The Swedish welfare organisation is built on the fact that the legislation gives the municipalities and social workers guidance and direction how to assess cases. Through out this the clients have right to be assessed both equally and individually. How is this done? The purpose of this paper was to examine the effect of the organisation referred to the social workers ability to discretion and the evaluation of the assessment in first time applications of social assistant cases. The purpose was also to look for variations in decisions and if these could be explained out of organisational and assessment effects.

Over the past thirty years, the living conditions of intersex people have received attention both in Sweden and internationally. A particularly intense debate has emerged from a human rights perspective, focusing on medical interventions and treatments performed on children with intersex variations. These procedures are often carried out at an early age without the child?s consent. Several UN committees have highlighted that such interventions risk violating fundamental human rights, including the right to consent, protection against torture and inhuman treatment, as well as Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: the principle of the best interests of the child.

This thesis analyzes the media debates generated by the election of Omar Mustafa to the board of the social democratic party, and the appointment of the conservative Minister of Labour, Elisabeth Svantesson. More specifically, the aim is to analyze newspaper material through a discourse analyze, to see if and how religious affiliation effects the possibilities to act as a political representative. Theories of othering and intersectionality serve as theoretical points of departure. Further, chains of equivalence from Laclau and Mouffe?s discourse theory are used to study how categories as ?us? and ?the other? are constructed in the material, and how these processes of categorization relate to the intersection of religion, gender and ethnicity.

The aim of this essay is to study the decision making process and implementation of the principle of political participation and influence for Roma minority in Sweden. The results regarding the decision making process is structured through a discourse influenced policy analyses. Problem picture and recommended measures in the political documents representing the decision making process are analysed through theories of minority rights and equality. The implementation is seen through, by the author given minority discourse and the work in the roma council and analysed by the same theories already mentioned.The results show that regarding the decision process the aim of art.15 in the framework convention is based on the idea of equality while the Swedish documents relates more to an idea of the right to speak for the group. Regarding recommended measures, the framework convention gives several recommendations on specific measures for political participation while the Swedish documents focuses on the general politics of the state.

In the beginning of this century United Nations expressed their concern about the lack of female participation in politics through a number of resolutions and conventions. To ensure sustainable development and democracy, United Nations argued the importance of women?s participation in every level of politics within a state.Burma is a country that is in the middle of an ongoing democratization process and women are not considered to participate in this process. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to analyze the experience of politically involved Burmese women in their political participation progress.This study has been realized through semi-structured interviews with nine Burmese women, in both Thailand and Burma. The questions that have been asked are about what societal and cultural barriers women meet when they are, or want to be, political involved, both from the society and within their own political organizations.

In December 2004 an earthquake coursed waves that hit Thailand. Over 5000 people died, and Sweden was the tourist country that has been effected the worst. The catastrophe precipitated Sweden in crises and the demand became high for Swedish government to act. Swedes followed the development via media, why media became the crucial element for how the public perceived politicians? acting.

Even though Sweden is a small country which has a low rate of inhabitants is it one of the worlds leading nations of exporting products from the forest industries. The Importance of a sustainable use of the Swedish forests has been known for many years. In 1903 the first law of forestry were establish. Today the National Board of Forestry carry out inventories of regeneration result. The result of the latest inventory showed that especially the non-industrial private forest owners did not full fill the regeneration work after a clear cut.

The Swedish public inquiries and most of the political science advocate reforms in the spirit of participatory democracy to strengthen the democracy. Although it is striking how limited and narrow the scientific documentation is in analysing the effects of participatory democratic reforms. Still, many of the local governments in Sweden are reshaping their organisations according to the participatory democracy model. Is it a trend and a symbolic action or a veritable action of good-will of the politicians?The paper argues that the idea of participatory democracy has become popular and widely spread.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the Swedish model with attention to core values over time, as well as, explain recent changes. It examines changes of the social insurance system, with focus on political reforms in the unemployment insurance, health insurance and family policy, during the last two decades. The thesis is empirical but although a discourse amount political theories and normative conceptions.Conclusions are that the normative basis in the Swedish model contains general equally and uni-versally designed rights and consensus on growth and development as well as a strict focus on an employment oriented society. Important values have also been dialogue between actors as well as accountability, even if these facts appear to have declined in recent years.Relating to three leading theories in political philosophy - utilitarianism, Rawlsian communitarian-ism - explores the directions in later year political reforms. The results show that later years changes seem to go in relative strongly utilitarian direction.

