AbstractIn this thesis I will discuss the relationship between the European Union and the regions of Europe. The development of the European Union has meant that many decisions are taken in Bruxelles. Many actors participate in the policyprocess ranging from national goverment to policynetworks of different kinds. An emerging actor has been the regions of Europe. Their influence on the policyprocess have grown and today almost all of them are represented in Bruxelles through Region Offices.

Due to globalization, decentralization and the capitalist system's need to physical location cities have become increasingly important economic spheres during thee last decades. City mayors are seen as increasingly important actors, who can shape the future economic development of their cities through networking with businesses and strategic policy development. Therefore several European countries have introduced mayor reforms to enable mayors to take a bigger responsibility for the local development. These reforms raise interesting questions concerning what leadership changes they produce at the local level and if there is a difference between local leaders and leadership in different countries. This paper further explores the connection between the local leader and the locality since this relationship often has been neglect in studies concerning mayor reforms.

The purpose of this research is to identify how E-NGO and forest stakeholders, in the study referred to as non-state actors, have influenced the EU timber regulation; through participation and lobbyism towards the decision- makers (policy makers) at EU and national level, to achieve adjustments in the legislative text. The study also examines the relationships between the forest stakeholders, the E-NGOs and the EU-institutions, regarding communication, cooperation, informal and formal consultation where interviews were accomplished with decision-makers from the EU-institutions, forest stakeholders, E-NGOS and representatives from Swedish authorities that participated under the development of the EUTR during the period of 2008-2013. The participation and lobbying from non-state actors have most likely affected the outcome of the regulation, through alterations in the legislative text and through influencing the EU-institutions. Several factors that have affected the efficiency and timing of the influence have been identified through interviews as well as various approaches to influence the decision makers. The findings of the study may be useful for forest related interest groups that are involved in decision-making procedures at EU-level and as substance and material for further research in the subject of forest policy making at supranational level..

The aim of the thesis is to highlight external factors to explain why the EMU was created. The external factor considered here is the monetary policy of the United States, which often conflicted with European interests. The statistical data in the thesis, as well as previous research, show that even though the EU economically in many ways had become an equal partner of the US during the second half of the 20th century, the union still faced US influence and dependence.The results of the thesis can be explained with neorealist theories on power measured as an actor's distribution of capabilities and balancing of power. An actor that is equipped with the world's leading currency is more independent from others. Other actors, on the other hand, become increasingly dependent on the major currency and the policy of its owner.

AbstractThe rise of globalization has made ??the sustainability aspect emerged as a sign that peoples? actions must change. Tourism is now one of the fastest growing industries in the world that has an impact on people, nature and cultures. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding how different tourism actors use and express the concept of sustainable tourism development in the co-operation organization Kiruna Lapland. One of the most visited places in the north of Sweden.

The activity of interest groups in the political process of the European Union has given rise to a broad debate concerning the effect on European democracy these groups have. As relatively powerful political actors, the question of these groups? views on the EU and how the union should be is an important one. The status of these groups owns democratic representation also affects the democratic status of the EU. Being based on a number of theories, this study adopts an ideology analysis for the purpose of testing these theories on two cases ? the Swedish environmental organizations World Wide Fund for Nature and The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

The health care is an important part of the welfare services in Sweden. Therefore it is of large interest that it is well performing. A part of this is related to how the health care is organized. This essay examines how the Swedish health care has been organized between 1960 and 1990 and what organizational changes that have been made to the health care. It shows that the Swedish health care has un-dergone many organizational changes the last decades.

International trade in services has increased over the past 30 years as a result of progress in information and communication technology, increased focus on services from the manufacturing sector and the establishment of trade associations.The international market for healthcare services, also referred to as medical tourism, is growing more and more. Patients increasingly seeking treatment at other countries healthcare systems because of long queues within their own country or because it exists better prices for the same care abroad. However, this type of service exports occurs at a limited extent in Sweden.The purpose of this study is to highlight and analyze the conditions for Swedish service companies to export healthcare services. This, includes the challenges and opportunities that exist to expand the exports of these services.The approach for this study has been in the form of interviews with two market actors and written responses, from the same interview guide, with three market actors. These market participants are the so-called Care companies which export healthcare services in various counties, and the membership organization Swecare who work with export promotion activities for its members in the Swedish healthcare sector.

