedish state's international undertakings in legally binding treaties and theactualization of human rights by local authorities. The local authorities are ruled by a complex function of both national and local government. Of interest here, is the effect that these, and other organizational aspects, between the national and the local, have for the realization of human rights in local authorities. Also, the discrepancy between the national and the local is attempted to be understood.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the institutional effectiveness of the environmental institutions Helcom and the Mediterranean regime, by using Haas, Levy and Keohane's "the three Cs"; governmental concern, contractual environment, political and administrative capacity. The method used is a comparative analysis.This study takes into consideration the specific structural and economic factors that are prevailing in each region where the environmental regime operates. This study also takes into account the influence of the European Union as a factor that affects the environmental progress.By focusing the study on the line of conduct concerning hazardous substances by respectively regime this study shows that the institutional effectiveness is fulfilled in neither Helcom nor the Mediterranean Regime, although Helcom has been more successful. The lack of state capacity is the most restraining factor for both developing countries and countries in the transition towards being developed, to achieve a good environmental status of the sea. This study also shows that the European Union sometimes has a greater impact on the environmental progress in states, rather than the environmental regime in countries that were/are aspiring members, thus showing the ineffectiveness of the regime..

This thesis aims to analyse the problems concerning the reorganization of the Swedish consulary system, which took place right after the Swedish entry in the European Union in 1995. This thesis shows the underlying debate in the Parliament before the changes. It also discusses which factors caused the reorganisation. My work focuses on the Swedish consulary representation in Spain which exist of an embassy in Madrid and 20 underlying honorary consulates. The consulates are not foreign authorities but are still handeling a lot of cases as an govenmental authority.

The debate surrounding the opinion polls of the political party Sverigedemokraterna, and later their results in the Swedish election has been evident. The purpose of the study is to investigate how norms of equal treatment in social work practice might be influenced by Sverigedemokraterna's understanding of culture, ethnicity, nationality and religion. The thesis is outlined through the works of Teun van Dijk and Ruth Wodak (2000) regarding racist discourse in politics, Giorel Curran (2004) explaining lesser established parties influence on the broader discourses and Anders Hellström and Tom Nilsson (2010) attempting to ideologically position Sverigedemokraterna. With the method for analyzing policy documents designed by Carol Bacchi (2009) the latest motions from Sverigedemokraterna has been analyzed. Bacchi?s theoretical framework, together with theory concerning the expression of modern racism of John Hodge (1999), Paul Gilroy (1999) and Bennedict Anderson (1996) amongst others has been used to create an understanding of the material.

Motives and reasons behind a decision to change the asylum process in Sweden are the central concern for this thesis. A symbolic political perspective will be applied in order to elucidate the symbolic factors that have influenced the decision process.The Aliens Appeal Board in Sweden will close down at the end of March 2006 and all pending and future cases will henceforth be decided by three administrative courts. This will be done in order to enhance the principles of legal certainty by making the process more transparent and oral. It is an extensive reform, but since very few amendments are made to the applicable substantive law it raises questions about the actual motives behind the change.One reason that seems to have had a major impact on the decision to close down the Aliens Appeal Board is the fact that the board is perceived as a symbol for an inhuman asylum policy. Transferring the process to the courts might ease the attempt to increase the legitimacy of the asylum process.

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.

For over 40 years, there's been a debate in Sweden of whether it's good or bad with maintenance therapy for heroin addicts. This method is far more acknowledged in other parts of Europe and in USA. The aim of this paper was to explore how public actors manifest their thoughts concerning the subject of the substitution program in Sweden. This approach includes the complex of problems that can be found in statements and the discourses that these operators stand for and support. In my analysis the philosophical thread was principally based on Michael Foucault ideas, but also on other theories related to social constructionism.

Denna uppsats handlar om vad som ledde fram till att IRA valde att lägga ner sina vapen och ingå vapenvila 1994. Vi har hittat flera olika orsaker vilka vi har klassificerat som interna eller externa. Här återfinns orsaker som kalla krigets slut, attitydförändringar, vinster med vapenvila och internationellt samarbete. För att förstå bakgrunden har vi även tittat på vikten av en avväpning i en fredprocess samt hur Sinn Féin och IRA är sammanlänkade. Slutligen har vi även gjort en applicering av våra resultat på en terroristgrupp vilken delar många av IRAs drag, PLO, men även tittat på en grupp vilken inte är så lik, ETA..

