In this thesis I discuss and analyse the relationship between USA and Europe since the end of the Cold War. Many authors claimed that the Soviet threat was the glue that kept the continents together. Now that threat is gone and new challenges have risen. In what way has this relationship been influenced by the new challenges this new era stands for? By doing a case study and by using two quite different theorists, John Mearsheimer an offensive realist and Joseph Nye who is a liberal institutionalist, I?ll try to show how for example September 11, anti-amerikanism and NATO can be explained and understood.

In our world, more than two billion people are living under insecure food conditions and more than eight hundred million people are estimated to be starving. The majority of these people live in developing counties which are poor and often subject of civil war. The past fifty years the main subject of security analysis has been the sovereign and rational state and the threats have been viewed in terms of military and weapons of mass destruction. This has come to change over the last decades and security as a concept has broadened, which better represents the reality of today. Within this broader conceptualization of security the main referent of security is the individual, rather than the state, and threats are not only analyzed from a military point of view, but also seen as threats against human rights and freedoms.

The purpose of this study was to examine the political party ?Feministiskt initiativ? (Fi) and their communication during the election campaign 2006. We wanted to find out what the intention was and how the communication was received by the public. We also looked for signs of congruence between those two sides.Fi is the first political party with a feministic ideology to candidate for the parliament in Sweden. The party is rather new and their political standpoints and internal affairs have often been subject of for debate in the media.We wanted to investigate people?s individual opinions of the matter, and therefore we chose to personally interview a number of people.

In scientific investigations on how organizations can learn from their mistakes the perspective is usually that of the social engineer; the object is to prevent human errors through modeling the system in a certain way. The aim of this paper is to explore the learning process from a different standpoint than those usually applied in organizational learning and error theory. By studying the learning process in Swedish health care I seek to discover how theoretical presumptions affect the outcome in terms of what we actually learn. The theoretical framework draws on two major discussions in contemporary political science; the question of structure and agency and the question of whether to focus on formal or informal structures when explaining organizational behavior.The investigation shows that Swedish health care tend to understand human errors as a result of formal organizational structure. Such a view leads to insufficient explanations to why errors occur but is useful in producing preventative measures.

The consumer society exploits the earth?s resources more than the earth itself has capability to produce. This over-consumption causes a mass production of products, which mean that more greenhouse gases are being emitted to the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why the earth?s temperature is rising, where the result of it is worldwide disasters.

This essay is about democracy and how a democracy index can be used as a tool to illustratethe gap between reality and ideal. The purpose of this study can be expressed by two researchquestions: Does the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) democracy index illustrate thedistance between reality and the ideal of democracy presented by Dahl? and Can the EIU'sdemocracy index be modified by a) internal adjustments and b) using the variables includedin World Economic Forum?s (WEF) equality index?By using a combination of theories (Dahl?s theory of democracy, Rawls theory of justice andchosen theories critical to liberal democracy) as an analytical framework the following twoquestions have been answered:1) Which of the variables included in the EIU's democracy index have the potential to capturethe level of political equality?2) Which of the variables included in the WEF?s equality index have the potential to capturethe degree of political equality?By using a quantitative method the study?s third and last question has been answered:3) How strong is the rank correlation between the EIU?s democracy index and the WEF?sequality index, that is; how strong is the rank correlation coefficient (rho)?The data presented by the WEF?s equality index indicate that women are systematicallydiscriminated against as a group. From a democratic perspective the EIU may need tomeasure inequalities at a group level in order to capture the lack of political equality betweenindividuals. By reformulating some of the EIU?s variables, by revising the EIU?s point systemand by using the variables included in the WEF's equality index to extend EIU?s democracyindex, the chances of capturing the gap between reality and the ideal of democracy presentedby Dahl would likely increase..

According to old european tradition the ideal national state has a unified people, but in reality practically all states has one of several minorities that to a smaller or greater degree differs from the majority. One such minority that have been present in many countries and managed to avoid becoming completly assimilated are the jewish people. Their dream of a state of their own eventually lead to the founding of the state of Israel where they themselves are now in majority. The purpose of this report is to study how the jews historic experiances has affected the political parties in Israel, how they choose to meet the ?challenge? of their own minorities och whatever they treat different minorites differently.

The purpose of this paper was to discuss stigma and stigmatisation in relation to social policy and social work. By discussing welfare systems in social policy I wanted to see if there could be any connection between social policy and stigma. I used case studies of hearing impaired adults to give examples of how the stigma processes work. By connecting the stigma and the social policy theories with the case studies I wanted to see how the social policy could affect the stigma processes or vice versa.In the paper the concept of stigma has been described and discussed, foremost using the theories of Erving Goffman. I have also discussed the welfare system and the connection between residual systems and stigma.