This paper concerns the divide between secularist and anti-secularist groups in Turkey, which is related to a greater antagonism between a Kemalist and an Islamic political discourse, dominant in Turkish politics since the 1980s. The main aim of the paper is to analyse the causes of the conflict using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. The second aim is to analyse the contents of each discourse and identify the main points of conflict between them. The empirical material used in the study consists exclusively of secondary sources treating the topic, and these are analysed using the theory of identity conflicts, which is part of Laclau and Mouffe's theory. It will be argued that the attempts of Kemalism to impose strict secularism by hegemonising the concepts of ?modernity? and ?Islam? led to the creation of an alternative political discourse based on political Islam.

The purpose of this study was to examine divergences in assessments of social assistance in one big and one small social welfare office in the municipalities of Malmö. To examine this we used a qualitative method. We held interviews with social workers and their superiors. At the end of the interviews with the social workers we presented two vignettes, describing different cases of first time applications of social assistance. The social workers was asked to assess whether the application should be granted or not, and motivate their decisions.

 The purpose of this essay is to study the republican and socialist Northern Ireland political party Sinn Féin and to examine its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens of Northern Ireland. Is it possible to have a political agenda that includes violence and still maintain legitimacy? The Irish Republican Army?s (IRA) military struggle was for a long time a part of the party?s political agenda. This strategy has been described as to have a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other, and successfully made Sinn Féin one of the province?s largest political parties.

AbstractEssay in Political Science, autumn 2010. ?ALBA ? A regional integration project with good conditions?? Autor: Anna Sjögren. Course: Political Science, C-level, Tutor: Sten Berglund An essential part of the political science research on regional integration has been about why states join economic unions and what forces drive the process of integration. This essay is a case study on the Latin American regional integration project called ALBA.

Title: Images of Sweden in ItalyNumber of pages: 5252 (589 including enclosures)Author: Oskar GustafssonTutor: Martin NilssonCourse: Political Science C level ? Bachelor?s ThesisPeriod: Spring term 2010University: School of Social SciencesLinnaeus UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose of my research study is to, through the use of political science theories on soft power and marketing theories about nation branding and in comparison to previous studies on the image of Sweden in Italy, gains a better understanding of the image of Sweden in Italy, with special focus on national political institutions and young Italians.Method: The method of analysis is a combination of qualitative methods: interviews where information about the image of Sweden amongst national political institutions were gathered and a survey where information was gathered about the image of Sweden amongst young Italians.Main results: On the basis of the results I have gained it can be concluded that a positive and well informed image of Sweden emerges when it comes to cultural and social factors but a more restricted and somewhat negative image come to light when asking national political institutions and young citizens in Italy about their views and knowledge on Swedish domestic and international politics and economics.Keywords: Soft power, Public Diplomacy, Nation Branding, Images of Sweden, Italy..

As the numbers of immigrants to Sweden and the EU are ever increasing even the right-wing populist parties grow faster in number. Sweden, Germany and France are three European countries that receive 90 percent of all asylum seekers and should therefore have a well-established and talked about immigration policy one can think. Yet the political parties in Sweden do not mention much about the immigration policy apart from the political party Sweden Democrats. This study aims to analyze eight different political parties in the Swedish parliament through a textual analysis to see what kind of immigration policy they share. Carl Dahlström has a theory to determine what type of policy a certain party has and whether they want to assimilate or integrate immigrants.