The idea that I put forward in this thesis concerns the democratic system and the threat from discoursive impact on its core values. I focus my normative analysis on three of these democratic values: transparency, accountability and influence ? and what democratic problems the discoursive impact causes in conflict with them. I have used a critical discourse theory to define discourse and discoursive impact, by focusing on the process of discourse, rather than its nature. I deal with the political structure where I claim that the essential relation between citizen and politician is disrupted, due to lack of information and the imminent problems of the existing network society.

Mergers between companies has become more and more common in Sweden and in the rest of the world with the motive to increase the competitive strength in the current markets and has an important role within organisational development of companies. When organisations merger there is not only buildings and objects that are put together but also their individual organisational structures, people, values and cultures. This can be a difficult process and can affect many people in how they think conscious as well as unconscious, feel and react.The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of how employees are affected following a merger when changes in the organisational culture come up, and how these changes are expressed.This thesis is delimited to investigate only one company, Skruf Snus AB and only focus on their business and employees in the region of Stockholm. The thesis contains a qualitative investigation with semi structured interviews that has been carried out with eight employees at Skruf Snus AB. The thesis is partly based on a model of Schein which describes the different levels in organisational culture and partly on some theories about reactions to change in relation to the integration between the employees following a merger.The results of the investigation indicate that with a merger the whole organisational culture is affected and therefore also the employees.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

This study focuses on why people not longer want to be a part of a religious communion they have earlier been a part of. To examine this I have made seven interviews with people who have left their previous communions. Together with the methodological and theoretical discussions on discourse analysis, Richard Jenkins discussions on identity and theories concerning the post-modern society, I have made an analysis on how these people consider their previous communions and its members. They refer i.e. to the social control, the ?closed? culture and the non-questioning-culture that constitute the communions and its techniques.

The aim of this study is to explore the approach and views on female genital mutilation(FGM) among young women from Somalia, and how they perceive the tradition afterimmigration to Sweden. This is structured under the following questions: What do theyknow about FGM? What are their experiences? And what do they reckon about FGMtoday? The study is based on one recorded interview with a group of young femalesfrom Somalia. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The women?sfeelings were ambivalent though they on one hand opposed FGM because of serioushealth risks, but on the other hand were conscious of the tradition?s great influence inthe social network and daily life.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate why the two Swedish municipalities of Frykerud and Östmark were the only municipalities in Värmland that were forcibly merged by the state during the ?Municipality block reform? of 1971, and whether local identities played a role in the resistance against this reform.     The study is designed as a comparative case study and builds on both history and political science to analyze the topic from a broader perspective. Based on the research situation three theoretical theses have been formulated, the durability of which will be tested in the analysis part of the essay.    The study notes that Frykeruds resistance against the ?Municipality block reform? started when the reform prevented a planned retirement home construction in the municipality. In the analytical part of the essay, the author discusses how the discontent can be interpreted as symptomatic of bourgeois centralization resistance, as well as being due to the fact that traditional, local self-government as a political subject was perceived as threatened.

The purpose with this essay is to contribute with knowledge on how pedagogues in Swedish schools can prevent cultural clashes between themselves and their pupils and between pupils from different cultural backgrounds.The survey is done with qualitative interviews with three pedagogues.The result shows the importance that the pedagogues are positive to cultural meetings and that they acquire intercultural competence. The result also shows that the interviewed pedagogues acquired competences through direct meeting with students and their parents, courses, lectures and literature.The conclusion of this essay is that if pedagogues obtain more knowledge about their own and other`s culture, it would prevent cultural clashes in school.I believe that if the pedagogue teaches his/her students that there are different ways to think in the world, fewer cultural clashes would occur between the students.Key words: culture clash, education, communication.

This is a case study on the functioning of political parties and the aim was to explain ?how? and ?why? the Swedish social democratic party changed their policies in the Middle East politics. I wanted to explain this process of change by using Angelo Panebianco?s framework for the analysis of political parties. Angelo Panebianco´s hypothesis is that all parties must be viewed as organizations to understand their functions.