The thesis Den ?fria? rörligheten aims to give deeper knowledge to the notion of social sustainable mobility. My previous knowledge within the subject is focused around mobility being biased and therefore gaining particular groups of actors within society and leaving others worse off. Therefore I chose to do a critical analysis of social sustainable mobility and more precisely show which problems that exist and why.To start with, I have created a framework for social sustainable mobility, from which I have looked at the empirical material. The general empirical material is mostly based on mobility in Sweden also a more specific study is made of the Öresundregion.

In contemporary global environmental governance stakeholding, as a means for defining legitimate participants in democratic decision-making, has become of great importance. In this essay I deploy the concept of ?the stakeholder perspective? to denote arguments that all stakeholders ? defined as carriers of particular interests ? should be able to participate in political decision-making affecting their interests. The purpose of the essay is to analyze the stakeholder perspective's potential to change environmental politics. Departing from the philosophy of Heidegger, I develop a theoretical approach that separate the concept of the political from that of politics.

The purpose of this study is to examine the actual political conditions that exist for the Iranian women. What is the political reality of the Iranian women and how can they exert political influence within the political system that exists in Iran today. This is done to see how the Iranian women's potential political influence affects Iran's democratic status. This will be answered through the overall research question: What opportunities do the Iranian women have to influence policy? This overall question is then split into three smaller research questions:1) What formal possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?2) What real possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?3) How have women in Iran tried to exert political influence outside the institutional framework?This will be done through a qualitative text analysis where texts concerning the Iranian women?s political influence are examined.

I have investigated the political culture of post-communist Russia. For a long time it has been assumed that, the history is of great importance in shaping the political culture. I wanted to find out if this was true, I chose to study the political culture of Russia. How great effects had the autocratically legacy of Soviet Union in the democratisation of Russia? My thesis show that the role of history isn't of such great importance, instead it's the Russian state that has had the greatest possibility of shaping the political culture of Russia but it failed.

During the last years social media have developed and become a place where all kind of people can meet and interact with each other without any kind of physical contact to one another. We belive that this development also has made it easier for political parties and organisations to spread their propaganda to the people that uses social media without them knew from whom the information is coming. With this in mind we decided to do a study about the social media Facebook and how the users of Facebook think they are being influenced by political propaganda from organisations and private persons. In our study we decided that we wanted to know why our respondents are using Facebook, if they have payed attention to two political questions, one international question and one national question, that have been noticed recently and if they feel that they are being influenced of political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have concluded that our respondents, depending on how old they are, do feel that they are being influenced by political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have also noticed that the younger part of our respondents feel that they are using Facebook because their friends do it and that they have noticed the international political question more than the national political question. In the older category of respondents the reason of why they are using Facebook was to maintain a conection with their friends and they had noticed the national political question more than the international political question. .

This comparative case study, which is based on a most similar system design,investigates why the Chávez government has attained a lower degree of democracy than the Kirchner and the Lula governments. In order to develop asupplementary theory about why governments in general achieve various degrees of democracy I compare these governments and examine what policies that differ them and why. My results show that these governments? policies differ concerning the rule of law, militarization, and negotiations with economic groups and anti-regime parts of civil society. I have found numerous answers to why some of these governments (and governments in general) have democratic policies within these four areas and why some do not.

AbstractParticiapation from the citizens in a democratic society is one of the ground pilars for the function of the democratic society. The goal for the Swedish contemporary democracy is to complement the representative democracy with different kinds of participatory activities for the citizens. But is it working? The purpose of this essay is to exame the problems that might occur when the citizens participate in a wider extent than just voting. The focus is problems connected to the democratic value political equality.