The aim of this thesis is to examine the institutional effectiveness of the environmental institutions Helcom and the Mediterranean regime, by using Haas, Levy and Keohane's "the three Cs"; governmental concern, contractual environment, political and administrative capacity. The method used is a comparative analysis.This study takes into consideration the specific structural and economic factors that are prevailing in each region where the environmental regime operates. This study also takes into account the influence of the European Union as a factor that affects the environmental progress.By focusing the study on the line of conduct concerning hazardous substances by respectively regime this study shows that the institutional effectiveness is fulfilled in neither Helcom nor the Mediterranean Regime, although Helcom has been more successful. The lack of state capacity is the most restraining factor for both developing countries and countries in the transition towards being developed, to achieve a good environmental status of the sea. This study also shows that the European Union sometimes has a greater impact on the environmental progress in states, rather than the environmental regime in countries that were/are aspiring members, thus showing the ineffectiveness of the regime..

The aim of this study was to understand how evaluations are implemented and used in procured nursing homes for elderly. Our methodological approach consisted of a single-case study research. The case in this study was Växjö municipality. Three procured nursing homes for elderly were chosen in the municipality as examples of implementation and use of evaluation. The method for retrieving empirical data and the analyzing of it was based on triangulation.

This thesis discusses the attitudes versus methadone assisted rehabilitation ad modum Dole Nyswander in Sweden during the period 1972-2004. This is done by means of a Foucault inspired discourse analysis applied on the directions issued by the Board of Health and Social Affairs. The context in which these directions were created is also described, in which scientific achievements on methadone treatments during the period, and the main actors struggling to establish and define the discourse on narcotics and narcomania, are juxtaposed to the effects of the work of the Board. It is stated that the directions were largely affected not by scientific results and knowledge on methadone, but by the symbolic connotations of narcotics in Sweden established in the discourse already in the mid 1960´s. Also during the end of the studied period, after the occurence of AIDS had begun making methadone more broadly accepted, the findings of this thesis showed that the legacy of the 1970´s symtomtheory and its severe antagonism against methadone, was still present, in effect, in the discourse around methadone and subutex assisted rehabilitation, and so in the directions issued by the Board of Health and Social Affairs..

Invasive alien plant species have historically caused major damage to ecosystems and are considered to be amongst the greatest threats to biodiversity globally. The lurking threat of harm to well functioning ecosystems has led to the development of global and regional goals and regulations which seek to stop the spread of invasive species. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a list of species that are specifically harmful to the Swedish flora and fauna, which includes (amongst others) garden lupin. The management of invasive species is however largely dependent on local actions, making municipal public servants key players. This qualitative study uses interviews to investigate how municipal public servants who are responsible for managing invasive alien species view this work.

Motives and reasons behind a decision to change the asylum process in Sweden are the central concern for this thesis. A symbolic political perspective will be applied in order to elucidate the symbolic factors that have influenced the decision process.The Aliens Appeal Board in Sweden will close down at the end of March 2006 and all pending and future cases will henceforth be decided by three administrative courts. This will be done in order to enhance the principles of legal certainty by making the process more transparent and oral. It is an extensive reform, but since very few amendments are made to the applicable substantive law it raises questions about the actual motives behind the change.One reason that seems to have had a major impact on the decision to close down the Aliens Appeal Board is the fact that the board is perceived as a symbol for an inhuman asylum policy. Transferring the process to the courts might ease the attempt to increase the legitimacy of the asylum process.

Since the Maastricht Treaty the European Parliament has gained competence in the decision-making process and the Parliament is today one of two decision-making institution, next to the Ministers of Council. In this study the main focus has been to shed light over the negotiation culture within the European Parliament, which up till now has been a neglected research area. This is of great significance because the internal negotiations in the European Parliament decide the external negotiation position with the other institutions.After face-to-face interviews with MEP:s and assistants I have been able to identify certain characteristics to create an understanding of the negotiation culture in Europe's elected Parliament. The negotiations are oriented towards a problems-solving approach and the prevailing apprehension is consensus-based negotiations instead of the existence of political blocks. The committees are stronger than the European party groups, which further encourage negotiation.

The purpose of the study was to learn how social structures can enable accessibility, by asking persons with visual impairment about their experiences of accessibility in the public environment in the city of Stockholm. Eleven adults with visual impairments, living in the city of Stockholm, were interviewed using two separate focus groups. The study was carried out with the objective to allow for the participants to be involved in the research process. The resulting data was analyzed on the basis of Nancy Fraser?s theory on social justice, focusing on the conceptions; needs, politicised needs, redistribution, recognition and misrecognition.

