This thesis analyzes and discusses the role of institutions concerning countries' abilities to create economic wealth. The countries that we are analyzing are the former members of the Warsaw pact and former Yugoslavia. These countries are referred to as transition countries. In order to analyze the transition countries institutional structure we are using Douglass C. North's theory regarding institutions and institutional building.

This essay examines the historical development of group rights for cultural minorities in Sweden between the years 1970 and 2010. The purpose of the study is to analyze the development of political measures taken at government level for different minority groups, foremost explaining the division that have arisen between measures aimed at the five national minorities, the Sámi, the Swedish Finns, the Roma, the Jews and the Tornedalians, and measures directed at other ethnic groups.My conclusions are that the division in Swedish public policy between one the one hand national minorities, and on the other hand immigrant groups, is in no way self-evident. The division has arisen from an international standard on how democratic states, such as Sweden, should treat their cultural minorities. Further, this division has had an immense impact in shaping public policy as well as determining the type of group rights introduced for minority groups in Sweden.A difference has also been found in how the minorities are perceived by state actors. Immigrant groups are currently perceived as less entitled to group rights due to their short presence in Sweden, whereas national minorities are seen as more entitled to group rights due to their long historic presence in the country.

This essay focuses on the implementation of the strategy gender mainstreaming in the European Union and the member states. It starts to identify problems connected to the implementation process and recognizes significant prerequisites for an efficient implementation of the strategy. The main problems and prerequisites are: political will, governance and structure and knowledge about gender equality. The empirical material consists of reports from the EU that touches upon gender mainstreaming and gender equality. The problems and prerequisites will be analysed in relation to the governance perspectives top-down and bottom-up and expert bureaucratic and participative democratic and gender and feminism.

This study is a value chain analysis for timber in East Africa. It was commissioned by Vi Agroforestry, a nongovernmental organisation registered in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania engaged in a rural development program that involves promoting tree planting and enterprise development (Vi Agroforestry, 2012). The purpose of the study was to identify and describe common value chains for timber in the countries where Vi Agroforestry operated. Value chain is a concept and a framework describing how to structure information regarding activities included in satisfying a certain customer need, e.g. procurement, logistics, transactions, production and marketing.

Construction projects are organized in different shapes and disturbances in the information flow in these processes can lead to problems, such as delays and/or a lower quality. Therefore, a well-functioning interaction between actors and a well thought out-communication at an early stage is of crucial importance. The main question is "How does the communication of decision and information flow in the building process and what barriers and opportunities can be observed?". This diploma work has been written with guidance from Bjerking AB and to answer this question, a collection of empirical data conducted via semi-structured interviews.

Slovenia and Latvia are two examples of countries which have gone through a successful democratic transition. They were both under authoritarian rule and command economy up until their declarations of independence in the early 90s. Today they have a functional market economy and political pluralism. I have examined transition theories highlighted by Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman and from these theories sought the explanations to what lies behind the successful transitions of these two countries. The transition in Slovenia was affected by liberalization from within the ruling communist party which then controlled much of the transition process. A relatively large civil society and the fact that Slovenia was not involved in the Balkan War also contributed to the short process.

The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the existence ofpersonalization within Swedish political parties along withhow the parties work with this phenomena in order to achievemore voters.The method used is personal interviews with politiciansfrom four different government parties. As a complement, interviews with a political expert was also made. All parties use personalization in different ways as a strategy tocreate dialogues and relationships with both media and voters. We distinguished two sorts of personalization: individualization and privatization, and discovered that not all parties use both..

abstractThe aim of this essay is to try to convince the reader that relativism and postmodernism (the latter implying the former, but not the other way around) can be reasonable methods for the social sciences, rather than the irresponsible play of ?extremes? theories of this kind sometimes are made out to be.The intention is to do this by way of the later Wittgenstein, the philosophy of whom is the foundation for what is termed relativism and postmodernism in this essay (definitions of a kind that are here claimed to be missing from the discourse of the social sciences). The essay also contains an empirical presentation/analysis, displaying the Wittgensteinian theory through an aspect of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and -60s..

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.

By using contemorary work-theory this thesis aim to show how Yarden. En bera?ttelse, puts into play the circumstances of precarian work, circumstances that have gender political as well as identity political overtones. It tries to show how the idea of ?class-jouney? is used as a conciliatory element.

The municipality of Falkenberg is a result of a unification of several smaller municipalities in 1971, each one with a small library. This left Falkenberg with an unusual large amount of smaller branch libraries. The object of this thesis is to describe and try to understand the political conflicts that have erupted during the period 1971-1994. Through a case study containing press clippings from the local newspaper, different reports, political meeting protocols, a historical background of the library and a study of library specific norms and regulations I can create an image of the heated debate. The participants in this debate can be divided into politicians and civil servants and the conflict circles round the fact that from an economical perspective, there is not enough budget to keep all the small, local libraries.

ABSTRACTBachelor essay in political science by Hanna Richter, spring 2006Supervisor: Mats LindbergTitle: A study of the phenomenon of micronationsThe purpose of this essay is to study the phenomenon of ?micronations?, to describe it to the reader and to discuss why this phenomenon is interesting to study in the field of political science. The questions this essay seeks to answer are:- What are micronations, and which variations are to be found within the phenomenon?- Why are micronations interesting to study in the field of political science?Bary Buzans theory of the nature of the state works as a frame of reference to this investigation of micro ?state-like? units. The phenomenon of micronations has not been investigated by the social sciences in any extent worth mentioning yet.

This thesis analyses the 2005 UK presidency of the Council, and more particularly the negotiations on the future financing of the European Union. The purpose of the study is to discuss whether the holding of the presidency implies political influence for the member state. To analyse the power of the country holding the chair the thesis focuses on the presidency functions of brokering and leadership. The theory suggests that the influence of the presidency is derived from informational and procedural power resources, as well as some leadership resources, such as coercion and reward. A case study was used to analyse whether these power resources were used by the British presidency.

In November 2006 and July 2007, changes were made to the Social Services Law and the Criminal Injuries Law, defining children who have witnessed domestic violence as crime victims. The objective of our study is to examine if these changes have affected how social workers responsible for child protection inquiries interact with children who have witnessed domestic violence, and to what extent these children?s need of support are taken into account. Qualitative interviews have been carried out with five social workers, with the aim to evaluate how they meet and become aware of these children. Our problem-formulation is based upon the question how social services implement the recent changes to the law.