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 investigate how energy efficient measures has spread throughout the data centers in Sweden. These questions are put up against a theoretical use of such concepts such as green IT, technological evolution, large technical systems and knowledge dissemination. These theories are used to answer the questions that are encountered during the study, such as how green IT is approached, how big of a role environmental thinking has had in the evolvement of these new technologies. The study has been conducted in a longitudinal manner, it is an observation of the phenomenon that is data centers over a longer period of time. 23 non structured interviews spanning over 27.5 hours of recorded material have been conducted alongside a study of archived material.

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..

AbstractAt the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 the nations stated that traditional environmental policies were not sufficient to handle the multidimensional challenges posed by sustainable development. Governments needed to broaden their political decision making procedures in order to coordinate and integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Therefore a new tool was introduced in Agenda 21, National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSDS). The aim of an NSDS would be to bring together actors from all parts of society to jointly reach a consensus on how to work towards the vision of a sustainable society. An NSDS would be seen as a strategic tool to help focus national policies for SD.

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).

There are many researching studies to be found that describes how media relates to men and women differently. Even if it?s a newspaper research or a magazine research they all display the same information. That there are differences in the way that women and men are described or portrayed in articles and pictures. Most of these gender studies are made on a basis of magazines that are mainly intended to men or to women.

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.

?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.

ABSTRACTThe EU as a normative power in Belarus ? a critical caseBy Anna JohnssonUniversity of VäxjöSchool of Social SciencesSpring semester 2007The European Union?s identity is a much debated topic. Some say it?s a unique actor in the international arena because of the different tools it has at its disposal. Ian Manners claims that the EU is what he calls a normative power.

Mass media is becoming more and more personalized and despite common ideas it could actually be a good thing. Instead of affecting the actual content of news coverage it might only have an effect on the way in which news are presented. Famous politicians more regularly become symbols and synonyms for their parties or for the government and are being used to create interest in the beginning of articles.Those are the results from a content analysis of the newspaper coverage of the Swedish parliamentary election in 1976 and 2006 in which the scientist categorized each article in one of four ideal types, counted quotes and analyzed whether personal names were interchangeable with party names without affecting the content. All three methods showing that it is the presentation, not the content, which has been personalized.At the same time, psychology-science tells us about the human brains associative learning processes, where memorizing becomes far more efficient when the information can be connected to an already known person. Increased personalization of news might therefore increase the political knowledge of the receivers..

In the world after the Cold War, internal and ethnic conflicts have been predominant. Ethnic conflicts have their own theories on why they erupt and what can be done to solve them. This essay seeks to analyze how the Ethnic Security Dilemma can explain the causes, and possible solutions, of today´s armed ethnic conflicts.By making an ideal types typology over different types of ethnic conflicts, and then analyzing the Ethnic Security Dilemma´s impact on each conflict type.

1.1 billion people are today living without sustainable access to improved water. The debate over the water sector has been dominated by the discussion over whether public or private actors are the most competent to manage it. In this paper the arguments pro and contra the two positions are presented to try to overview the debate and to try to find new ways to approach the question of the people living without clean water. By examining possible alternatives towards the discussion of public and private actors, it might result in some new approaches on how to move closer towards a solution. One alternative is local, small- scale projects which focus on the situation of the targetgroup in most need.