The purpose of this study is to analyse the discourse on political exclusion in the official report Demokratiutredningen. It has been my ambition to relate the analysis of the report to a critical academic discourse on political exclusion and thereby make visible hidden norms and structures which functions to exclude certain individuals and groups from political participation.My paper point out that the report establishes a strong link between democracy and participation and that it, therefore, makes a strong case for a process of democratic inclusion. Though, in my study I suggest that that there is an unawareness of the importance of norms, hegemonic conceptions and structures and that inclusion, therefore, is unlikely to take place. Furthermore, I criticize the focus on deliberative democracy in the report. With insights offered by Mouffe in her argumentation on the necessity to acknowledge the dimension of antagonism present in all societies I underline that the focus on this democratic model is problematic.My conclusion is that the analysis presented in the report is insufficient if we want to create a democratic system characterized by equality..

It is the aim of this paper to examine, and analyze at a discursive level, the Swedish Democrats' interpretation of the term 'human rights', as this is presented in the material available on the party's official website. The goal is then to investigate in what manner the party portrays its political ambitions in relation to 'human rights'. The theoretical foundation for this analysis is discourse theory as it is presented in the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.Furthermore, the aim is also to examine whether the Swedish Democrats? interpretation of 'human rights' is compatible with the established understanding of the term, such as this is presented in the international UN treaties on human rights. This will be done by thoroughly examining and comparing certain aspects of the Swedish Democrats' political ambitions, such as they have been portrayed in the analytical section of the paper, with relevant sections of the UN treaties..

Regionalization has become a catchphrase in European countries during the last twenty years with the establishment of the European Union. An ideational development has occurred during time towards emphasing more politicially powerful regions with the idea of new regionalism. Sweden represents a deviant case study, where regions historically have been politically weak and where Sweden has been characterized as a strong unitary state. The aim of this paper is to analyze the political debate in the Swedish parliament concerning the implementation of a stronger regional level (storregioner) during 2007-2010 and to determine if the debate can be characterized as a case of depoliticalization. The theory of depoliticalization have been introduced by Richard Katz and Peter Mair to explain why political parties through external pressure from europeanisation and globalization tend to become more consensual with similar political agendas, leading to a diminished the lef-right scale.

Regionalization has become a catchphrase in European countries during the last twenty years with the establishment of the European Union. An ideational development has occurred during time towards emphasing more politicially powerful regions with the idea of new regionalism. Sweden represents a deviant case study, where regions historically have been politically weak and where Sweden has been characterized as a strong unitary state. The aim of this paper is to analyze the political debate in the Swedish parliament concerning the implementation of a stronger regional level (storregioner) during 2007-2010 and to determine if the debate can be characterized as a case of depoliticalization. The theory of depoliticalization have been introduced by Richard Katz and Peter Mair to explain why political parties through external pressure from europeanisation and globalization tend to become more consensual with similar political agendas, leading to a diminished the lef-right scale.

Liberal theorists typically argue that state action should not favor any particular conception of the good or meaningful life. On this view the defining characteristic of the liberal state is neutrality among rivaling ideas of the good. This thesis argues that state neutrality is impossible to maintain in practice. Two different versions of state neutrality; neutral justification and neutral aims, are used to analyze a wide range of political issues. It is concluded that far from being neutral, the liberal state favors individualistic and market oriented conceptions of the good life.

This thesis examines the European Union's sanctions policy regarding human rights and interdependence. Previous research has discussed whether sanctions are effective or result in desirable outcomes. This paper aims to take a step back and understand motives by analyzing consistency in the EU?s decisions to impose sanctions. The question is relevant because formal justification can be used to cloak actual motives, and by examining actual decisions, the analyses shed light on motives.

The Swedish alcohol policy has by tradition a restrictive composition, with high taxes and the Swedish Alcohol Retailing Monopoly as important elements. The Moderate Party has been powerful critics of the alcohol policy and has advocated a reformation. However, today the Moderate Party seems to have changed the attitude towards the alcohol policy and it even supports the Swedish initiative to create cooperation about alcohol matters at the EU level.This thesis examines why the Moderate Party has changed its attitude towards the restrictive alcohol policy. Three aspects have been considered: the rise of a European public policy, strategic choice, and the influence of the political environment. The paper discusses the problem from a strategic perspective, which means that the political change is viewed as a result of strategic considerations.The party has indeed been affected by all of the three aspects, although to different extent.

The first regulation concerning the protection of shores was introduced in 1950. The purpose of that regulation was to "secure the general publics condition of an outdoor life". The protection has been sharpened over the years and in 1975 a general protection of the shores was introduced, which meant that all land was protected within 100 meters from the shoreline. In 1994 a supplement was made with the purpose to "preserve good conditions for animal and plants on land and in water". The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did an inquiry of the shore protection regulations commissioned by the Government in 2001. The inquiry pointed out that there were big lacks in the exemption decisions.

This report evaluates whether an interpreted high-level garbage collected language has enough information about its memory behaviour to make better cache decisions than modern general CPU hardware.With a generational garbage collector, depending on promotion algorithm and generation size, around 90% of all objects never leave the first generation. This report is based on the hypothesis that, because of the low promotion rate, accesses to higher generations are sufficiently rare not to benefit from caching.To test this hypothesis, we built an operating system with a Scheme interpreter in kernel mode, where the interpreter controls the cache. Generic x86 PC hardware was used, since it allows fine-grained control of cache decisions.Measurements of execution time in this interpreter show that disabling the cache for generations higher than the first does not give any performance gain, but rather a performance loss of up to 50%.We conclude that this interpreter design is not an improvement, but cannot conclude that the hypothesis is false in general. We suggest building a better CPU simulator to gather more data from which to make better caching decisions, moving internal interpreter data structures into the garbage collected heap and modifying the hardware to allow control in the currently rigid dimension of where data is cached---for example separate control of instruction and data caches and separate data caches for different areas of memory..

The aim of this paper is to try to explain how specific, foreign policy decisions are made, and why one state decides to use violence against another state. A qualitative method is used, and text and documents are analysed. The two theoretical points of departure are central within foreign policy analysis: realism´s theories on external threats and constructivism´s theories on ideas´ policy influence. The empirical case chosen is the US decision to use military violence against Iraq. The paper investigates whether the real threat from Saddam Hussein´s Iraq was the cause of the American military attacks, or whether the ideas of leading politicians in the USA were decisive for the decision to invade the country.

Abstract: According to previous research, it is not unusual for online poker players to create profiles which indicate they are members of the opposite sex. This phenomenon, known as 'Gender Swapping', is partly being utilized in a strategic fashion. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether or not the gender of an opponent has an impact on decision-making in an online poker environment. An experiment was constructed where subjects made 15 poker-related decisions against seven randomly generated opponents, consisting of three male, three female and one genderless opponent. The results indicate no significant differences in decisions against male and female opponents.

Abstract This thesis is based on a case study of the drawn out legal process on the question of establish a limestone quarry in Bunge Ducker in north Gotland (Sweden). The current fields are located next to areas that are protected by virtue of being EU-certified Natura 2000-areas. Despite this, the Swedish governments and courts have not agreed in witch national interest that should be prevail when decisions are made on this issue. This phenomenon are reflected in the judicial process and different court have evaluate information differently in the case. A change among governmental actors where priority is given to the importance of national interest have occur in the later part in the process.

The consociational democracy model in Macedonia, which came out from a warcrisis and a peace agreement from 2001, in addition, putting an end to the violent conflict, actually admits the division of the society along the ethnic lines. Paradoxically, there is an attempt to bridge the ethnic gap with this model. As a result, the consociational democracy model holds solutions that can be abused if somebody misuses its power and desires to disintegrate the country. The future development depends therefore on the moderate attitude of the citizens, and first and foremost, on the political elites and their commitment to the values of democracy and human rights instead of their nationalistic goals. Furthermore, thepresent democratic consolidation in Macedonia is established on the execution of the peace agreement and the improved effectiveness of the institutions.

AbstractThe aim of this thesis is to investigate how the Swedish political parties have been discussing gender politics since 1970 to nowadays, in order to see which problems and solutions that have been suggested by the parties to increase the representation of women and the equality between the sexes. The theoretical framework is constructed by theories of women´s representation, gender politics and women?s interest.To describe how the discussions about gender politics have been between the different parties, the methodological foundation consists of an ideology critical textual analysis of the political programs from the Swedish parties.The analysis confirms that the discussions about gender politics and the political representation of women increase over time. The most important issue of equality is the lack of women´s rights and possibilities in the labor market as a consequence of women´s responsibility of home and childcare. The analysis also shows that parties which discuss women as a category and the underrepresentation of women also point out the importance to increase equality between men and women..

This paper deals with a partly new development in the Swedish law system, somewhere in the boundary between political science and jurisprudence. A new instrument -artbrott- has successively become more popular among lawyers and politicians. The new instrument -here translated to classified crimes- signifies that the perpetrator is sentenced to prison even though the seriousness of the crime committed is not in itself serious enough for such a consequence. The reason for this policy stance is to create a prevention against crime of that specific character among the public. The use of this instrument has grown considerably both concerning types of crimes as well as in application.