The Nord Stream natural gas pipeline has been a controversial project. The debate was primarily escalated by Poland's strong negative reaction to the project in the spring of 2006 over safety and security and then alternated back and forth in Europe until the approval by the nations most concerned in the Baltic region during the autumn of 2009.In the case study an approach is used that primarily maps out the media image of the various viewpoints that deal with the pipeline and how these viewpoints position themselves, primarily through political and environmental dimensions. Simultaneously there?s an attempt to map out the spatial spread of the media image views as to the proximity and distance to the pipeline in Sweden, Poland and Germany. A key question is whether distance or proximity to a large facility can affect people's attitudes.A parallel focus of the study is to explore the role of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline in the cross-border hinterland region of Szczecin-?winouj?cie.

Abstract Youths and adolescents have for a long period of time, and at a high degree, beenabsent from the party political stage. The causes for this have been discussed inthis essay through a quantitative survey made in an upper secondary school class,consisting of some 19 subjects in the municipality of Kalmar. Tied together withrelevant literature and discourse on the subject, the essay has dealt with thepossible societal-, system- and individual barriers for political interest andinvolvement. Central questions for this essay has been for instance; age, gender,social background, geographical domicile, as well as the decline of ideology, theforms of current party politics, political interest, political engagement and soforth. The concluding remarks contain not only a mix of these barriers existing,not exclusively, for young and adolescents but different ground for them as well.On the one hand, there exist barriers which exclude youth from the conventionalpolitical life, but on the other, the more individualised youth of today, prefer to agreater extent not to participate under the conventional circumstances that partypolitics has to offer.

Den ojämlika representationen i våra folkvalda församlingar är ett demokratiskt problem. För att alla grupper i samhället ska få sina intressen tillgodosedda krävs en representation som speglar samhället, dess intressen och åsikter. Könskvotering kan ses som ett svar på problemet med ojämlik representation. En diskussion av medborgarskap är viktig för att förstå innebörden av representation och dess betydelse.Den här uppsatsen är en forskningsöversikt som klargör hur forskningsläget ställer sig till frågan om ojämlik representation och könskvotering som en lösning. Vi fokuserar på de argument som styr den vetenskapliga debatten.

Due to globalization, decentralization and the capitalist system's need to physical location cities have become increasingly important economic spheres during thee last decades. City mayors are seen as increasingly important actors, who can shape the future economic development of their cities through networking with businesses and strategic policy development. Therefore several European countries have introduced mayor reforms to enable mayors to take a bigger responsibility for the local development. These reforms raise interesting questions concerning what leadership changes they produce at the local level and if there is a difference between local leaders and leadership in different countries. This paper further explores the connection between the local leader and the locality since this relationship often has been neglect in studies concerning mayor reforms.

Earlier research has shown that young and adult citizens in Europe participate in politics in different ways. While adult citizens participate in more traditional ways, non-traditional ways are more frequent among younger citizens. Moreover, issue-based participation increases when Europeans turn away from mainstream politics. Citizens in the European Union EU-15 between 15-24 ages are likely to be ?critical? citizens of a working democracy compared to people in older ages (Sloam, 2016).

During the time of membership in The European Union Swedish domestic policy has gone through many changes. A lot more political areas are being influenced by the EU policy. Today every ministry has got some sort of EU office. Swedish politicians are functioning on two arenas, domestic and European. At the same time Swedish membership has gone from being highly discussed to being a state of normality.

This study examines affective polarization among first-time voters in Sweden and the factors that explain variation in its levels. Affective polarization refers to the extent to which individuals hold negative feelings toward political opponents. Drawing on social identity theory and theories of ideological polarization, the study tests two hypotheses regarding why first-time voters are expected to display lower levels of affective polarization compared to older voters. Affective polarization is operationalized as the dispersion of individuals' evaluations of political parties and analyzed using visual graphs alongside bivariate and multivariate regression models to identify underlying mechanisms. The results show that first-time voters, on average, exhibit slightly lower levels of affective polarization than older voters.