At the workplace, different types of discussions take place, where employers meet members of staff. Some of these discussions take the form of an employer correcting a member of staff; that is the employer wanting the member of staff to change his/her behaviour. The correcting discussion has a very important role within labour legislation as it is often this measure that the employer takes to bring about change. If this does not happen then more severe disciplinary measures like a warning or giving notice will be necessary. This paper is about the employer's role in the corrective discussion. How an employer can work with the corrective discussion but also what effects can be experienced due to the discussion. To understand how an employer experiences the corrective discussion, 98 employers within a municipality have received a web questionnaire via the computer program Esmaker. Of these employers 68 answered the questions, which is a response of barely 70%.

This thesis examines the subject of change in public administration from an instrumental and an institutional structure perspective. The purpose of the thesis is to examine whether institutional structures affect the development of instrumental structures and if it in turn is possible to affect institutional structures by changing the instrumental structures. This case study is primarily based on a series of deep interviews with senior administrators and politicians within two new administrations in the municipality Karlstad, both which have been created by merging several smaller administrations, but also thorough analysis of several official document such as protocols from the municipal council meetings, Tja?nsterskrivelser and internal PMs.   The result of the analysis indicates that both institutional structures and the forming instrumental structures affect each other and  that their ability to affect each other depends on the dominance over the organization each structure has.  In my specific research case we can see that the institutional structure of the city-technical and housing administration has affected the outcome but the institutional structure of the cultural and tourism administration hasn?t.  While the structural change of the city-technical and housing administration hasn?t effected the institutional structure but the structural change of the cultural and tourism administration has affected the institutional structure of this specific administration..

Denna B-uppsats behandlar huruvida Polen som medlem av europeiska unionen har stort eller litet inflytande. Vi har genomfört en fallstudie på Polen som är uppdelad i två sektioner. Den första sektionen behandlar Polens potentiella inflytande i EU, där vi har mätt olika indikatorer för att få fram variabler som påvisar inflytande. Indikatorerna baserar vi på en teoretisk diskussion om makt, där vi utgår från olika tänkare inom samhällsvetenskapen. I den andra sektionen har vi studerat Polens reella inflytande genom att se vilka krav Polen ställt inom den gemensamma jordbrukspolicyn (CAP) samt i vilken utsträckning man fått igenom dessa krav.Nyckelord: Polen, EU, makt, inflytande, CAP.

AbstractPurpose: The purpose of this thesis was to examine to which extant the politically governed organization, Swedish association of local authorities and local regions (SALAR), has been mediatized. Furthermore the purpose was to examine how SALAR being a Meta-organization affected the mediatization process. To accomplish this the thesis studied how SALAR organized themselves internally in order to form opinion through the media in one of their prioritized issues. A further purpose was to equalize SALAR?s mediatization process with the mediatization process for the whole political system. Method: This is a qualitative study which the gathered material has been collected through two types of methods, semi structured interviews and field observations.Material: A total of eight interviews were made distributed over three departments inside SALAR.

The Catalan movement of Independence is a well debated subject in Spanish news for the last decade. This thesis aims to examine what kind of identityarguments that spanish versus catalan newspapers make about the independence movement, in relation to nationalism and national identity. This is to deeper the understanding about the current complex situation in the Iberian Peninsula. The research shows that identityarguments about the independence movement presented by catalonian newspapers clearly put focus on identifying the ethnic and cultural reasons for the growing nationalism in the region, as well as discussing the political possibilities and obstacles of a sovereign Catalonia. In comparison, the identityarguments presented by spanish newspapers has another view of the situation, where the political aspect of the nationalistic catalan movement, identify the process as defying the Spanish Constitution and challenging the traditional historic unity of Spain.

Detta arbete rör sig inom det organisationsteoretiska området. Ämnet som behandlas är kontrollspann och vad som påverkar och påverkas av detta. Vi har funnit att det finns en stor mängd olika faktorer som kan sägas påverka hur en organisation väljer eller bör välja att strukturera sig. I uppsatsens första del har vi försökt identifiera vilka effekter olika breda kontrollspann kan tänkas ha för en verksamhet samt vilka rekommendationer som finns i den existerande forskningen kring kontrollspann.I andra delen av uppsatsen undersöker vi Lunds universitetssjukhus akutmottagning, där man nyligen (2006) genomfört en omorganisation som bla innebar avsmalnande av första linjens chefers kontrollspann. Vi har funnit att många av de effekter som man kunnat förvänta sig inte har inträffat i vårt exempelfall..

This work examines the students´ thoughts on climate change with a focus on carbondioxid through photosynthesis and the carbon emissions from cars. The study is based on two subject areas, one with a focus on enhanced greenhouse effect, and the other focusing on photosythesis. The survey was conducted by means of qualitative interviews with students in grades four and six. The results describe that student´s understanding for photosynthesis and the carbondioxids function for photosynthesis doesn´t change significantly from grade four to grade six. I have divided the students inte three levels based on their understandingof the various fields, and their use of adequate concepts.