The study is divided into three parts ? the development of wage labour towards becoming the dominant norm in society, how this norm is challenged in a specific geographical context, and lastly a study of two unemployed individuals and their everyday activities, what and especially why certain behaviour occurs. The main purpose with the text is to study unemployed people in a specific geographical context in a overall society where wage labour is thought to be the norm. Questions that is being asked is how the unemployed individual works in a society where wage labour is the dominant activity for the day. This is connected to a study of Möllevången, a district of Malmö, where the wage labour norm can be thought of as being challenged.

The purpose of this study was to examine how SOS Children's Villages as an organization in Swaziland is affected by, and takes into account, the cultural, organizational and societal context in which it acts. Material was gathered through a field study during one month in one of the three SOS Children's Villages in Swaziland. The study has a qualitative approach and is based on the result from 12 semi-structured interviews with village mothers and other representatives from the organization. The other representatives were: social worker, program director, child and youth development coordinator, board member and educational manager. Since this study is both characterized by a specific historical, cultural and organizational context, we decided to connect the postcolonial perspective with an organization theory with focus on the concepts of culture, power and a children?s right perspective.

The purpose of the essay is to analyze the welfare state from a gender perspective. Further, the paper analyzes and critically examines three different normative solutions provided by Irish Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas for the realization of a welfare state that includes women.Habermas argues that the welfare state has created a situation of dependency and state paternalism which reduces both individual and collective self-determination. Young follows Habermas? argument. She argues for a political climate where justice is reduced to the distribution of material goods rather than the elimination of underlying relations of domination and gender specific patterns.

Denna uppsats handlar om vad som ledde fram till att IRA valde att lägga ner sina vapen och ingå vapenvila 1994. Vi har hittat flera olika orsaker vilka vi har klassificerat som interna eller externa. Här återfinns orsaker som kalla krigets slut, attitydförändringar, vinster med vapenvila och internationellt samarbete. För att förstå bakgrunden har vi även tittat på vikten av en avväpning i en fredprocess samt hur Sinn Féin och IRA är sammanlänkade. Slutligen har vi även gjort en applicering av våra resultat på en terroristgrupp vilken delar många av IRAs drag, PLO, men även tittat på en grupp vilken inte är så lik, ETA..

This thesis examines what automatic indexing and genre classification may bring to fiction. The thesis studies five theorists of the subject to find out what the biggest problems are concerning fiction indexing. The thesis also investigates which automatic text analysis methods that can be effective for automatic indexing and genre classifying fiction. To show that it is possible according to philosophy of language to index fiction, in particular to automatically index it. Wittgenstein?s, Barthes? and Ricoeur?s language and fiction theories are presented and used to problemize the subject.

Politicians Week in Visby has since the late 1960s developed to be a fairly unique concept in Swedish politics, which even in recent years has begun to be exported to other countries in Europe. Curiosity and interest around the arrangement of activities and actors have in the past decade become increasingly both nationally and internationally. The purpose of this study has therefore been to find out how ?Almedalsveckan? as a political arrangement emerged and developed. The question that the study mainly tries to answer is how ?Almedalsveckan? became a concept of the open democratic meeting between politicians, citizens, journalists and various organizations in the Swedish society.

Abstract Youths and adolescents have for a long period of time, and at a high degree, beenabsent from the party political stage. The causes for this have been discussed inthis essay through a quantitative survey made in an upper secondary school class,consisting of some 19 subjects in the municipality of Kalmar. Tied together withrelevant literature and discourse on the subject, the essay has dealt with thepossible societal-, system- and individual barriers for political interest andinvolvement. Central questions for this essay has been for instance; age, gender,social background, geographical domicile, as well as the decline of ideology, theforms of current party politics, political interest, political engagement and soforth. The concluding remarks contain not only a mix of these barriers existing,not exclusively, for young and adolescents but different ground for them as well.On the one hand, there exist barriers which exclude youth from the conventionalpolitical life, but on the other, the more individualised youth of today, prefer to agreater extent not to participate under the conventional circumstances that partypolitics has to offer.

Den ojämlika representationen i våra folkvalda församlingar är ett demokratiskt problem. För att alla grupper i samhället ska få sina intressen tillgodosedda krävs en representation som speglar samhället, dess intressen och åsikter. Könskvotering kan ses som ett svar på problemet med ojämlik representation. En diskussion av medborgarskap är viktig för att förstå innebörden av representation och dess betydelse.Den här uppsatsen är en forskningsöversikt som klargör hur forskningsläget ställer sig till frågan om ojämlik representation och könskvotering som en lösning. Vi fokuserar på de argument som styr den vetenskapliga debatten.