This thesis aims to examine the conditions for entrepreneurship in Taiwan by the occurrence of cultural phenomenon guanxi. Based on the concept of familiness and guanxi, the family is central in this study of family business. Traditional descriptions of the Asian culture claim that guanxi is vital in the business context. Though, recent studies indicate that significance of guanxi seems to be changing. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of the importance and relevance of guanxi in the context of Taiwanese family business.By travelling to Kaohsiung, Taiwan to interview six managers of Taiwanese family firms this study?s empirical material was gathered for further processing based on a qualitative approach.

This master thesis is about one of the first female in the Swedish Parliament, Elisabeth Tamm (1880?1958), and her political articles in the magazine Tidevarvet. The aim of this study is to find similarities with Tamm?s political thoughts with the Ecofeministic theory. Due to women?s right to vote 1919 women citizenship was in a political debate.

The centre of attention in this essay is on public-private-partnerships in Swedish city planning. It discusses the phenomenon and tries to identify the problems and possibilities that may appear when private and public actors are trying to work together to plan new cities or parts of cities in a process with network structures. The main questions that is asked is ?what vision for the city can we se, and who's vision is it?? together with the question of where the actual power to make the city plan and the vision can be find. The soon-to-be-built area Ulriksdal in Stockholm were Peab AB and Solna Stad stands as main actors has been chosen to illustrate the possible problems and is analysed from different angles, but the writers intention is also to say something on the matter in general.

This study is an attempt to shed light on problems and possibilities of the school library of the Swedish comprehensive school concerning library law and goals of the school and the school library. Many investigations about the role of the school library of the comprehensive school have been carried through. They have all more or less come to the same conclusions. In spite of Swedish library law and goal documents of the school library, the school libraries are often neglected, if not will and commitment are to be found among teachers. Using a model of the school organisation by Gunnar Berg, three cases of school libraries are presented and analysed in a larger organisational and political perspective.

During the last few years the alcohol consumption has increased and is now the highest in 100 years, one usually count that 10 % of the grown up population abuse alcohol and/or drugs and most of them are hidden abusers with families and work. This leads to great costs for the companies. But the much greater cost for the companies are the much larger group of risk abusers. According to the Swedish law the employer has a responsibility for the work milieu and also for the rehabilitate for the employed and drug/alcohol abuse applies to this.I have done qualitative interviews on four companies in the south of Sweden with one representa-tive for the management and one representative for the union. I have investigated their attitudes to alcohol and drugs and how they describe the alcohol culture at the company.The companies define alcohol problems when they are established and obvious and when it is dis-covered they put in resources and because of this they don't work preventive so much.

There is a clear difference between types of regions and forms of regionalization. This theoretical division can point out other division lines on different areas and levels, like the one of discourses. In this article is urged that regional political discourses may be divided in West and East European ones. To argue for West and East differences in regional discourse the article shows division lines both in the history of regionalization but also in ideologies. The regional policy of the EU is one example for today's regionalization as a West discourse and the Transylvanian in Rumania as an example for the East discourse.

AbstractEssay in political Science (c-level) by Karin Forsling, Spring 2007A school for the best interest of the child? - The Swedish School System according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.Supervisor: Stig MontinThe purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Swedish governments work with the im-plementation of this convention and what progress has been made. The inquiry of this study is to describe how the changing in the Swedish School System correspond to the national strat-egy for implementation of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Sweden and how the political protagonists.I have read some of the most relevant documents from the authorities and organisations work-ing with children?s rights in Sweden and papers and communications from the political pro-tagonists.Since UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by Sweden in 1990 the work for implementation has been quite successful but there are still lots to do. There are still some problems in School such as bullying, insulting, insecurity and lack of peaceful and harmoni-ous school environment.