When it comes to political representation, all over the world women almost always make up a minority of representatives in the legislative bodies. The Scandinavian countries in general and Sweden in particular have though been exceptions to this rule with, when compared to other countries, a rather high percentage of women in elected positions. This development took off in the seventies: during that decade the unit percentage of women in the Swedish Riksdag rose by double!The aim for this thesis is to analyse what underlying ideas influenced this advance. The focus is on three different female party federations, who are believed to have had a great impact on this increase of women politicians through their influence in their own mother parties. The federations analysed are the ones connected to the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party and the Liberal party.

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).

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.

AbstractThis paper is a comparative study of the final reports of the Norwegian and Danish power studies performed in 2003. While the Danish study found that democracy is thriving, the conclusion of the Norwegian power study was that democracy is in a crisis. The purpose of this paper is to find explanations to why the studies in two Nordic countries arrived at such different results.Methodologically, the paper consists of an ideological text analysis and critical analyses of the discourse. In order to study how the results of the power studies can differ so considerably, the following aspects have been surveyed; 1) external contexts (government inquiries); 2) work process (the researchers? background, role and co-operation); 3) the problem areas and themes studied; and 4) power perspectives.

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.

This is a reception study on how the idea of Paneuropa, as launched by the austrian count Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1923, was received by the political weekly magazine Tidevarvet, a product of ? and an opinion forming organ for ? the social liberal wing of the Swedish suffrage- and peace movements. The main purpose is to examine to what extent there was an existent Europeanism in the public debate in Sweden during the interwar period, and how that discourse was constructed through the conceptual pairings disruption/unity and parts/whole. The study is conducted mainly through discourse analysis, combined with partly new research into sources such as the parliament, the newspapers and civil society to try to initiate a mapping over the wider reception of the Paneuropa project in a Swedish context. The study finds that the subject of Paneuropa is present throughout the almost entire period of the publication, namely 1924?1936, and that the question of a federal Europe is closely connected to the pacifist attitude of the editorial staff in general and writer/editor Elin W?gner in particular.

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.

Background: The Swedish retail trading company KappAhl has reorganized all the boutiques in Sweden. Before the reorganization many of the boutiques consisted of four levels: shop manager, assistant shop manager, department managers and regular personel. After the reorganization assistant shop managers and department managers have been replaced by a so called ?responsibility group? consisting of some of the employees. The change is presented as a decentralisation.

The study seeks to clarify a cultural change in the armed forces (FM). The study is based on the hypothesis that repeated operations in war-like environment, where the FM sends professional combat units, develop a warrior culture. The empirical results indicate that there is an existing warrior culture at all three units surveyed.The subculture is verified by the constants of western warrior culture described in theory. The cultural change leads to ethical / moral and leadership challenges for FM..

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..

The myth of the user - a study of the user discourse and its visionariesThis study is a discourse analysis of the visions that implicitly are expressed in different texts about user-centered library theory. Several other studies have analyzed the discourse and conceptualization of how the user is expressed in the library debate. Therefore we have chosen to analyze the visions that are expressed by three different sources: the evaluation of the Swedish GÖK project, which was an reorganization of three different libraries in Sweden (Greenhalgh, Worpole & Landry 1995). The influential book by Michael E. Casey and Laura C.

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.