AbstractThe recruiting of lay judges to the district courts is managed by the political parties. Despite repeated efforts the parties do not succeed in recruiting lay judges that reflect the structure of the inhabitants. Why not? This is the fundamental issue of this essay.This study is a multiple case study of two parties with different success in their recruiting work. The purpose is to study the process of nomination regarding lay judges at the district courts, at the latest election (2006).

This study focuses on young adults with mild mental retardation and how their early adult life is a few years after leaving high school. They have grown up in a society where the view on mentally disabled has undergone big changes. Political Decisions regarding handicapped, laws, official principles and social reforms have been dominated by the prinziple of normalization.The purpose has been to describe how the young adults themselves experience their life. The questions were: How is the every day life for young adults with mild mental retardation? Do they have asset to community support in order to reach as normal life as possible? How satisfied are they with their life?The investigation is a quality study through interviews with four young adults and their parents.

This thesis is a case study that examines what Political Decisions have been taken and how these policies have been implemented. Further this thesis discusses how legitimacy of local policy makers and implementors is affected. The subject studied have been the social service of Jönköping municipality and the intervention of safe-housing aimed at women who have been, or are subject to violence by person close to them. In our study we have examined local policy within the territory of the intervention and how this policy is implemented. A qualitative method with semi-structured interviews was used in combination with quantitative methods to examine protocols from the social welfare board and an action program named "Skydd och stöd för misshandlade kvinnor och deras barn? [Protection and support for abused women and their children].The purpose of this study has been to highlight how the social services implemented the local policy of safe-house accommodation in Jönköping municipality from the legitimacy and discretion perspectives.

In Sweden, prostitution is politically defined as a social problem, more precisely, as a form of male violence against women. The definition is distinctly manifested in the government bill Kvinnofrid, characterised by the unique Swedish law that prohibits the purchase of sexual services.This thesis examines how the Swedish solutions of prostitution are carried out. By interviewing central actors working with prostitution in different ways we aim to answer the question: What measures are taken to decrease prostitution and what implications does the Swedish solution have?The analysis is divided into two parts. First, we analyse the concrete measures taken against prostitution ? what is done, how, and why? Second, we analyse the complexity of prostitution measures by applying complementary analytical perspectives: the symbolic and the discourse perspective.The study shows that measures taken to decrease prostitution vary and depend on individual actors? understandings of the political definition.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to illustrate Serbia?s democratic development on the basis of consolidate democratic perspective. Linz & Stepan´s five arenas (political, civil, economic, legal and bureaucratic) are required for the possibility to become a consolidate democracy. In order to fulfil the aim, I have chosen to focus on the political and civil arenas that are most central in the study of consolidate democracy.The purpose of this study is to process how far Serbia has come towards a consolidate democracy and which obstacles still remain in the transition.The questions in this study are:? What problems has Serbia faced since the democratic transition in the beginning of 1990?? What possibilities are there for Serbia to consolidate the democracy, with focus on the two key arenas of consolidation?By applying the theoretical framework to the data, I have been able to present answers and build up an analysis.

Following essay discusses the possibilities of using a gender perspective when studying local governance within a Swedish context. Governance is an international concept used to describe a more lose, informal and network based way of doing politics The main purpose for conducting this essay is that traditional theoretical frameworks used in the study of local politics are not enough to fully conceptualize the complexity of our changing political environment.After a broad summing up of what had been done in the recent decades within Swedish political science on the topic of local politics and gender I came to the conclusion that so far nothing had been written on governance. The next step was therefore to conduct a pilot study to cover the subject matter of governance and gender. The study was based upon interviews with five female politicians in Malmoe city.Results showed that governance, in terms of informal networks did exist, and had influence over the local politics. Some of the networks were male dominated.

Japan's foreign and security policy has seen some substantial changes as a result of events like the first Gulf war and 9/11th. This has been taken as proof, by some, that Japan is abandoning its antimilitaristic stance and pursuing a more traditional hard power role through military means. This essay aims to explore if these shifts have coincided with any substantial shifts away from antimilitarism, which has had a strong influence on the country's security policy since the end of WW2.To do this I use constructivist theory, specifically regarding the impact of norms and identities on states security policy and briefly look into the problem of actor designation. The thematic focus is on security policy, from a narrow perspective, and thus I examine areas like the input and output to the Japanese military and the actual applications of this force. State identity is used to explore the prevalence of nationalistic sentiments and support for anti militarism in the public opinion and the political elite.The result of this study points to the further relevance of constructivist theory and especially the application of norms and identity.

This thesis intends to examine the role of the city, Dublin, in the Irish economic growth during the 1990s. It is a case study where Dublin is compared with current theories on post modern cities as growth machines and increasingly prominent actors in the global context. The study has an interdisciplinary approach but focuses on political science issues such as power distribution, global-local governance and local political organisation. It is a theory driven study that also intends to add aspects to the understanding of the cities of our time. I argue that Dublin has faced a lot of changes during the last decades in accordance with the post modern city.

Uppsatsen behandlar lagstiftningen som skyddar offentligt anställdas yttrande- och meddelarfrihet. Med grunden i Lennart Lundquists ?offentliga etos? är den utformad som en fallstudie där tre fall granskas för att kartlägga hur dagens lagstiftning fungerar i praktiken.Uppsatsen jämför även med en normativ ansats två olika förslag till förändrade förutsättningar som är ämnade att bättre trygga en fullgod yttrande- och meddelarfrihet för verksamma inom det offentliga..

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..

The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

AbstractWith this c-composition, I am trying to give a view over what has happened in the political area and the issues that concerns environmental aid. My analyze starts in the 60-ies when the environmental debate took of. It continues trough the 70-ies, 80-ies and ends in 1994 with the report that considers the UN-conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992, ?Sustainable Aid? and what the results of the more and more important issue ?sustainable development? has offered the Swedish government ant there work with environmental aid.The question issue is: At what time in history, did the Swedisch government start to addrsess environmental aid? How did the environmental aid come to be addressed and developed in the political area from the Brundtlandreport ?Our common future? from 1987 to the UN-conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992?The result is that the environment is getting more and more important in the political arena as the knowledge about the escalating crises with the environmental problems are being taken more seriously. The problems with the environment has to be considered together with the rest of the aid- and developing questions like economy and the struggle to reduce poverty in the world.

AbstractIn the paper, democracy's development and change are studied in Swedish textbooks related to social science. The study?s starting point is that the picture of democracy provided to students has changed over time. The study aims to see how the view on democracy has altered in Swedish textbooks in social science. In order to examine this, I have studied seven textbooks, from 1945 to 2006, in social science.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the established law and make researches into non-institutional compulsory care (?mellantvång?) paragraph 22 The Care of Young Persons (Special Provisions) Act (from now on called LVU) and examine whether the administration of the law is in harmony with the best interests of the child.This paper combines two methods : traditional judicial method and a social science method. In the juridical part the sources of law have been studied and in the social sciences part semi-structured interviews have been conducted with five respondents. The theoretical framework consists of ideas and theories about the best interests of the child, a concept which is one of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child's core principles.This study shows that the legislator has identified a problem and an existing need and found a solution to this by introducing a non-institutional compulsory care, paragraph 22 LVU. The problem is that Social Services do not make use of the restraint.

?CSR and political consumption ? a study of Nike?s and Puma?s CSR-reports?The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike?s and Puma?s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll?s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic.